U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance campaigns in Avon

AVON — Continuing on his statewide "No B.S." town hall tour, U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance campaigned in Avon on Tuesday evening. Vance, a Republican and author of the well-known memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," is seeking the Senate seat currently held by the retiring Republican Rob Portman. On Tuesday, he spoke and took voters' questions for about an hour at the Knights of Columbus hall. After being introduced by his sister, Vance began his remarks by discussing economic issues including the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries. Americans used to be able to support a family on a single middle-class income by working hard and playing by the rules, Vance told voters, but then "a set of bipartisan and very dumb American leaders" decided that manufacturing of many products could be outsourced to China, Mexico and other countries. "But in the process, two things happen. The first is that millions of middle-class American jobs disappeared. And second, we became weak and dependent as a country," he said, adding that he believes leaders failed to admit failure and instead "used identity politics to distract us from what they were doing, and to divide us against each other." Vance said the prices of goods are rising because of spending by the Biden administration, which he views as spending money we don't have, as well as because not enough items are manufactured in the country anymore. He also addressed his support for former President Donald Trump, who Vance had previously criticized. Describing his change of opinion as an "elephant in the room," Vance said he came to realize Trump was "legitimately the best president of my lifetime." "What Trump's presidency did was rip a Band-aid off in this country, and I think a lot of us have seen something about the corruption in our leadership that we maybe didn't see, or at least I didn't see, five or six years ago," he said. "I mean, who would have believed that a sitting U.S. president would be spied on by his own Federal Bureau of Investigation?" Vance also addressed the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, saying there are "political prisoners, who are not even accused of a violent offense, who've been sitting in prison for over a year without a trial in the greatest and freest country in the world." He said he won't defend people who committed violence during the riot, but said "no one was armed" at the Capitol. People should go to jail for committing violent crimes, Vance said, "but after a free and fair trial under the laws and Constitution of the United States." During the question and answer portion, he claimed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) under President Joe Biden is illegally keeping a database on people who lawfully purchased guns in the past few weeks. Vance said if elected to the Senate, he would investigate who decided to allegedly collect the information for the database, which he said would eventually become an "unconstitutional gun registry" that would destroy people's Second Amendment rights. He proposed abolishing the ATF. Questions from attendees ranged from queries about vaccine mandates — Vance said he opposes them — to discussions about car parts manufacturing and intellectual property theft. Asked a question related to healthcare, Vance said "Obamacare was a disaster" but it must be repealed and replaced by something with "some substance to it, or we are going to get creamed electorally and we're not actually going to do that job that the people sent us to do." Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @drey1357.