CLEVELAND — Less than two days after winning his election to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate, Senator-elect JD Vance spoke Thursday with News 5's John Kosich in his first Cleveland interview since winning the seat. The two talked about the road ahead.
JOHN KOSICH: Has it sunk in yet?
JD VANCE: It's definitely starting to sink in, we took a few hours to celebrate on Tuesday night and hung out with the kids yesterday and now we're sort of in the business of actually setting up the Senate office and that includes hiring the right people, making sure we have the right balance of constituent service and policy focus and so forth. So it's starting to sink in because it has to sink in because we got a job to do.
KOSICH: Your new colleague in the Senate, Senator Sherrod Brown would often talk about the need to go out and take a public relations bath once in a while — hear bluntly from your constituents. You've been through that for the past year and a half in this 88-county process. What did you hear along the road that you feel that you can take immediate action on to help constituents come January 3?
VANCE: Well some of it is just the nitty gritty of constituent services. I mean a lot people have problems with the EPA or the Department of Veterans Affairs or the IRS, and we actually have to set up an operation to make sure we're responding to those constituents' needs as well as we can... I'm actually hopeful that on energy policy in particular and in bringing down prices for Ohio consumers we can actually make some real progress. Because we've got a lot of resources here in the country and I don't think it makes any environmental sense to shut them down and people are really hurting out there. It looks like the inflation numbers got a little bit better today but they're still way too high and that was the most consistent thing that I heard about, the most consistent complaint I heard on the road.
KOSICH: I mentioned Senator Brown, I talk with him and Senator Portman almost once a week between the two of them and they are very often working on the same thing for the benefit of Ohio. Is that a relationship that you will continue, the bipartisan work for Ohio?
VANCE: You know I certainly will. Sherrod was very gracious, called me yesterday and offered his congratulations and I'm going to try to sit down with him in the near future just to talk about things that we can work together. Obviously, he and I have some pretty big disagreements but we also have some big agreements, on trade policy, for example. So I'm trying to make sure that we get some things across the finish line for the people of Ohio. As much as obviously campaigning is a fundamentally partisan act and as much as I obviously disagree with the Biden Administration a whole lot more than I agree with them, I'm also reminded that we actually have a job to do. We have problems in the country and the people of Ohio just elected me to solve some of them, and I'm hopeful I can do that.
KOSICH: You were one of the few Trump-endorsed Senate candidates to win. Why do you think that was?
VANCE: You know it's hard to say. One I still think that (Adam) Laxalt in Nevada and (Blake) Masters in Arizona have a very good shot of pulling this off and of course, Herschel Walker is going to a runoff. I think if you look at the Trump-endorsed candidates but also the non-Trump-endorsed candidates in both the House and the Senate, it was just a much tougher cycle for Republicans than a lot of us expected it to be. There were a lot of moderate Republicans who never had Trump's endorsement in the Northeast that people thought would win and they got crushed. That's not a good thing, but it is a reality that I think we have to deal with in our party — why didn't things go as well as we hoped they would.
KOSICH: The Wall Street Journal, no liberal rag mind you, had an editorial today saying that Donald Trump is the "party's biggest loser." Blaming him for '22, '20, '18. Should the party begin to distance themselves from the former president?
VANCE: I don't think so John. I think that Trump is a very popular figure. I think he is going to continue to have a major role in the party moving forward. Look, the effort I think to finger-point at this stage is really, really counterproductive. For one, we actually don't know what happened. There are a lot of House seats where we still don't know what happened, a lot of Senate seats that are still very much up in the air, and I think that there are a few very clear problems that we should be focused on like the fundraising disadvantage. That'd be a lot more productive than, I think, blaming Donald Trump, or frankly anybody else. I mean there are obviously a lot of other figures within the Republican Party who played a big role in the 2022 election. I'm not sitting around trying to blame them. I'm trying to figure out why didn't we do as well as we should have. And I think for me a big answer is we didn't provide enough of a counter. It's not just enough to be anti-Biden. You have to be for something, and I think that we have to take that lesson to 2023.
KOSICH: If former President Trump does announce a 2024 run for president next week as expected, he does have your support?
VANCE: He will, yes.
KOSICH: When this stage was set in the primary, Tim Ryan vs. J.D. Vance, I said to myself and others that whoever wins this race will immediately be thrust into the national conversation of their party. We're going to have a presidential election coming up in less than two years — would you be open to being part of your party's ticket?
VANCE: You're the first person who has asked me that and certainly not, I think my wife would kill me and probably a few other people as well. Look, I look at this as I just completed a very long job interview and I got the job, and part of that job is I serve six years to do the people's work in the state of Ohio. That's what I plan to do. I think that we'll be effective at it; people won't always agree with me but I'm certainly not looking for another job. I've got six years to do this one and I plan to do it well.
KOSICH: At 38, you are the second youngest, I believe, member of the U.S. Senate and clearly this is a body that tends to trend a little on the older side, so what does that youth bring to it?
VANCE: Well hopefully just a fresh perspective. I mean, look, we live in a country where some of the older generations have gotten the chance to govern this country and a lot of us are coming into our own and we're going to get a chance to govern the country as well and I think that that means hopefully I'll bring a slightly different perspective. I've got young children at home so I'm very worried about whether our kids are getting a good education at their schools. Very concerned about issues that maybe affect young people a little bit more than they affect other people but look I'm representing everybody in the state of Ohio, I think I'll definitely bring a fresh perspective, but whatever perspective you bring your job is to represent everybody from the moment they come into the world to the moment they leave it, and I plan to do that.
