Vance criticized an infrastructure law as a candidate then embraced it as a senator

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Vance criticized an infrastructure law as a candidate then embraced it as a senator

2024-09-30 12:08 Last Updated At：12:10

WASHINGTON (AP) — As he campaigned for the Senate two years ago, JD Vance harshly criticized a bipartisan 2021 law to invest more than $1 trillion in America’s crumbling infrastructure, calling it a “huge mistake” shaped by Democrats who want to spend big taxpayer dollars on “really crazy stuff.”

That hasn’t stopped the first-term Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee from seeking more than $200 million in federal money made available through the law for projects across his state, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.

Vance is hardly alone among Republicans who have condemned spending enacted under Democratic President Joe Biden, only to later reap the benefit when government funds flow to popular projects back home. In this case, he also was criticizing the achievement of one of the bill’s authors — former Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican he succeeded.

“I believe you should campaign how you govern so that you are consistent in your message and voters know what they are going to get,” said Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan, one of Vance's 2022 Republican primary rivals, who was the only GOP candidate to support the bill.

Parker Magid, a spokesperson for Vance said, “Senators are elected by their constituents to fight for them in Washington, regardless of the party in charge. The fact is that this bill was a wish list of destructive Biden-Harris policy proposals and over 1,000 pages long, but as his constituents expect of him, Senator Vance successfully advocated for full and fair consideration of legitimate expenditures on Ohio projects by the federal government.”

To the man Vance defeated in the general election, former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan, Vance's pivot “fits the general pattern of him being two-faced on just about everything.”

"Look at the Trump stuff," Ryan said. “He was ‘America’s Hitler'" in Vance's estimation, ”then when it didn’t benefit him anymore to have that view, he changed it.”

Trump had vowed to pass an infrastructure bill when he was president, but did not offer a plan, and “Infrastructure Week” became something of a punch line.

That changed after Biden became president. A bipartisan group of senators including Portman and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, then a Democrat, hashed out a roughly $1 trillion package that passed with 19 Republicans joining Democrats.

Vance criticized the bill as a boondoggle tainted by Democrats’ preoccupation with racial justice.

“I’m reading through this new infrastructure bill, and it includes all these ridiculous references to things called transportation equity, which is basically just importing critical race theory into our nation’s infrastructure programs,” Vance tweeted in August 2021. “It’s totally ridiculous and it’s obvious that Republicans have been had in supporting this bill.”

During a September 2021 interview with CBS News, Vance said that the “mistake that Republicans have recently made on bipartisanship is that we gave Democrats a huge win.”

“We do have infrastructure problems, but I don’t think this bill actually spends the money on the things that we need,” he said of the legislation, which Trump opposed.

Portman, who cited “partisan gridlock” as a reason he retired from the Senate, was unavailable for comment.

After taking office in January 2023, Vance appears to have warmed to the legislation his predecessor helped write — though not publicly.

In 10 letters addressed to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that were sent between 2023 and 2024, Vance requested more than $213 million made available through the law for Ohio projects, according to copies of his correspondence obtained by the AP. At least four of those projects were approved and are slated to get about $130 million, federal records show.

Toledo received nearly $20 million to revitalize a majority Black area that was isolated from the city’s downtown when Interstate 75 was built in the 1960s. Toledo officials described the planning decision behind the location of the freeway as “discriminatory” in their federal application for the funding.

“These once-thriving communities now suffer from some of the city’s highest rates of poverty, unemployment, and blight," the application states. “Historically, this majority-Black area has been disproportionately impacted by harmful transportation policy decisions.” The application said those policies “caused displacement from which the area has never fully recovered.”

Vance had previously mocked a journalist who asked Buttigieg about bias that went into decades-old planning decisions. “Nothing in our country works,” he tweeted in November 2021. “And our reporters ask about the racism of our roads?”

As a senator he wrote that the project in Toledo had potentially “far-reaching” benefits, though he did include a disclaimer that he opposed “the Biden Administration’s emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion over outcomes of meaningful infrastructure improvements."

In another instance, Vance sought $29 million for low or no emissions buses. Vance has repeatedly railed against Democratic efforts to reduce emissions. In a recent opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, he singled out Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration's support for zero-emission efforts, arguing that they were “stifling investment in the coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants that Americans rely on.”

Dolan, Vance's 2022 primary rival, said he's glad the senator seems to have changed his mind about the bill.

“The talking points during a campaign sometimes don't match the responsibility of governing," Dolan said. “I think the two should be indistinguishable. That's what it means to be a public servant."

He said if lawmakers were to "reject those dollars for political reasons, Ohio would suffer.”

Harris trolls Trump at Vegas rally and LA fundraiser, says her crowds are 'pretty big'

2024-09-30 11:51 Last Updated At：12:00

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris poked at Republican Donald Trump over crowd sizes, his refusal to debate again and his privileged background on Sunday as she hauled in campaign cash in California and held a raucous rally at the same Nevada venue where the GOP nominee had appeared just two weeks ago.

During the presidential debate, Harris appeared to get under Trump's skin when she said people were leaving his rallies early because of his rambling speeches. And she's kept it up on the campaign trail.

She told donors at a tony Los Angeles fundraiser that as she campaigns around the country her “crowds are pretty big.” And then before a roaring Las Vegas crowd estimated at 7,500, she renewed her jabs at him over refusing to debate again, saying, “The American people have a right to hear us discuss the issues. And as you say here in Las Vegas, I’m all in. I’m all in.”

Harris’ four-day West Coast trip has been crafted with dual purposes: She opened and closed it with stops in Sun Belt battlegrounds — Arizona and Nevada — where the vice president is trying to shore up support as Trump pounds her relentlessly over illegal migration. And her mid-stay in California was devoted to hauling in campaign contributions from donors in her blue home state.

Harris also has moved into what Trump considers his terrain — immigration — with a Friday visit to the border town of Douglas, Arizona. It was her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking over for President Joe Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket.

Harris’ border visit in Arizona seemed to irk Trump. The GOP leader has spent two days railing about the vice president during his rallies, upping his personal attacks against her, claiming she was responsible for a border “invasion,” and stirring up unfounded fears that she’d usher in lawlessness if elected.

Harris gave the same response she usually does to his insults, even despite Trump calling her “mentally impaired.”

“We just see the same old tired show from the same old tired playbook,” she told a Los Angeles crowd of donors, some who shouted “boring!” in response.

In Las Vegas, she also revived her jabs at Trump for his “silver platter” background that nonetheless produced six bankruptcies, saying, "I come from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from.”

Harris has warned the race is as close as it could possibly be, a “margin-of-error” race. But on Sunday in Los Angeles, she added: “The election is here and let me be clear. We are going to win.”

The fundraiser was full of celebrities: Stevie Wonder, Keegan Michael-Key, Sterling K. Brown, Demi Lovato, Jessica Alba and Lily Tomlin. Performing for the crowd: Halle Bailey and Alanis Morissette.

The Los Angeles fundraiser and one a day earlier in San Francisco raised a combined $55 million for Harris' campaign.

The vice president is continuing to notch Republican support. Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake became the latest to endorse her. He credited Harris with a “fine character and love of country” and said he wants a president who does not treat political adversaries as enemies or try to subvert the will of voters.

Flake, a longtime critic of the former president, joins a list of anti-Trump Republicans who have said they will vote for the Democratic ticket, including Dick Cheney, the deeply conservative former vice president, and his daughter, Liz.

But Maryland Senate candidate Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor and a sharp critic of Trump, said Harris has yet to earn his vote, though Trump won't get it.

In Nevada, where Harris held her latest rally, all voters automatically receive ballots by mail unless they opt out — a pandemic-era change that was set in state law. That means most ballots could start going out in a matter of weeks.

Harris will be back in Las Vegas on Oct. 10 for a town hall with Hispanic voters. Both she and Trump have campaigned frequently in the city, highlighting the critical role that Nevada's six electoral votes could play in deciding an election expected to be exceedingly close.

Trump held his own Las Vegas rally on Sept. 13 at the Expo World Market Center, where Harris spoke Sunday. She's also held events at the same venues that Trump used in Milwaukee, Atlanta and suburban Phoenix.

During a campaign stop in Las Vegas in June, Trump promised to eliminate taxes on tips received by waiters, hotel workers and thousands of other service industry employees. Harris used her own Las Vegas rally in August to make the same promise.

Fully doing away with federal taxes on tips would probably require an act of Congress. Still, Nevada's Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and Reno, has endorsed Harris.

Long reported from Washington.