“How much are you feeling J.D. Vance's absence from the Senate right now?” Raw Story asked mere days away from a now-averted government shutdown.
“It hasn't shown up yet,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Raw Story while riding an elevator to the Senate floor. “We're not doing a whole lot.”
Graham’s far from alone.
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“I’m gonna take a timeout”
“How much is the Senate missing J.D. Vance — you guys are only a 100-person body?” Raw Story asked.
“I haven't had any discussion, so I don't know about that,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol a few weeks ago.
Republican senators have now been released from their senatorial duties until after November's elections, meaning many are crisscrossing the nation stumping for their colleagues in razor-thin races and former President Donald Trump and his running mate.
But away from the lights, cameras and teleprompters afforded politicians rallying the base in swing states, many Republicans don’t seem to have enough energy to praise Vance — at least when asked for examples.
“I really enjoy working with J.D.,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told Raw Story at the U.S. Capitol a couple weeks ago. “I hate not having him around, but I'm so glad that he's out on the trail.”
“Do you mind if I ask what you guys have done together?”
“No,” Ernst replied, hopping a tram back to her Senate office alone. “I’m gonna take a timeout.”
Ernst isn’t the only Republican taking a timeout from Vance.
“I hate to say it, but I haven’t watched a lot of J.D.’s stump speeches,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) admitted to a small gaggle of reporters at the Capitol last week. “At the end of the day, J.D. knows he's running for president and who needs to be the primary messenger-in-chief.”
Republican senators may not feel the need to listen to Vance on the stump because they’ve heard him speak in private.
“He's a very smart guy and contributes to discussions,” Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) told Raw Story on his way to vote on the Senate floor last week. “He's not afraid to speak his mind.”
“He's part of the younger breed,” Raw Story pressed. “He was more aligned with Trump, kinda putting those voices of the party's base at the table?”
“He is, and he isn't. Depends on the issue,” Boozman said. “There's a little bit of populism in there, and so he's aligned more with President Trump regarding foreign affairs. Those kind of things.”
Senators may know the sound of Vance’s voice, but few seem to know — or at least want to discuss — his work ethic, or lack thereof, publicly.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) chairs the bicameral Joint Economic Committee, which is comprised of only 20 members of Congress—10 from each chamber and each party—yet he says he hasn’t interacted with Vance enough to be able to rip on him in the midst of this heated, hyper-partisan presidential election cycle.
“I haven't had enough exposure to him,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol recently. “It’s usually what you would expect. It's the same, kind of, Appalachia family stuff that he's been talking about on the campaign trail, but nothing really that noteworthy.”
“Is that just natural for a second-year freshman?” Raw Story asked.
“I just don't know the guy well enough to really comment,” Heinrich said. “The stuff on the campaign trail is, I mean, not going well, so I would rather just step back and let him speak for himself.”
Before Vance was speaking for himself — through his Trump-approved teleprompter remarks, that is — on the campaign trail, he tried to use the few levers of legislative power afforded freshmen senators to be heard not by his colleagues but by the far-right fringes of today’s GOP.
The absent, if loud, junior senator from Ohio
Of the 36 bills Vance has sponsored in his two years in the Senate, most are slapped with self-exploratory red meat titles aimed at Trump and his MAGA base, like Vance’s FAUCI Act, which would mandate a new federal government website devoted to listing the financial record of public officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Other bill names are even more self-explanatory. Take Vance’s No Community Development Block Grants for Sanctuary Cities Act, along with his No Obamacare for Illegal Aliens Act or even the Dismantle DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion—Act of 2024. Other measures are cloaked in politicalization.
There’s Vance’s Timely Departure Act, which critics decry for requiring foreign visitors to deposit between $5,000 and $15,000 to enter America. Those who can afford that retainer would get it back if they don’t overstay their visas, which only 3.7% of foreign visitors are estimated to do.
Vance has also teamed up on legislation with one of his first political allies, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
The two serve on opposite sides of the Capitol, but they came together to repeal the Freedom to Breathe Act, which prohibited public health-focused mask mandates on planes, trains and publicly funded classrooms.
The GOP vice presidential nominee also teamed up with former House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-VA) to try and “declare English as the official language of the United States.”
Vance has missed dozens of votes in his short career. Before Trump tapped him as his sidekick this summer, between April and June, Ohio’s junior senator didn’t bother voting 21.6% of the time, according to GovTrack.
Since joining Trump on the ticket in July, Vance’s missed votes percentage has, naturally, spiked to 79.2%. But that’s not necessarily because Vance has been out campaigning.
A couple of weeks back, on Thursday, Sept. 19, Vance and his intimidating entourage of Secret Service agents and aides were at the Capitol so the senator could take advantage of the free — well, taxpayer-funded — government-run healthcare provided to the nation’s political class.
Vance saw the Capitol’s Attending Physician, but he didn’t bother joining his colleagues in voting — the job he was elected to do — on the Senate floor.
Just like Vance is a natural ally with the far-right Freedom Caucus on the other side of the Capitol, he’s surely got allies amongst the rabble-rousing Republican senators.
“What has he brought to this chamber?” Raw Story asked.
“He represents Ohio, and he creates a good conversation,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story on his way to vote on the Senate floor last week.
Scott was a powerful governor before becoming one of 100 senators. That may be why the first-term senator turned heads in the marble halls of the Capitol two years ago when he challenged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
While he was resoundingly defeated, Scott has no regrets because—like Vance and Freedom Caucus bomb-throwers in the House—he feels a part of his mandate from Florida voters is to upend the Washington establishment.
With McConnell promising to resign from GOP leadership after the November elections, Scott is running once again against two of McConnell’s top generals, current Republican Whip John Thune (R-SD) and former Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-TX). Scott sees Vance and others like him from the new right as his potential ticket to senatorial power.
“Do you look at [Vance] as one of those allies who came here to upend the ways of Washington?” Raw Story asked.
“Oh yeah,” Scott said. “J.D. has come here to change the direction of the country, and I appreciate his positions and I appreciate his energy. And we’ve got big problems. We have a country in turmoil. It’s going to take a big change, not a little change. It's gonna take a sea change.”
That sea change has been felt across Washington of late. From last year’s ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy by eight of his fellow Republicans to fringe-right Republicans blocking Speaker Mike Johnson from racking up even the smallest win, like when they forced him to rely on Democrats to fund the government last week.
“It’s feeling less weird here”
However, according to Vance’s fellow freshman classmate, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), Vance's absence from the Senate has also brought about a tangible change.
“It's feeling less weird here. I’ve been picking up on that vibe,” Fetterman told Raw Story while walking through the Senate basement. “I know the GOP thinks that, they think it's all part of the plan to be the ultimate wang like that, but that's the only card he can play. He just keeps saying weirder things and going out of his way to offend people that otherwise wouldn't even be a voter. It's just strange.”
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