Speech: JD Vance Holds a Midterm Political Rally in Lima, Ohio - October 9, 2026

That's not a bad entrance, right? How we doing, Lima? You know, ladies and gentlemen, I've been, it feels like, all over the country, all over the world. In just the last few weeks, I've been to Alaska, I've been to Florida, I've been to Texas, to Maine, to North Carolina, and to Kansas, and damn near everywhere in between.

And while I've loved every minute of it, I love this country, and it's a beautiful place, I gotta say, man, it feels good to be home. Ohio. It's good that we know how to spell the state of Ohio, ladies and gentlemen. That's what I've learned far and wide is that we do know how to spell our state. Now back, I'm back here for one simple reason because this November we have some big races ahead of us. And here in Lima, we need to win, ladies and gentlemen.

We need to run up the score, and we need to do it big for Jon Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy. Now, I wanna talk a little bit, of course, about what the Trump administration, of course, led by a great president, has been able to accomplish for the great state of Ohio, thanks to our Republican allies outside the White House.

We would not have been able to get it done without many of the people here. But before I get into that, I gotta shout out a few people who have been essential partners in that fight. And of course, the first is your great congressman. He couldn't be here with us today, but the great give it, Jim Jordan, give it up for Jim Jordan.

Second, of course, is the amazing current state representative, but soon to be congressman from Northwest Ohio, Derek Merrin. Derek, thank you for everything you're doing, man. We're, of course, excited and proud to be joined by a dear friend of mine, but more importantly, the next governor of the great state of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy.

And also, you've got two of the best senators. I know this because I was in the Senate. I can judge very objectively, but the two best senators that d- -- the best Senate team in the entire United States represents the state of Ohio, Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted. My friends, this is a team that knows Ohio.

This is a team that fights for Ohio. And most importantly, this is a team that has gotten big results for the people of our state. So let's give another huge hand to all of these incredible fighters for our people and for our state. Now, you know at heart, I'm still a Senate guy. I guess it says on the title, I'm the President of the Senate.

So I gotta start by talking about Jon Husted a little bit. Because Jon and I, you know, we've known each other for a very, very long time, and I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get pissed off at all the lies that they're telling about the great statesman, Jon Husted. As you guys know, Jon took over the seat that I vacated after you all gave me the honor of making me your Vice President of the United States.

And every single day I see a headline or a press release from Senator Husted and I think, damn it, I'm kinda jealous of that guy. Why didn't we think of that when I was in the United States Senator? Because for 20 months, 20 short months, Jon has fought relentlessly for the people of this state. He is one of the hardest workers in the United States Senate.

Do you know why you no longer pay taxes on tips? It's because Jon Husted. Do you know why people working overtime get to keep all of their overtime and don't have it taxed? Because of Jon Husted. If you're a senior and you're sick of paying taxes on your Social Security when you already paid taxes on that money when you earned it, you know you can thank for cutting taxes on Social Security?

Jon Husted. Ladies and gentlemen, it's because of Jon Husted that Congress was able to permanently, permanently lower taxes for working families. It's because of Jon Husted that Congress was able to permanently, permanently lower taxes for working families. It's because of Jon Husted that our police are as well funded as they have been in decades in this country.

And it's because of Jon Husted that we passed the Laken Riley Act and kicked violent foreign criminals out of the United States of America. Now, of course, it's also because of President Trump. I'm gonna get in trouble. I'm giving Jon Husted so much credit. I'm gonna get a call from the president. But ladies and gentlemen, we cannot do all this great stuff without our amazing congressional allies.

And I know that people in the state were worried about making life affordable. We're worried about how can our government make life more affordable for the everyday Ohioan who wakes up, bust their tail every single day. And we gotta remember that we're trying to lower the costs from a crisis that the Democrats left us. And in lowering costs and fighting for your tax dollars and fighting for the money to go into your pocket, there has been no greater ally to the state of Ohio than Jon Husted.

Jon is the man who led the charge in rolling back the Biden administration's insane Green New Deal rules for American manufacturers. It is Jon Husted who is the person who deserves the most credit for when the president signed into law a, a piece of legislation that si- -- saves appliance makers $213,000 and thousands of hours each year in paperwork alone.

It was Jon Husted who made that legislation happen. This is the stuff the media doesn't talk about. But when we talk about fighting for normal people who go to work, who pay their taxes, who play by the rules and just want a better life, it is Jon Husted who has been right there with us as we've stood up for Ohio families every single day.

You know, there, there's a pet issue of mine. Something again, I don't think the press talks about enough, but why have we seen rents in the United States of America after more than doubling under the Biden administration, rents have finally started to cool off? We still got a lot of more work to do. But I though, very simple principle, because we ought to ensure that American homes go to the American people, not to foreigners and not to Wall Street investors.

But guess who helped us get that legislation passed in the United States Senate and was calling me about it every single day to make sure it actually got done. The legislation that banned Wall Street from buying up American homes has one very important author and Jon Husted is standing right here. All of the work that we've done from keeping money out of the hands of fraudsters to ensuring that we make it possible for everyday Americans to be able to get a good job or to afford a home when the president of the United States called the executives of the big pharma companies and said, "You know what?

You need to stop charging Americans more for drugs than Europeans." You know who stood and fought with us every single step of the way? It's the current senator and the guy you're gonna re- -- reelect, Jon Husted. Now Jon has always had our back and now it's our turn in this state and in this room and in this community to have his.

So on November the 3rd, I don't want you to just get out there and vote for Jon. I want you to take every single person you know, get them to the polls and remind them that you need a fighter for Lima and for Ohio and the United States Senate and our fighter is Jon Husted. Now I gotta talk about the guy he's running against too, but before I do that, I wanna talk about your next governor, our next governor.

Vivek is an entrepreneur. He's a guy who hasn't just received a paycheck he signed a paycheck to and he knows what happens when Washington bureaucrats and Columbus bureaucrats, let's be honest, care more about their jobs when they care more about their cushy positions than they do about fighting for the people of their state.

Now you may not remember this, but in the early days of DOGE, Vivek saved billions and billions of dollars from going to woke pet projects and do nothing bureaucrats in Washington. And he has promised me that he is gonna do the exact same thing from the governor's mansion in Columbus, Ohio. What Vivek is gonna do is he's gonna to attract jobs and he's gonna unleash the incredible potential of this state.

And he's also gonna fight every single day to bring down costs, particularly energy costs for the working people of the state. Because Vivek knows business, he knows that Ohio, we're like a chained animal. There is so much potential in this state. There is so much ability, so much dynamism, so much excitement.

People want to come and invest in this state and create jobs in this state, but they're not gonna do it if we don't have smart leadership at the governor's mansion. Now, Vivek has made a number of things, of course, a hallmark of his campaign. He's talked about doing something that people have only wished at, but he's gonna get done.

He's gonna get historic property tax relief for every single citizen who owns a house in this state. Like me, Vivek is a young father. He cares about whether young people can actually afford to build a life in this great state. He wants to make it so that every single person can, so long as they work hard and play by the rules, that our young people can buy a home, raise a family, and actually achieve the American dream of home ownership in a state that all of us love.

And I'm not just up here talking about the important things that Vivek wants to do. I'm also telling you, he's a guy who actually gets things done. Vivek is not like so many politicians, a person who just talks about things. He's got very interesting ideas. But more importantly, he has the capacity to execute and get it done.

And we need him to win because we need all those great things to happen to our state, but we also need him to win because he is running against a crazy person. And this is the fun part of the festivities where I get to talk about Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown. Now, Amy Acton, I have to be honest with you, I don't know that much about her other than that she was the woman who wanted to mask all of our two year olds and keep them from going to school.

That's the only thing I really remember about her. Now I did promise Amy that I would meet her at a bar later. I understand that she's into that sort of thing. So I'm going to try to get to know her a little bit better. But ladies and gentlemen, it was Amy who closed your kids' schools, who banned you from going to church.

It was Amy who stole precious moments from your family and loved ones who stole birthdays, graduations and funerals. It was Amy who forced mandate after mandate after mandate on the great state of Ohio. This November, ladies and gentlemen, the choice could not be clear. So I ask you very simply, vote for Vivek, vote to keep Ohio strong, vote to keep us prosperous and vote to keep us free.

Now look, I, I'm very proud of what we have accomplished together with partners like Jon, like Vivek, like Derek Marin, what we've done for the state of Ohio and what working with them we've been able to do for the whole United States of America. Now, a lot of you know that this is very personal for me. This is not just red team versus blue team.

My papa, the man who raised me welded steel in Middletown, Ohio for nearly 40 years, just down 75, 75 South. I watched jobs like his get shipped overseas and I watched what happens to a town, to its families when your leaders fight to ship your jobs overseas rather than to protect your livelihood right here at home.

So when I say I want to make Ohio strong again, when I say I want to make America build again, I know exactly what's at stake. I know what it does to families when mom or dad loses their job. I know what it does to a man, when he trades the dignity of a good job for the necessity of going to the welfare lines.

It's not what we want. It's not what we want for anybody, but it's exactly what we're going to get more of, ladies and gentlemen, unless we have smarter policy. That's why in our administration over the last couple of years, our philosophy is simple. It's actually not that complicated. If you're making things in America and you're employing American citizens to do it, great.

We're going to give you a big fat tax cut and we're going to reward you for building and expanding production. But if you're sending American jobs overseas, if you're trying to ship your factory to a foreign corporation or you're trying to replace American workers with a legal immigrant later, you know what you're going to get?

A big fat tariff. We're going to penalize you for going to war with Americans. We are going to fight for our people. And because of this, ladies and gentlemen, we're attracting trillions of dollars in new investment in America. And with them we've seen a wave of new manufacturing jobs. We've created 72,000 manufacturing jobs just in 2026 alone.

But you don't have to take my word for it. You just have to look at the companies that are setting up shop right here in the Buckeye State. Now, just up the interstate, the other direction, not towards Middletown, but north is Toledo. And Stellantis is investing $400 million into a new manufacturing plant to produce Jeeps right here in Ohio. 90 minutes south of us, Electra, a great company, is investing $850 million in aerospace manufacturing just outside of Springfield, Ohio.

And Bayer, one of America's biggest pharmaceutical companies, is putting $2.2 billion into a new pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in central Ohio, and Bernie Moreno deserves a lot of credit for that, and so does Jon Husted. Now, there's so much more we could talk about, but that's just three examples of thousands of permanent jobs for Ohio workers.

All thanks to an administration backed up by great leadership that is fighting to put America first. And it's why Ohio is now the number one state in the country to do business. Now, look no further than around us here in Northwestern Ohio. This region is central to our defense industrial base and our broader manufacturing might as a nation.

President Trump, you know this, you remember this, has fought repeatedly to make sure the workers living in places like Lima, who use their hands to build the machines and the equipment that keep America strong, were fighting for the workers of Lima to have respect, to have dignity, to have good wages, and to keep their jobs right here in Ohio.

And when I say Ohio is the number one state for business, ladies and gentlemen, that didn't happen by accident. And it's not gonna keep happening unless we get Jon Husted, Derek Merrin, and Vivek i- -- into the positions we need to get them into. If we take the smart leadership this state has had and replace it with a person who wants to mask your kids and have girls play with boys in sports, then you're never gonna get the great economic boom that is coming to this state.

Now, of course, none of this would happen if we didn't elect President Trump and vote to di- kick the Democrats out of Columbus and out of Washington DC last November. And I think it's important, ladies and gentlemen, to remember what happened the last time we let the left run this country. Remember exactly what happened just two years ago when Joe Biden was president and you had Democrats like Sherrod Brown and like Marcy Kaptur voting for everything he asked for.

Inflation, remember, was triple then what it is today. The average American worker's wages went down by $3,000 when Joe Biden and Sherrod Brown were in charge. Prices rose by 20% across the board, and homes, as I said earlier, more than doubled. Now, my favorite thing in the 2024 campaign trails, I go out there and I'd say, "You know, inflation is the highest that it has been in 50 years." And then I have somebody in the media come to me and say, "No, no, no, no, no. Fact check.

Inflation is the highest that it was in 48 years." Ladies and gentlemen, that is not a record to brag on and that is not a record to run on. And it's why politicians like Sherrod and Kaptur tr- -- Look at their advertisements. They're not running on their record. They're not running on what they accomplished.

They're running on lies and excuses. Lies about Jon Husted and Derek Merrin, and lies about their failure to stand up to Joe Biden when they had the chance. Let's remind them exactly who they were. They didn't fight for us. They fought for the bureaucrats in Washington. You know, Sherrod Brown and Marcy Kaptur, they had a pretty good setup.

In DC, they'd spend their time rubbing shoulders and going along to get along. They would vote for the Biden agenda 100% of the time. And then, of course, when campaign season rolled around, they'd cut ads going on and on about how independent they were. They'd tell you that they really weren't like the rest of the Democrats that raised your taxes and made your homes unaffordable.

They were mavericks. They were free spirits despite the fact that their voting records showed they stood with Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and never with you. But we know the truth about Sherrod Brown and Marcy Kaptur. Each one of them is a stone cold fraud and their voting records prove it. Now, we're going to talk about Marcy first because this is a woman who runs away from the trans craziness now, but every year, every year, Marcy Kaptur co-sponsored a bill that would mandate taxpayer funded sex changes, and she's done so for the past decade.

Does that sound like a reasonable moderate to you? [Audience responds "No"]

A woman who wants to hand out your tax dollars for taxpayer funded sex changes is not a reasonable moderate. She is a radical, and we ought to kick her out of Washington, D.C. not give her another two years. Marcy Kaptur voted multiple times to keep giving your tax dollars to schools that let boys play in girls sports.

And she also voted against the border wall. She voted to raise your taxes. She voted to raise taxes on Social Security. She voted to raise taxes on tips. And when Donald Trump brought the pharmaceutical executives in before him and said, "How dare you force Americans to pay more for pharmaceuticals than Europeans?" You know what Marcy did?

Nothing. On every single opportunity that she has gotten to stood with you, to stand with you, to fight for you, Marcy Kaptur stands with Nancy Pelosi and the far left Democrats. This is a woman, ladies and gentlemen, who would run a TV advertisement telling you that she's gonna fight for you. Ladies and gentlemen, she's been there for 44 years and it's time to tell Marcy she's fired.

And Sherrod Brown. Oh, Sherrod. So here's the thing about Sherrod. Sherrod wants to pretend that he's the kind of Democrat like my Papaw was. My Papaw, his entire life, was a blue dog union Democrat. He fought for his jobs, he fought for his coworkers. This is a man who loved his town, who loved his industry and loved the people he stood on line with.

But Sherrod Brown's voting record shows that he is not the kind of Democrat that JFK was. He's not the kind of Democrat that my Papaw or Franklin Roosevelt was. Hell, Sherrod is not even the kind of Democrat that Bill Clinton was. Sherrod is the kind of Democrat that uses his power to force your tax dollars to go to fraudsters.

You wanna talk about standing for working people? It's the thing about Sherrod that most annoys me when he says that he stands for working people. Well, you know one of the biggest onslaughts against working people of the last 50 years is when Joe Biden opened the border wide and flooded this country with cheap labor that never should have been here.

And what did Sherrod, uh, Brown do? Not a damn thing. So what are we gonna do for Sherrod on November 3rd? Not a damn thing. You cannot say that you stand for working people when you promote policies that ship their jobs overseas. You cannot stay that you stand for working people when you actually encouraged the flood of illegal migration that undercut your wages and put that deadly fentanyl into the bloodstreams of our children.

Every single opportunity that Sherrod Brown had to stand up to the far left radicals and actually fight for the people of this area and the people of this state, he bent the knee and he did what the far left told him to do. Now he's back again. He's back again after a long career and he's back again because Sherrod Brown, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it, but Sherrod Brown thinks you're stupid.

He thought you were stupid two years ago the last time you fired him and gave Bernie Moreno the job. He thinks that advertisements on TV can hide the fact that his record is atrocious. So I got a very simple question, ladies and gentlemen, does Ohio need a senator who voted 100% of the time with Chuck Schumer? [Audience responds "No"]

Does Ohio need a senator like Sherrod Brown who voted to open the border? [Audience responds "No"]

Does Ohio need a senator like Sherrod Brown who wants you to pay more for pharmaceuticals? [Audience responds "No"]

Ladies and gentlemen, remember when you go and vote on November the 3rd, not Sherrod's well-produced TV advertisements. Remember that this is a man who wanted to raise taxes on Social Security and did. This is a man who wanted to ship your jobs overseas and did. This is a man who bent the knee to Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden.

Ladies and gentlemen, on November the 3rd, you have an opportunity to stand for a man who has stood with you. Let's stand for Jon Husted and get him elected to the United States Senate. Now let me, let me say just one final thing here before we'll have to hit the road. Look, this election, you hear this all the time.

This election is the most important election of our lifetimes, but I wanna tell you why in 2026, I believe that to be the case. What we've done over the past couple of years is reverse some of the worst trends that existed in the United States for my entire lifetime. Never before has a president of the United States not just closed the border, but actually got millions of illegal criminals out of the United States of America.

Never before has that happened. Never before has the president of the United States undone 40 years of industrial decline, 40 years of our jobs getting shipped overseas. When I was a young man, when I was a kid driving around in Middletown, Ohio, I would drive around and actually see them put up the signs of factories closing.

I would talk to my friends who learned that their fathers and their mothers had just lost their jobs. And for my entire life, I wondered why do we have politicians who let this happen to us? You know who the senator was back then? Sherrod Brown. And the reason why is not rocket science. It was not complicated to have a president of the United States to say, "You know what?

We're gonna reward you for investing in our country and our people, and we're gonna punish you if you're a foreign corporation trying to ship our jobs overseas." You just needed presidential leadership to get it done. But in 2026, the Democrats are running on a basic principle that they can lie to the American people.

And if they do, the lesson the Democrats will take is that they can get crazier and crazier. Now, I wish we had a Democratic Party we could work with. It might be harder politically. It might make it easier for them to get elected, but I would love if I could sit across the table from a reasonable Democrat and talk about ways where we could compromise and fix the country's problems together.

But that's not what we have, ladies and gentlemen. We have a Democratic Party that is obsessed with things like men in women's sports, a Democratic Party that is obsessed with opening the border, and a Democratic Party that is obsessed with raising your taxes and making American energy more expensive. That's what they openly run on, but it's also what they did when they were in power for many, many long years.

So I want everybody to remember that in this election, we don't just need to elect Derek Merrin because he's gonna be a great congressman, he will be. We don't just need to elect Jon Husted because he's already a great senator, he will be. We don't need to elect Vivek just because he's gonna make a great governor.

I promise you, he will make a great governor for this state. We need to vote to send a message to the Democrats that you need to check the crazy at the door. And so long as the Democratic Party -- and we need to send a message that America belongs to those who love it, not those who hate it. And so long as the Democrats hate this country, they don't get our vote and they can stay the hell out of Washington.

God bless you all and thank you for having me.