Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz came together at Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate on the migrants overwhelming Springfield, Ohio — sort of.
Vance echoed remarks he made to The Post last month in the exchange, which started with a moderator asking his Democratic opponent about the issue.
Walz said he believes the Republican does want to solve Springfield’s problems — but wouldn’t admit his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, had any hand in causing them.
Vance hit back, only briefly offering Walz an olive branch in return. “The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border. It is a disgrace, Tim,” he said.
Looking at Walz, he concluded, “I actually think I agree with you, I think you want to solve this problem. But I don’t think Kamala Harris does.”
Vance told The Post in an exclusive interview on Trump Force Two last month that no town in America will be safe if the Democrats keep the White House.
“Kamala Harris’ plan is to basically turn every city in this country into Springfield, where you have a small town, 40,000 people, where she drops in 20,000 immigrants in the last just few years,” he said. “It’s just impossible for any town to absorb it. It’s higher housing prices, stressed-out social services, an education system that’s not functioning, hospitals, services that aren’t doing what they need to do.”
“It’s just very, very hard to imagine any town absorbing this many migrants. It’s done by design, and we really have to fix it,” he added.
Nearly 20,000 mostly Haitian migrants from a federal parole program have descended on the quiet midsize community of about 60,000 over the last two years, straining the city’s resources to the breaking point and prompting many residents to voice their concerns to city officials about a range of issues, from harassment to dumping old mattresses on front lawns — with scattered reports of migrants devouring ducks and gobbling up geese in the town about 45 minutes outside Columbus.
Vance told The Post he’s been trying to get the town help since long before it made headlines over allegations migrants were eating residents’ pets.
City leadership and constituents told his office months ago about the “stresses on the system,” especially “an increase in homelessness” with “a lot of people who can’t afford housing in Springfield” anymore.
In a July Senate Banking Committee hearing, Vance put a letter from the city manager into the congressional record — and spoke about Springfield’s suffering in the face of the migrant surge.
Vance told The Post he tried to work with “Banking Committee colleagues to try to identify some solutions. Unfortunately, when you’re in the US Senate and Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t want to do anything except for further open the border, it’s sometimes hard to actually get solutions when you have such an uncooperative White House.”
