Commitment 2022: One on one with J.D. Vance, Rep. Tim Ryan

Updated: 10:47 AM EDT Oct 11, 2022

Ohioans have four weeks before deciding who takes over Rob Portman's open senate seat. WLWT sits down with Ohio Senate candidates Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan for one-on-one interviews about the policies that matter to them, their political affiliations and what it's going to take to represent the state of Ohio. It's the race America is watching. And despite what you see in the commercials, some of what Ryan and Vance stand for might surprise you. For instance, the long-standing Democratic congressman, serving his 10th term, does not want the president's support in his senate race."We won't be asking him to come in. I just, I want to run this race on my own. This is my voice, my values, my beliefs. And you know, again, J.D. is bringing in Trump, he's bringing in Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump Jr., I'm gonna stand on my own two feet," Ryan said. While Vance may seem like he flip-flopped on the former president, Vance candidly admits he wasn't always on team Trump. "I was actually a critic of Donald trump in 2016. I did not think he was going to be a great president, I was very happy to be proven wrong. I think if you look at the prosperity that we had in this country, the rising wages, the fact that we were finally started to take on China, I think this policy has really worked for working people in our state," Vance said."I think a lot of people, they either love or hate him, right? And, the fact that you support him, for some people, it's enough to say, 'He's not going to get my vote,'" WLWT anchor Sheree Paollelo said."I guess the main thing that I'd say to them is, look, would you rather have a guy who's honest about making a mistake about changing their mind? Or would you rather have a guy like Tim Ryan, who supported a lot of really bad policies for this state, and then says in his tv commercials that he loves Donald Trump?" Vance said. In campaign ads, Ryan says he, too, supports former President Donald Trump on certain issues such as national defense, drug trafficking and trade deals with China. He said he's not just trying to win over conservatives. "I'm a Democrat. But I agree with Republicans. I'm doing what's in the best interest of Ohio and I've had the guts to take on my own party. I ran against Nancy Pelosi, I've gotten in fights with Bernie Sanders I take on Democrats when I think they're wrong. And I will agree with Republicans when I think they're right. I think that's the Ohio way. Rob Portman has done that with the bipartisan infrastructure bill with the chips act and other things. And that's why I think JD is off because he's on the extreme vein of politics today. And that's just not Ohio," Ryan said.The two glaring differences between these candidates is their experience. Do you want a veteran politician who's been in Washington for almost 20 years or a rookie to the political game? Vance said, sometimes, it's not just about experience."Given what's going on in Washington, D.C, not a whole lot of bipartisanship, not a whole lot of legislating going on in Washington, not just the last few years, the last 20 years.10 I think being a creature of Washington, D.C, spending 20 years in that place, as Tim Ryan has done, not being able to get anything done. That's not the experience we need," Vance said. Some voters say what elections need to do is ditch the negativity. That's what we've seen in Vance and Ryan's ads. But both insist if voters elect them, they'll reach across the aisle to create compromise instead of contempt. "Any team, the Bengals didn't get to the Super Bowl last year, fighting with each other. You know, you can have your arguments. I tell people all the time, 'We don't have to agree on everything.' Like, I love my wife head over heels. If we have 10 conversations in one day and we agree on seven, we crack a bottle of wine and like celebrate our marriage on that day. You don't have to agree with everybody on everything. Let's move forward together as Americans, not Democrats and Republicans," Ryan said. "There are things that you can do to work across the aisle to get things done. And look, I'm not opposed to giving something up, right? I'm fine with a good piece of legislation. I don't need everything to be perfect. I just want to make things better for the state. And at the end of the day, crime is too high, the border's in crisis. We have a terrible price problem and inflation problem. We need to do something, and we need to make people's lives better," Vance said. Both men think they're the guy to do that.

MIDDLETOWN — Rodney Muterspaw, then a first-year police academy cadet, kept a daily journal as mental therapy.

“I had to write or drink, and sometimes it was a little of both,” he said.

Muterspaw, 52, a Middletown native, spent 30 years in law enforcement and retired in 2019 after five years as chief of the Middletown Division of Police. He never intended his “very personal journal” to become a book.

“It’s surreal to see it on paper,” he said.

After being encouraged to write a book by John Wager, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Middletown, he sent a copy to 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page, a Middletown native, and J.D. Vance, another Middletown native and author of the New York Times Best Seller that became a Netflix movie, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”

Page and Vance were impressed by his journal, so he contacted a few publishers to gauge their interest.

But they wanted to turn his notes into a novel. That’s when Muterspaw decided to publish the book, “The Blue View: The uncut journal of an Ohio police chief.”

The book is available on Amazon and the audio version is expected to be released this week, he said. Muterspaw said “Blue View” is the No. 1 seller for police-related books on Amazon.

He said a test group of 15 people, including two police officers, read the draft of the book. One said: “This needs to be out there,” while another said: “Are you really going to release that?”

Muterspaw said it was important to include all aspects of his career, from the dark moments and the success stories. He left nothing out, he said.

“It had to be real,” he said.

He’s proud of the book because it “humanizes” police work and gives readers an insight into the profession.

“We need to do a better job with the community,” he said. “It’s time to open up the curtain. These are all the experiences of my life.”

There were times when, as police chief, his supervisors told him to lie to the media, he said. That bothered him, he said.

“That’s not me,” Muterspaw said. “There are some dark places in there.”

Because of the negative sentiment toward cops after police-involved shootings, especially of unarmed Black men, Muterspaw said it’s the “perfect time” to release the book.

“Some people hate the police, and that’s OK,” he said. “But there is a method behind the madness. Hopefully this gives readers a better idea of what we are about. We have a lot of failures. Nothing is as easy as you see on TV.”

After he retired, Muterspaw was offered police chief and city manager positions. But Julie, his wife of 29 years, discouraged those career moves and Muterspaw said he’s never been happier. He sells real estate for Berkshire Hathaway Realty and has time to care for his twin 5-year-old granddaughters, Lilly and Lainey.

HOW TO ORDER

TITLE: “The Blue View: The uncut journal of an Ohio police chief”

ORDER: Website: amazon.com

AUTHOR: Rodney Muterspaw, former Middletown police chief

MUTERSPAW FAMILY: wife Julie; children Matt, Lauren and Maddie; grandchildren Lilly and Lainey.

When WCPO news anchor Tanya O’Rourke interviewed author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance in 2017, he was fresh off the decision not to run for Senate the year before. People had wanted him to, he said. He didn't. His family, investment firm and nonprofit kept him too busy.

He'd found room in his schedule by Thursday night, when Vance returned to his birthplace of Middletown to announce a bid for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Rob Portman. It'll be a competitive race — other Republicans hoping to score the same job include longtime Ohio GOP chair Jane Timken and former Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel, one of Twitter's most vocal Trump fans.

O’Rourke sat down with Vance again to find out what changed his mind. Why now?

“I recognize that if you actually want to get anything done, you got to go in there and blow some things up,” he said. “I also think I have a desire to actually get things done. You know, I’m a political outsider. I’ve never run for political office before.”

He was initially critical of former President Donald Trump in 2016 but has since changed his mind about that, too.

“I think he delivered on his promises to make the country a better place,” Vance said. “So, I think I saw this guy, he was an outsider. I didn’t really believe he was serious. And then I saw the guy in action. And I thought he was a successful president. That’s why I supported him enthusiastically in 2020. I didn't hide from that fact, either that I was critical of them in 2016, or that I was a big supporter in 2020. So I changed because he did a good job.”

The two met a few months ago to discuss the race.

“He’s not gonna endorse anybody in this race early on,” Vance said of his meeting with Trump. “I think he wants to let the candidates fight it out.”

Vance is running on a platform of bringing jobs to Ohio and taking on big tech, even though he’s received $10 million from a super PAC formed by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

Pieper, Robert

Vance also said he supports a universal voter ID.

“First of all, we do want, I think, universal voter ID because it's just common sense election integrity," he said. "A majority of people, Democratic, Republican, all racial groups support common sense voter ID, so I think we should have it."

"And absolutely, if people can't afford to get an ID, you don't want that to prevent them from being able to vote. You want to make it easier for people to vote, but you want to make it easier for them to vote in a fair and safe way. You want basically legal votes to count, illegal votes not to count, and making voter ID the law, that way it actually I think facilitates and supports that goal."

In addition to Timken and Mandel, Vance will face two Cleveland businessmen, Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno, in next year's GOP primary.