JD Vance’s Ohio hometown struggles with how to recognize the incoming vice president

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — It was a month after her son’s election as vice president of the United States and JD Vance ‘s mother wondered why the city of his birth had yet to recognize him.

“I just think it would be really nice if we could acknowledge that this is his hometown and put up some signs,” Beverly Aikins told the city council in Middletown, Ohio, where she and Vance’s sister still live, in early December. “He graduated from Middletown High School, comes back here frequently to visit me and take me to dinner, and I humbly request that.”

Perhaps in another historical moment, a few signs would seem like a no-brainer, but not this year and not for this person. The council was, instead, divided.

Many residents of this Midwest steel town are bursting with pride at their native son’s accomplishments. But others feel lingering embarrassment over Vance’s unflattering portrayal of Middletown in his best-selling memoir, “ Hillbilly Elegy ” or trepidation about Donald Trump’s second White House term, or both.

The debate played out in the city’s high-ceilinged council chamber, where subdued backlighting gives the room a Starship Enterprise aura. One council member suggested naming a street for Vance. Another suggested a statue of Vance’s beloved Mamaw, the grandmother who raised him. A third tried to slow her colleagues down.

“I’m thinking, what’s the rush?” Jennifer Carter said. “If he gets in office and creates havoc, with him and Trump sending the people out of the country, all of the things that they have said that they wanted to do, if all of this stuff happens, we’re still saying, ‘Yay!’? I’m trying to understand.”

Colleague Steven West offered a counterpoint.

“To say, hey, there’s going to be a city where a young man had a lot of struggles, overcomes all of those and becomes vice president, and the city doesn’t recognize it — regardless of political party affiliation, you would scratch your head and go, ‘What? What’s going on?’” he said. “And that’s how polarized this country is.”

City leaders eventually came to the kind of compromise that was either maddeningly bureaucratic or elegantly impartial, depending on one’s perspective, but also the kind that has become increasingly rare in the bitter politics of the current moment. They would “recognize” Vance’s important achievement, but be careful not to “celebrate” it — out of respect for residents’ varying opinions and the nonpartisan council’s goal of political neutrality.

The day after the council meeting, Middletown posted a congratulatory note to Vance on its website and he will be featured prominently in the city’s next monthly newsletter. City spokesperson Clayton Castle said signs will go up at the city’s seven entry points after Vance and Trump are inaugurated Monday. The signs will say: “Middletown, Hometown of J.D. Vance, 50th Vice President of the United States of America.”

At Middletown High School, Vance’s alma mater, the energy level is high. At the former Ohio senator ‘s invitation, the band is scheduled to march in Monday’s inaugural parade in Washington The students will leave at 6 a.m. Sunday.

“He seems really proud that he’s from Middletown and he wants to bring other Middletown students to be there,” said Leslie Hernandez, a senior who plays clarinet. “Which is awesome, you know?”

The Middletown City School District raised well over the $140,000 needed to underwrite the full cost of the trip for band members, color guard and cheerleaders attending, said spokesperson Dan Wohler. He said enough was left over to buy a banner for the parade, T-shirts and other souvenirs.

Besides city and state grants, the total included money raised through a GoFundMe launched by Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who’s positioning for a run for governor next year, and a $10,000 donation from the campaign fund of Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

“From the district’s standpoint, it’s pretty exciting to say that a graduate of the high school is going to be the next vice president of the United States,” Wohler said. “That’s pretty historic.”

From residents’ standpoint, he said sentiments on Vance’s election are mixed. Turnout in Middletown ran nearly 9 percentage points behind that of Butler County, where it’s situated, according to state figures. Trump and Vance won almost 62% of the vote in city precincts.

“We’re split down the middle, same as the country,” Wohler said. “I think there’s people that like him, I think there’s people that don’t like him, because of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ and all that.”

In his 2016 book, Vance was not kind to Middletown. He recalled that kids “derisively called it ‘Middletucky’” when he was growing up because of all the Kentucky transplants — including his family, which hailed from Jackson. With them came Kentucky’s problems, he wrote, which he described as drug addiction, ”Mountain Dew mouth” and a shortage of virtuous fathers.

“People have struggled to get out of Jackson for decades; now they struggle to escape Middletown,” he wrote.

The portrayal created a backlash among Appalachian scholars, reigniting debate over whether a region with a long history of exploitation from out-of-state interests had been misrepresented with victim-blaming stereotypes. Vance began to distance himself from the book, rarely mentioning it during the 2024 campaign. He has spoken fondly about his Appalachian roots, and earlier this week he visited the cemetery in Breathitt County, Kentucky, where five generations of his family are buried.

“My ancestors who are buried in that cemetery fought tirelessly for the American ideals we will be entrusted to uphold,” he said in a statement about the visit. “It’s both an honor and a privilege that someone with my upbringing can go on to become the Vice President of the United States.”

In Middletown, not technically part of Appalachia, some residents don’t think the book’s conclusions rang true.

Paul Gomia, a politically active Middletown Democrat who’s more than 30 years older than the 40-year-old Vance, said his neighborhood was about four blocks from Vance’s. Gomia said he was poor growing up and his family got a lot of government benefits, including food from the health department and college scholarships. He rejects the book’s suggestion that such programs breed laziness and generational downward mobility. He said they helped him succeed in life.

“I don’t like his story, when he grew up almost the same as I did,” he said. “And my concern with what I’m seeing locally, as well as nationally, is the loss of possibly those opportunities, you know, grants, the opportunity to go to school — with the dissing with the word ‘woke,’ and claiming that it’s something evil, coming from the Republican Party. I think that means opportunities, job training, and diversity and equality and inclusion, things that we worked so hard for all these years.”

Pastor Lamar Ferrell of Middletown’s Berachah Church criticized Middletown’s lack of recognition for Vance two weeks before the politician’s mother visited council chambers. Ferrell called for an end to “the nonsense of silence.”

“JD is a Middletonian,” he told the council. “Before we debate and dialogue on what ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ has meant, the reality is that JD has shown us all that we can climb from a place that all of us would want to climb from.”

Ferrell’s church is hosting an inaugural watch party on Monday.

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Associated Press videojournalist Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos contributed to this report.