Due Diligence: Can J.D. Vance’s “made in America” story help convince Pa. voters?

What questions do you have about the 2024 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, newly nominated Republican VP pick J.D. Vance referred to Pennsylvania six times during his 35-minute address.

After talking about his background, growing up in a lower-income family in Rust Belt, Ohio, the U.S. Senator said the real story wasn’t about him.

“It’s about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tin-pot dictators across the world when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country,” he said.

Vance has made history as the first millennial vice presidential nominee, but his selection appears to be designed to help former President Donald Trump appeal to voters in rural and deindustrialization regions, including the Keystone State.

So will it work? Due Diligence goes into the deep dive to find out.

‘Blue Dog Democrats’

Members of the Pennsylvania delegation to the RNC overwhelmingly supported Trump’s VP pick and told WHYY News that they thought Vance would help Trump pick up disaffected voters in Pennsylvania’s own Rust Best in the western part of the state as well as in old industrial Lehigh Valley, where rusted out factories such as Bethlehem Steel stand as memorial to the area’s manufacturing past.

Delegate Tom Carroll from Bethlehem of Bethlehem told WHYY News that he thinks Vance may even appeal to some Democrats.

“They’re old blue dog Democrats and they haven’t switched their party, but they don’t like what the Democrat Party is doing,” he said. “And I think those are the very people in large numbers, largely Catholic, largely former unions, ethnic groups from all over Europe that came to build this country and still live in the valley, and they’ll turn to him.”

Trump Convert

Republican political consultant Ray Zaborney of Red Mavericks Media largely agrees, but sees Vance’s value a little differently. While Zaborney points out that most people vote for the president without much regard for the other member on the ticket, he thinks that Vance will appeal to more moderate Republicans who see a little of themselves in Vance.

Vance was an early “never Trump” Republican who called the former president “cultural heroin” and “America’s Hitler,” but later apologized as Trump gained control of the party, making him a necessary endorsement when Vance ran for the U.S. Senate.

“White working-class voters can relate and in the suburbs,” Zaborney told WHYY News. “He’s a guy who can talk about his conversion on Trump — something many of them are potentially doing themselves.”

However, Sam Chen, another political consultant who works with Republican candidates and causes, said that he doesn’t think Vance will add much to the ticket.

“I don’t know that the Republicans that have won in the areas like the Lehigh Valley and the collar counties are these populist Republicans and then in Central Pennsylvania, that’s just going to be a conservative area,” he told WHYY News. “Republicans are going to win those seats regardless of what brand of the party they’re in.”

‘Things are Good’

Allentown Mayor Matthew Tuerk takes great exception to Vance’s depiction of rural and “rust belt” areas of Pennsylvania as economically depressed.

“Right now, things are actually pretty good,” he told WHYY News. Tuerk credits the Biden-Harris for the significant local investments through legislation such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, American Rescue Plan Act and The Chips Act, which he says are pumping millions of dollars into the area, updating the city’s public facilities and services while creating jobs.

“There’s continued growth in the healthcare sector, in manufacturing and in transportation and warehousing. We’re also seeing continued entrepreneurial growth in a city like Allentown, where we saw more new business start in 2023 than we had seen in years.”

Instead, Tuerk says, a Trump-Vance Administration would eliminate programs that “help people participate in the labor force such as the Affordable Care Act, which provides non-job dependent insurance options and Social Security and Medicare.

The Elegy

In his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance wrote about a desperate upbringing, relaying his own story of social isolation, poverty, drug use and the religious and political changes. The question remains whether that narrative still holds today and if it will resonate with voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and, of course, Pennsylvania where Vance is expected to take residency the next few months as the Trump campaign hopes to make it back to the White House next year.