Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance sits down for a town hall with Pastor Joshua Robertson in Harrisburg Oct. 26, 2024 (Photo by Ben Wasserstein for the Capital-Star)
During a town hall on education in Harrisburg on Saturday, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the GOP vice presidential candidate, said his politics are grounded in his Christian faith.
“Christian politics should be about the common good, whether you’re a Bible-believing Christian or not,” he said. “You should pursue the kind of society where people can live a good life, where they can raise their children with good values, where, if they work hard, they can earn enough to provide for a family.”
Vance said he was first baptized in 2019.
The town hall was hosted by Black Pastors United for Education, an organization associated with Jeffrey Yass.
Yass is a major Republican donor, donating nearly $85 million to mostly Republican causes this cycle, according to OpenSecrets. He has also tried to champion school choice and vouchers.
Despite that, Vance took time to criticize politicians receiving money from big donors.
“You know how interest group politics happens in Pennsylvania, or each of our individual states is if you’ve got 10 people who don’t have a strong political voice, pushing for one thing, but then you’ve got one guy who’s really powerful and connected pushing for something else,” he said. “Unfortunately, very often, it’s the one guy who’s in the ear of the politicians. That’s who people listen to.”
Vance said education bureaucracy is getting in the way of students having access to new learning materials, and that is one reason he is a fan of school choice.
“We got a lot of schools that are really underfunded and don’t have the resources that they need, or, for some complicated reason, aren’t giving kids a good education,” he said. “One of the ways to solve this, I believe, is to give scholarships. Is to give vouchers to every single parent, every grandparent, who is caring for a child, so that they can choose the educational choice that makes the most sense for their families.”
In Pennsylvania, school vouchers are a controversial topic with Republicans praising it, saying it gives parents more freedom, while most Democrats argue it takes money away from public schools.
Public schools in Pennsylvania can vary drastically in quality as they are predominantly funded by local taxes.
Pastor Joshua Robertson of The Rock Church in Harrisburg asked Vance if he thought school choice could coincide with improving public schools.
“The evidence that I’ve seen suggests that school choice actually improves the quality of both the private schools and the public schools,” he said.
But Vance said feeding children is one of the most beneficial things for schools.
“I think that if you want to have successful public schools and successful private schools, one of the most important things is the kids can’t learn if they’ve got an empty stomach,” he said.
He then claimed the Biden administration was threatening schools that don’t allow trans people to participate in sports by withholding funds for the National School Lunch Program, which is housed under the Food and Nutrition Service.
“I think it’s crazy to allow biological males to compete in sports with biological females,” he said. “But even if you disagree with me, I think that it is such a terrible thing to take food out of the mouths of poor children because they don’t do what the Biden Harris administration wants them to do.”
The administration tried to expand the Title IX prohibition on “sex” discrimination to “sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not say it would cut funding to the school lunch program, but rather said “program operators and sponsors that receive funds from FNS [Food and Nutrition Service] must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.”
That expansion is on hold following multiple federal lawsuits filed against the U.S. Department of Education.
In its announcement, Black Pastors United for Education claimed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for VP and a former public school teacher, and Green Party VP candidate Buck Ware were invited to the town hall but only Vance and Libertarian candidate Mike ter Maat appeared.
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Onotse Omoyeni,criticized Trump and Vance for calls to eliminate the Department of Education in Project 2025.
Though both Republican candidates have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, Vance wrote the forward for a book written by the overseer of it.
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