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As Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance begins campaigning across the country today, the Democratic National Committee is working to ensure voters know where he stands on critical issues.
On topics including abortion, democracy, Social Security and tax cuts, the Democratic Party apparatus is deploying mobile and traditional billboards and paid media along with Vance’s own words to get its point across over the next several months, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s plans.
“This is someone who has taken these really, really extreme stances,” a Democratic official told NBC News. “And we’ve just seen time and time again that that’s just not a winning agenda.”
Vance has been criticized since being named Donald Trump’s running mate for his role in Project 2025, a controversial Heritage Foundation initiative with ties to the Trump campaign.
“I reviewed a lot of it. There’s some good ideas in there,” he told Newsmax in an interview on July 10, while also saying there were some things he disagreed with. Virginia, where Vance is holding a rally Monday, hasn’t elected a Republican for president since George W. Bush in 2004 — but Republicans are viewing the state as “in play” this cycle.
To counter that, Democrats plan to ensure one of the biggest issues this cycle — reproductive rights — is top of mind for voters in the area, with a mobile billboard featuring news reports of Trump and Vance’s evolving views on abortion circling the area of Radford University outside of Roanoke on Monday.
One of the focuses of the DNC’s attention are comments Vance made during his Ohio Senate campaign in 2021, before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Vance said in a local news interview that he thought “two wrongs don’t make a right” regarding whether abortion laws should include exceptions for rape and incest.
“At the end of day, we are talking about an unborn baby. What kind of society do we want to have?” Vance told Spectrum News in Columbus, Ohio. “A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?”
Earlier this month in an interview on “Meet the Press,” Vance’s tone shifted to align with what Trump believes as it relates to the abortion pill mifepristone.
“The Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication,” Vance told moderator Kristen Welker. “Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion.”
Abortion hasn’t been a successful topic for Republicans to run on in Virginia. In 2023, GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin failed to convince voters there that a 15-week abortion ban was a “consensus,” a policy proposal that helped Democrats flip the state’s House of Delegates and retain state Senate control.
“This year, Virginians will choose Democrats’ vision for the nation over the Trump-Vance ticket’s anti-freedom, anti-women future. We’re doing the work to win everywhere — community by community, block by block,” DNC spokesperson Addy Toevs said in a statement to NBC News.
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