A city council election in Vice President JD Vance's Ohio hometown could serve as a temperature check for next year's midterm congressional elections, according to a report Wednesday.
The Middletown city council is officially nonpartisan, but its current makeup tilts 3-1 in favor of Republicans while its fifth member, Mayor Elizabeth Slamka, is considered a centrist.
But threatened wins by progressive challengers Scotty Robertson and Larri Silas against GOP incumbents in next week's election could send shock waves all the way to Washington, D.C., reported The Guardian.
“Middletown is a city that has communities with some very vulnerable populations," said Robertson, a West Virginia native and pastor who moved to the city eight years ago. "The [Trump administration] policies are designed to help billionaires, and there are not a lot of his billionaire friends that exist in Middletown."
He identified one of those billionaires – a longtime mentor and financial backer to Middletown's most famous son – by name.
"Peter Thiel doesn’t live in Middletown," Robertson said, referring to the tech billionaire who hired Vance after the now-VP graduated from Yale Law School.
Ohio has become a reliably red state in presidential elections, but nearly four in 10 voters in Middletown chose not to vote for Trump and his running mate, who described the city of 50,000 people in less-than-favorable terms in his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy."
“I think a lot of people in Middletown want change, and that people see youth as change,” said Silas, a 22-year-old nursing home worker and third-generation Middletown resident. “A lot of people say they want to see the youth get involved [in politics], but when you do, you’re often criticized for not having experience.”
Silas decided to enter politics after longtime Democratic senator Sherrod Brown lost his race last year to Trump-endorsed Republican Bernie Moreno.
“I thought: ‘What can I do?" she said. "I can’t change national politics, but I can get involved someway."
Vance's unfavorability has risen nationally since becoming vice president, and he has been criticized in Middletown for not intervening to save a Joe Biden-era grant that would have provided millions to convert a local steel plant to a job-creating clean energy facility. His mother scolded the city council in December for not doing enough to recognize his accomplishments.
“I’m confused [by Vance]," Robertson said. "He says he wants to govern for the working person, for the average person, yet the policies that he supports are policies that hurt poor, working people disproportionately."
That describes many families in Middletown, where child poverty is 29 percent, well above the national average, and both Silas and Robertson have staked their campaigns against experienced GOP incumbents on their opposition to Trump-Vance policies they say are hurting the city's residents.
“I think that our country in general is at a pivotal moment,” Robertson said. “If good, decent people with the right motives don’t stand up and run for office and participate in the political process, then that leaves it ripe for picking for the bad actors.”