Ohio Senate candidates Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance clashed in a debate on Monday night. Watch:
“I’m not going to take lectures on dignity and self-respect from a guy caught on video kissing up to Chuck Schumer. We are close to Halloween and Tim Ryan has put on a costume pretending to be a Moderate. You voted with Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden 100% of the time,” Vance said.
Then Vance went further in his argument about Tim Ryan’s Washington record.
“20 years ago, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps,” Vance added. “That very same year, Tim Ryan went to Washington, D.C. where he has been failing at his basic job for 20 years.” “He talks a big game, but the record of accomplishment just isn’t there.”
Vance and Ryan also had a powerful exchange on abortion laws and immigration policy. Ryan discussed the case of a ten-year-old girl who crossed Ohio state lines to get to Indiana in order to get an abortion and argued that Vance wouldn’t allow for an exception for rape or incest.
“Look, I’ve always believed in reasonable exceptions,” Vance counter-argued. “This is a misrepresentation my view, but let’s hear it from me, not from Congressman Ryan. I absolutely think the 10 year-old-girl, the case that we’ve of course, heard a lot about an incredibly tragic situation. I mean, look, I’ve got a nine year old baby girl at home. I cannot imagine, what’s that, what that’s like for the girl, for her family. God forbid something that like that would happen.”
“I have said repeatedly on the record that I think that that girl should be able to get an abortion if she and her family so choose to do so. But let’s talk about that case because why was a 10-year-old girl raped in our community, raped in our state in the first place?” Vance argued. “The thing, the media and Congress and Ryan, they talk about this all the time. The thing they never mentioned is that poor girl was raped by an illegal alien. Somebody that should have never been in this state in the first place.”
“You voted so many times against border wall funding so many times for amnesty. Tim, if you had done your job, she would’ve never been raped in the first place. Do your job on board of security. Don’t lecture me about opinions. I don’t actually have,” Vance said.
As the New York Times highlighted about the debate, Ryan’s strategy turns on trying to paint his opponent as an alleged ‘extremist.’
“In a state that Donald Trump easily won, where the former president remains popular, Ryan has a difficult task, attacking Vance as an extremist threat to democracy without alienating Trump supporters,” Jonathan Weisman noted. “Asked what the biggest threat to democracy is, he went through Vance’s election denialism and support for Jan. 6 rioters. But he said he supported Trump’s trade policies, while he was willing to stand up to Pelosi and Biden.”
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