Since Ohio Sen. JD Vance was picked as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, he has been scrutinized for past comments, particularly about women.
And remarks he made during a 2021 event hosted by a private high school in Newport Beach have resurfaced — not just in the presidential contest, but in California’s open and closely watched 47th district congressional race in Orange County as well.
Vance, not yet a senator, attended a Pacifica Christian High School event in 2021 to discuss “Hillbilly Elegy,” his 2016 memoir that landed on the New York Times’ bestseller listand was turned into a 2020 movie.
But it was his comments about marriage, made during a Q&A portion of the event with Keith Carlson, a trustee for the high school, that caused backlash during both Vance’s successful U.S. Senate campaign and now.
Vance was asked about his upbringing, how his grandparents played a pivotal role in raising him. What’s causing younger generations, he was asked, to “give up on fatherhood?”
Vance said his grandparents had “an incredibly chaotic marriage” — relatively early in his memoir, Vance details instances of domestic violence among his family, including writing that his grandmother doused her husband in gasoline while he drunkenly slept and lit him on fire — but stayed together. It was important to his grandparents, he said, not to divorce despite what he described in the book as a “violent marriage.”
“That recognition that marriage was sacred, I think, was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together, and when it disappeared, unfortunately, a lot of kids suffered,” Vance said.
“This is one of the great tricks the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, is this idea that well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally — they were maybe even violent but certainly unhappy —- so getting rid of them and making it easier to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,” Vance said. “And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical, but it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”
Vance drew backlash for those comments, which some took to mean he felt people should stay in abusive relationships.
A strategist for Vance, at the time, blamed the media for not understanding Vance’s point. Vance himself is a victim of domestic violence, the strategist said, and it would be “preposterous” to suggest Vance supports people staying in abusive relationships. He also told a Vice reporter that “domestic violence … is much higher among non-married couples.”
Controversy seeps into local congressional race
Aside from how Vance’s past comments may impact this year’s presidential contest, they are also playing a role in the closely watched race for California’s open 47th congressional district seat between former Republican Assembly leader Scott Baugh and Democratic state Sen. Dave Min.
Baugh is a founding trustee of Pacifica Christian, which says it teaches “our students to think and live well.”
Vance was not paid for his speech to Pacifica Christian, said David O’Neil, head of the school.
“This off-campus event was part of our community speaking series and not a fundraiser,” O’Neil said. “The evening was wonderful, and Mr. Vance was well-received. We do not have any further comments on the matter at this time.”
Still, Democratic strategists — who are feeling the momentum from Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket and her recent pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate — are seeking to tie Baugh to Vance’s comments, particularly the more controversial ones.
“Whether he’s comparing abortion access to slavery, imploring women to stay in abusive relationships, chastising Americans without children or casting himself as the poster boy of Trump’s disastrous Project 2025 agenda that would harm working families, (Vance) offers no shortage of terrible takes that voters will hold against both him and his MAGA extremist friends across the country — and down the ballot — this November,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
In a statement through a spokesperson, Baugh said: “Domestic violence is never acceptable in any circ*mstance. I stand by victims of domestic violence and, frankly, all crime.”
Min, though, said Baugh should do more to outright address Vance and his comments about women and domestic violence.
“Those comments were despicable. They are ignorant and reflect an extreme view of the role of women and women’s rights that we’ve seen come out of the far right wing of the Republican Party,” said Min.
Intimate partner violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is a significant public health issue.”
About 41% of women and 26% of men experience physical or sexual violence or stalking from an intimate partner during their lifetime, according to the CDC. Domestic violence leads to physical and emotional harm, or even death, the CDC notes.
Vance, throughout the nearly hour-long event, also spoke about higher education, the economy and gender.
“When you have those manufacturing jobs disappear, it affects the fathers more than it did the mothers,” Vance said. “When men are unemployed, it’s very hard for them to maintain, to build families themselves. The fact that we lost a lot of stable, male employment was a catastrophe for the American family — more than the economic consequences, more than the fact that the jobs disappeared and the good wages disappeared — a lot of families suffered and struggled in ways that if you’re just looking at men and women as interchangeable, you would not appreciate, but if you recognize that moms and dads really are different, that men and women need different things, you recognize that we have a real problem here and we continue to have a real problem here.”
He said he worries “about the role of education in our society.”
Vance, a graduate of Yale Law and Ohio State University, said he doesn’t believe everyone needs to attend a four-year college.
“Most universities, almost every university in fact, is explicitly on the side of the left and the culture wars,” Vance said. “One of the ways in which our society has failed pretty profoundly is by making the university effectively a requirement of being able to access a middle-class life — at the same that we’ve gutted vocational education, we’ve gutted the trades, we’ve made it harder for people who want to work with their hands to earn a good living even though there are a lot of good jobs out there for people who want to work with their hands.”
“Obviously, I have personally benefited from our educational system so it’s hard for me to cast stones at it,” Vance added. “But I’m in politics now so I can say anything.”
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