Ohio’s Senate race highlights Republican divide on Ukraine
At a campaign event in a dark church basement in Mansfield, Ohio, an older man in a baseball cap leans back and asks Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance about a controversial remark he made a few weeks back, in which he said he doesn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine.”
Mr. Vance – a former venture capitalist whose bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailed his hardscrabble Appalachian upbringing – quickly assures the audience that he has prayed for Ukraine in church the past three Sundays. But he makes clear his position on America’s role in the conflict hasn’t really changed. “What should the federal government be doing in Ukraine?” he asks. “I think the answer is ‘Not a whole lot.’”
The next day, at a campaign event in Canton, rival candidate Mike Gibbons tells the Monitor he is “100% behind the Ukrainians,” adding that he “would crush” Russia with economic sanctions and supports arming Ukrainians “to the teeth.”
The Republican businessman, who narrowly leads the multicandidate primary field in polls, says he told his wife he wished he were in better shape so he could go to Ukraine and fight the Russians himself. “Any help we can give [Ukraine], I would do it,” says
