Ohio Republicans are being very, very careful in correcting Trump and Vance

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

(CNN) — Haiti clearly holds a place in the heart of Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. He’s been to the country at least 25 times with his wife, he said at a press conference Monday in Springfield.

He helped found a school in Haiti that bears the name of his daughter, Becky, who died decades ago in a car accident.

He respects the Haitians who have come to the US legally and found work in Springfield.

“They’re legal,” he said on “PBS Newshour” Tuesday night. “They want to work. In fact, they want to work overtime,” he said.

Further, DeWine said the Haitians found Springfield because business owners there were having trouble finding workers after the Covid-19 pandemic.

But while he is defending the Haitians legally working in Springfield with Temporary Protected Status due to violence and a humanitarian crisis after storms and an earthquake there, DeWine wants to separate them from the larger immigration and border debate fueling the Republican political argument in 2024.

“The immigration issue, and the border issue, obviously, is fair game,” DeWine said in the PBS interview, and it’s a refrain he has repeated in press conferences and interviews in recent days.

But that’s a different issue than what’s going on in Springfield, he said.

Without specifically criticizing former President Donald Trump or Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, by name, DeWine said their insistence on spreading false rumors of animal abuse by the Haitian community is “very hurtful for these men and women who work very, very hard.”

Their comments are also having an effect on the rest of the community. Ohio state troopers are in Springfield schools this week after scores of bomb threats – some coming from abroad and some from in the US – put the community on edge.

When he was asked if the comments from Trump and Vance were fueling the bomb threats, DeWine deflected.

“The people who are making these threats are the bad people. They’re the wrong people,” he said.

There’s no indication that either Trump or Vance will stop talking about the unfounded rumors of animal abuse.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday.

Vance later clarified: “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it. I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield.”

And on this point, there seems to be an ocean of disconnect between Republican leaders in Ohio, who argue that Haitians filled a desperate need in Springfield, and Trump and Vance, who argue, as Vance did, that “thousands of residents have had their lives destroyed” by the arrival of the Haitians.

Like DeWine, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has also tried very hard to correct the record on the role Haitians are playing in Springfield. Rue chose his words very carefully during an interview Tuesday when CNN’s Boris Sanchez asked if the attention brought by Vance’s story was helpful.

“It’s brought a lot of negative attention to our community,” Rue said, adding that he was doing so many interviews to make sure that people are “listening to the real and true story of Springfield.”

While Rue and DeWine have both said the community has admittedly had strain on its infrastructure – everything from staffing the schools to making sure the population is protected through vaccination to getting people driver’s licenses – there is also a larger story.

“We are a beautiful city. We are not a horrible city. We are not falling apart. We have strain and stress and we’re trying to figure it out, but none of this attention that has been brought upon Springfield, Ohio, is helping us,” Rue said, noting there were state troopers in his city’s schools only because of threats received in the past week.

At a press conference Tuesday, Rue and DeWine discouraged Trump from making a trip to the city.

DeWine said the city and state are stretched resource-wise, but that “if President Trump makes that decision to come here, he will be welcomed.”

Rue put it differently, saying a visit by any presidential candidate “would be an extreme strain on our resources, so it would be fine with me if they decided not to make that stop right now.”

The-CNN-Wire
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