Vice President-elect JD Vance’s mother pleaded with her son’s Ohio hometown last week to officially recognize him for winning the second-highest office in the land—only to come up against a divided city council and concerns about her son’s hardline MAGA views.
“I am just here because I am JD Vance’s mother and, as you know, he is our new vice president-elect and he thinks of Middletown as his home,” Beverly Aikins, Vance’s mother, told the Middletown City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 5.
“I still live here and his sister still lives in Middletown. He’s got two nieces who live here and I just think it would be nice if we could acknowledge that this is his hometown and put up some signs.”
Adding that Vance “comes back here frequently to visit me and take me to dinner,” she “humbly” requested the city, which has a population of around 50,000, offer some form of recognition for her son.
But members of the five-person city council were split on how—or even whether—to acknowledge Vance’s electoral victory.
“Why can’t we wait and see what he does?” asked Councilwoman Jennifer Carter, who supported Democrat Kamala Harris’ failed bid for the White House and previously said she did not like Vance’s policies.
“If he gets into office and creates havoc, with him and Trump sending people out of the country… all of the things they said they wanted to do. If all of these things happen, we’re still saying ‘yay’?”
Councilman Paul Lolli went in the opposite direction, agreeing with the vice president-elect’s mother that there should signs in recognition of Vance and even proposing there be a street named after him, the Cincinnati Inquirer reported.
He also criticized the city for not having recognized Vance on social media weeks earlier.
City staff rushed up a congratulatory message on Facebook a day later.
Another councilman, Paul Horn, tried to split the difference, suggesting they could take down recognition of Vance if he does pursue harmful policies.
“What if he really does bad things?” he asked. “That’s how you remove signs—when people screw up.”
Councilman Steve West II said he was concerned that there even had to be a debate about recognizing Vance.
“What we are saying is the fact that the city won’t even recognize that a Middletonian has been elected as vice president, that is a problem,” he said. “I would say the same thing if it were an Independent or a Democrat. We should be proud.”
Vance graduated from Middletown High School in 2003 and his memoir Hillbilly Elegy recounts his upbringing in working-class southwestern Ohio. Nearly two-thirds of Middletown voters cast a ballot for Vance and Donald Trump in November.
Middletown Mayor Elizabeth Slamka—who weirdly stated “I am not a political person” at a political meeting where she was the mayor—acknowledged the issue can be “very polarizing” but said it was “fair to recognize” Vance with signs, and in other municipal forums.
“That is in the works,” she said. The city’s January newsletter will also contain a feature on Middletown’s most famous son.
