Heated Ohio Senate race gets ugly at second debate between JD Vance and Tim Ryan

The final debate before Election Day between JD Vance and Tim Ryan in Youngstown, Ohio, was puncuated by vicious back-and-forth sniping between two candidates with a clear personal disdain for one another.

The night began with Rep Tim Ryan wielding Donald Trump’s “ass-kissing” quote – made in the same city just a few weeks ago by the former president when he visited town to stump for Mr Vance – like a club and portraying the Republican candidate as a spineless, two-faced politician. Mr Ryan was quick to note that Mr Vance was campaigning alongside a man he once compared to Adolf Hitler (which Mr Vance claimed falsely was not the case), and scoring easy blows against his opponent.

He also leaned in heavily to a past failed challenge for House leadership against Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker, finally telling his rival: “JD, you keep talking about Nancy Pelosi. If you want to run against Nancy Pelosi move back to San Francisco and run against Nancy Pelosi." Mr Vance previously worked as a venture capitalist in the California city.

Mr Vance, meanwhile, repeatedly faulted his Democratic opponent for voting with Joe Biden’s legislative agenda in the narrowly divided House while complaining that the Democrats and the news media were working together to smear him. The two both accused each other of fundraising from nefarious individuals and causes; both claimed the other was in league with the health care interests and opiate manufacturers whose drugs have devastaded wide swaths of the Rust Belt and other poor communitites in the US. Mr Ryan also faulted Mr Vance’s campaign being propped up by the Mitch McConnell-linked Senate Leadership Fund and Peter Thiel, the wealthy Silicon Valley GOP kingmaker.

One of the ugliest moments of the night came during the very last question when Mr Ryan accused his opponent of supporting the white supremacist “Great Replacement Theory” by hanging out with extreme far-right members of his party including Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene; he and the moderators both questioned what those individuals meant when they spoke of an “invasion” of immigrants in America.

Those blows clearly incensed Mr Vance, who countered that his own children are biracial, while angrily accusing the congressman of smearing him as a racist.

“I hope you feel better, JD,” Mr Ryan shot back under his breath as the exchange ended.

Another contentious issue the candidates sparred over was policing. Calling his opponent’s support for police a dog and pony show, Mr Ryan pointed out the support that Mr Vance and others in his party like Ms Greene have offered participants in the US Capitol riot, who are accused of taking part in the violent attack that is blamed for the deaths of four members of law enforcement and injuries to dozens more.

Mr Vance angrily shot back that he was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and accused his rival of having “stabbed in the back” police across Ohio with his support for federal oversight of some law enforcement agencies in the weeks after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota.

The pair even blamed each other over the issue of abortion. Mr Ryan, speaking about the recent case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to flee Ohio to seek abortion care in another state, Mr Ryan tied his opponent to efforts to pass a national abortion ban while the moderators tried, unsuccessfully, to pin down Mr Vance’s views on exceptions to abortion bans. The Republican spun the issue into one of immigration instead, claiming that it was actually Mr Ryan at fault for the girl’s pregnancy by failing to secure the border and allowing undocumented immigrants into the country; the man accused of her rape is thought to be undocumented.

Monday’s debate was the last in-person matchup between the two candidates who are in a dead heat in the final days of the race to replace retiring GOP Senator Rob Portman. It’s a crucial race for both parties as it represents one of the clearest shots for the Democratic Party to expand its majority in the upper chamber, while Republicans are desperate to hold on to the seat as they hope to flip the balance of the Senate with a win in Nevada, Colorado or elsewhere.

An average of polls complied by FiveThirtyEight shows Mr Vance with a 0.2-point lead over the congressman, a margin that puts Mr Ryan well within striking distance of his opponent in a state that Republicans were hoping would be an easy seat to defend this year.

Mr Trump, who has endorsed and campaigned for Mr Vance in a recent appearance in the state, won Ohio in 2020 by roughly eight percentage points, about the same margin by which he defeated Hillary Clinton in the state in 2016.