Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan, the nominees for U.S. Senate, don’t agree on much — but both said Vance is the favorite to win the seat in the November election.

Ryan, D-Howland, said he embraces the underdog role.

“It’s going to be a tough race, but at the end of the day, we’ve got a really good shot to win it and feel really good about where we are in contrast to J.D. — feel really good about it,” he said.

Ryan added: “It’s clear it’s a little David vs. Goliath here, but Ohio is the kind of state that roots for David because Ohio is in a lot of ways an underdog state, a flyover state, and so I don’t think they’re going to put their lot in for” Vance.

Vance said: “Certainly we’re favored to win, but again Democrats can win Ohio. They have in the past very recently so we have to do the work.”

Ryan, a 10-term congressman, had a solid victory in the May 3 Democratic primary against two opponents, capturing nearly 70 percent of the vote.

Vance, an author and venture capitalist, emerged from the most expensive Senate primary in Ohio’s history, beating six challengers with 32.2 percent of the vote. The latest campaign finance reports, through April 13, show four of Vance’s challengers and even Bernie Moreno, who withdrew from the primary on Feb. 3, raised and spent more than Vance.

Vance surged in the final weeks of the primary, boosted by the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who won Ohio twice, as well as a $15 million contribution from Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder, to Protect Ohio Values, a super political action committee that supported his campaign.

TRUMP FACTOR

Asked if he would have won without Trump’s support, Vance said: “It’s really hard to say, but certainly the president’s endorsement helped a great deal. The only real negative thing that came from it is, it put a giant target on our back. So we had millions and millions of dollars come into the race after he endorsed me on top of the millions and millions that had already been spent against me. I can’t possibly answer … it’s sort of impossible to know, but I think it helped a great deal.”

Ryan sees it differently.

“Trump dragged him across the finish line,” Ryan said. “You’ve got a carpetbagger from California with a Silicon Valley billionaire (Thiel) who wrote him a $15 million check” and “he didn’t get one-third of the vote in the primary. I’m not impressed. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m not impressed.”

Ryan has been in politics for too long, according to Vance, who called him”a fraud.”

“The broader problem is he’s been in Congress for 20 years,” Vance said. “He’s represented the Youngstown-Akron area and those areas have not done very well. If you judge people by the results, if I spent the past 20 years representing Youngstown in Congress I would say Youngstown needs a new congressman. The question for Ohio is: do we want to give this guy who’s been a total failure a promotion statewide? I think the answer for most Ohioans is going to be no.”

Ryan said: “People in Ohio think Tim thinks for himself vs. J.D. who was against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, against anything any Democrat offers, wants to continue the Democratic-Republican food fight. I want to start talking about we’re all Americans. There is a level of common sense in Ohio that Ohio isn’t going to go for a carpetbagger from California. I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Vance said the carpetbagger comments are “ridiculous.”

“One of the problems we have in Ohio is a lot of our young people don’t feel like there’s a future here; they don’t feel like there are enough opportunities to keep them here, enough good jobs, enough opportunities to raise families,” Vance said. “That’s certainly what I felt growing up (in Middletown). There weren’t enough opportunities. Part of the reason there aren’t enough opportunities are decisions made by Tim Ryan. But I came back after my service (in the Marines) and after a brief period in the business world.”

Vance, now 37, served four years in the Marines, got a law degree from Yale in 2013 and after working in California he moved back to Ohio in 2016. He has owned a house in Washington, D.C., since 2014 and it was his primary residence until 2018.

BIDEN FACTOR

Vance criticized Ryan for voting 100 percent of the time with President Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House.

“That’s a big, big weakness in light of the fact that Joe Biden’s policies have caused a lot of harm,” Vance said.

He added: “Democrats can win Ohio. We know that. It’s still a purple state, but it’s very tough for a Democrat to win Ohio when you have a Democratic president and a Democratic House that have caused a historical inflation crisis. That’s the challenge for Tim Ryan who’s going to try to run away from that. But we’re not going to let him.”

Ryan said while Vance is beholden to Thiel and Trump, he’s been an independent voice who challenged Pelosi for leader of the House Democrats in 2017, has criticized Biden for how he handled the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, not getting planes fast enough to Ukraine and not pushing for a tax cut to combat inflation.

While he’s voted with Pelosi and Biden 100 percent of the time, Ryan said in Congress the majority isn’t “bringing a bill that Democrats are not united around. It’s not going to come up for a vote. If it’s coming to the floor, we have a consensus of the party.”

Asked why he’s keeping Biden at arm’s length, Ryan said: “I want this race to be about me, my record and what I’m going to do for Ohio and what I’ve done. I just don’t want to that being obscured by anybody. A part of me is like, look, I am the face of the campaign. It is my race for Senate in Ohio, and I really want that to be the focus.”

In assessing Biden’s presidency so far, Ryan said, “I’m reluctant to give him a grade or a score. But I want people to know when I agree with him. When it’s good for us, I’ll support it. If not, I’ll fight him.”

OPINION CHANGED

Vance was a vocal critic of Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential race, but has since said Trump was the best president in his lifetime and that he was initially wrong about him.

“There is a real difference between Tim Ryan and I, which is, we have a record of what America First policies have delivered for this state and it was good; always a lot to improve on, but it was good,” he said. “I think the record of the Biden administration has been a catastrophe. That to me is the difference between our two races.”

Vance said Ryan”more than anybody in American politics” talks “a big game, but when you look” at his record it’s “weak.”

Vance also said he “would be shocked” if Trump doesn’t return to Ohio to campaign for him.

VOTER BACKING

After a bitter Republican primary, Vance said one of his challenges is to “get all the people who supported other candidates behind me for the general election.”

But he expects voters who backed his opponents to support him in the general election.

“We all realize the challenge for the Republican Party in the state of Ohio is, do we want a rubber stamp for Joe Biden or do we want someone who will push back against the inflation and open border policies of the Democrats?” Vance said. “Joe Biden has not done a good job and Tim Ryan has voted with him 100 percent of the time. Most Republicans realize we can’t have that in the U.S. Senate, especially given the stakes right now. I’m not at all worried about people uniting behind me.”

Ryan said he will unveil a Republicans for Ryan initiative soon.

He sees the voters who backed the defeated Republican candidates in the party’s primary “up for grabs. They won’t coalesce around him. He’s completely off-putting to independent voters. He was against Trump and now he’s not just for Trump, but he’s all the way up his rear end. This guy changes with the wind. He’s not for the issues that are most important to Ohio.”

Vance said that while he changed his opinion about Trump, it’s because the former president proved him wrong on being tough on China, trade and other issues.

“I don’t have any problem with people changing their mind,” he said. “The issue I have is when there’s no real theory behind it, no explanation behind it. The problem with Tim Ryan with going from pro-defund the police a few years ago to anti-defund the police is not that he changed his mind, but it’s that he pretends he hasn’t changed his mind.”

dskolnick@vindy.com

dskolnick@tribtoday.com