JD Vance isn’t taking it personally after Donald Trump flubbed his name in front of thousands of his fans.
The Ohio Senate candidate was questioned by Robert Costa for CBS News on Monday after the former president, at a rally in Nebraska, quipped that he had endorsed a candidate named “JD Mandel” in the race. The flub was a reference to Mr Trump’s announcement of support for JD Vance, the race’s new frontrunner (according to recent polling) but combined Mr Vance’s name with that of his closest opponent, Josh Mandel. More embarassingly, Mr Mandel was known to have sought Mr Trump’s endorsement with the same fervor that Hillbilly Ellegy author JD Vance did as the two launched their bids last year.
“He gives, what, thousands of words of speeches every single week,” Mr Vance said in response to a question about the moment. “Sometimes he’s going to misspeak. Everybody’s going to do that.”
“I’m not worried about it at all,” he added.
Ohio’s Senate primaries are on Tuesday. Mr Vance is polling slightly ahead of Mr Mandel at the top of a primary field that has narrowed to three, rather than two, candidates as the race enters its final hours. Just behind Mr Mandel in new polls of the race released in the past few days is Matt Dolan, a candidate who spurned the contest for Mr Trump’s endorsement and who has appeared to be having his moment in the last days of the campaign.
The race has largely devolved into a battle of national surrogates in recent days. Over the weekent Mr Vance campaigned with Trump loyalist members of Congress Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and he has also hit the trail with Donald Trump Jr., eager to serve as his father’s top political deputy.
Mr Mandel, by comparison, has campaigned with Texas Sen Ted Cruz in Ohio’s churches as he seeks to peel away the religious right and take down Mr Vance’s pro-Trump coalition. Polls have shown Mr Vance’s support doubling over the past month and a half as Mr Trump’s endorsement shook up the race; if he wins on Tuesday, it will prove that the former president still has the political strength to pick winners and losers in state primaries around the country.
He expressed his confidence in his chances of defeating Mr Vance to The Independent on Saturday, while offering an olive branch to Mr Trump for spurning him in the primary: “We’re gonna win on Tuesday and I look forward to working with President Trump to advance the Trump America First Agenda and retire [speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate majority leader Chuck] Schumer once and for all.”
