ICYMI – J.D. Vance to Ohioans: Leave Your Hometowns And Buy “A Ticket to Somewhere Else”

WATCH: Vance calls California and Colorado the “new land of opportunity”

WATCH: Vance: “There isn’t a whole lot of reasons to stay” in “places like eastern Kentucky,” where his mother and her family were from

READ: Vance: “The best anti-poverty program is a ticket to somewhere else”

*** IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ***

A new report today from The Vindicator reveals that on at least three occasions before he was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance advocated for people growing up in multigenerational poverty to leave their hometowns in order to make a living, telling them to buy a “ticket to somewhere else,” and even referring to California and Colorado as “the new land of opportunity.” Vance’s past comments contradict a recent campaign fundraising email in which he states that it’s “toxic” to tell people to abandon their struggling hometowns, but his remarks align with his personal story of leaving Ohio for San Francisco, where he earned millions as a venture capitalist.

The Vindicator: Vance flips on people leaving hometowns

By David Skolnick

August 13, 2022

Key Points: 

• D. Vance argued in a recent fundraising email that it’s “toxic” to tell people to abandon their struggling hometowns, but on at least three occasions before he was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, he encouraged exactly that.
• But that wasn’t Vance’s position in previous years.

• During a Feb. 3, 2017, discussion at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, titled “America in the Trump Era,” Vance said while talented or fortunate people should return to their communities, he added “that people who live in really high unemployment areas should be moving to urban centers where there’s not so much unemployment, where there’s a lot more economic opportunity.”
  • He said at that event “there isn’t a whole lot of reasons to stay” in “places like eastern Kentucky,” where his mother and her family were from and that people should move to New York City or San Francisco “where there are more opportunities,” but probably can’t because of the high rent there.
  • Asked about a move being disruptive to a family, Vance said: “My sense is the positives probably outweigh the downsides.”
• During an Aug. 12, 2016, interview with HuffPost Politics to promote his best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance said “my people” have “really struggled to adapt to the new economy. So they’ve seen the difficulty of finding jobs where maybe 50 years ago there was higher geographic mobility they would be moving to the new land of opportunity. Maybe that’s California or Colorado. There is a lot less movement.”

• In a Sept. 22, 2014, column for the National Review, Vance wrote: “For the multigenerational poor, home might be the worst enemy. Appalachian loyalty to the land is the stuff of legend, yet the stubbornness of poverty in the region means that those who stay risk being poor forever.”

• He added that the roads in Appalachia paved by government funds in an attempt to provide opportunity were best if used to leave those areas.

• “The best and most lasting effect of those roads was to give people a faster way out,” he wrote. “If we cannot improve the urban ghetto or the mountain hollow — and the evidence suggests we can’t — then the best anti-poverty program is a ticket to somewhere else.”

• Izzi Levy, [Tim] Ryan’s campaign spokeswoman, said: “San Francisco fraud J.D. Vance has so little regard for the people of Ohio that he thinks he can trick Ohioans into thinking he’s just like any normal person. But Ohio voters see through his schtick. They know Vance left Ohio for California and made millions investing in companies that profit from globalization and free trade and that when he did move back here, the only person his sham nonprofit helped was himself.”

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