Walz Makes Dubious Claim About Vance’s Record, Gets Brutally Fact-Checked

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s claim that Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance never supported a pro-worker bill has been dubbed false by a Washington Post fact check.

“He’s one of four senators, four, that has never cast a vote on a pro-worker bill in his life,” Walz said of Vance during a Tuesday speech in Los Angeles. “Not once.”

When asked to support the claim, the Harris-Walz campaign cited a scorecard published by the AFL-CIO — the U.S’s largest federation of unions — that assesses lawmakers’ voting records on bills and appointments the AFL-CIO decides are “key” for working people, according to a fact-check in the Washington Post. Vance and three other Republican senators were given zero percent, but all four were U.S. Senate freshman at the time, meaning the scorecard only took 2023 into account — a year in the AFL-CIO only deemed seven votes worth scoring, five of which concerned nominations for Biden administration appointments.

Walz’s jab ignored the fact Vance co-sponsored the 2023 Railway Safety Act — a bill introduced in the wake of the Norfolk Southern train derailment — which would impose new safety requirements to protect rail workers. The bill stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but it has widespread union support, according to the Washington Post.

Walz’s accusation also failed to mention Vance broke party lines to support the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act improving compensation for uranium miners. That bill passed the Senate in March.

Earlier in the speech, Walz also claimed that “the only thing those two guys [former President Donald Trump and Vance] know about working people is how to work to take advantage of them.”

Vance was raised in Middletown, Ohio, a Rust Belt city that has suffered from the deindustrialization and the decline of its main employer Armco steel, according to Ohio Capital Journal. Household median income in Middletown is roughly 25,000 below the national figure, according to the United States Census Bureau.

Vance’s mother was a heroin addict, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother and grandfather, who were pro-union Democrats, according to his best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” His grandfather worked at Armco steel mill, and, along with Vance’s uncle, was a member of the local union, according to the Washington Post.

The Washington Post gave Walz’s statement “Four Pinocchios,” the highest ranking for falsity on the outlet’s scale.

The Harriz-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.