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ohio democratic representative tim ryan and republican j.d. vance are the top two candidates running in this year's ohio u.s. senate race. the debate was held in youngstown, ohio.

joining me in questioning these candidates tonight, to my left, my colleague at 21 wfmj, 21 news at 5 p.m., anchor lindsay mccoy. and to my right, the mahoning valley journalist bertram de souza. let's not waste any more time with the fist question. moderator: inflation is the top issue of concern among voters. from what we pay for groceries, gas, and everyday essentials.

congressman ryan, you voted in support of the inflation reduction act which you claim will bring down prices. but some economists and republicans do not believe this bill will do that, as it spends more federal money. why do you still stand behind this legislation? rep. ryan: this is an opportunity for us, one, to reduce inflation. one of the big drivers. let me first say, i know how much pain people are in at the pump, with food. it's rough, and if you're driving anywhere, if you're a home healthcare worker, a construction worker, it's been brutal, and i understand that. that's why i've been calling for a tax cut in the short term to put money in people's pockets. j.d. said that was a gimmick, but it's actually an opportunity for us to put more money in people's pockets. inflation reduction act also drives down our deficit by $300 billion, which will help pull some money out of the economy, and one of the big drivers of inflation is our supply chains

are looked up. over the last 30 or 40 years, there were a lot of really wealthy people, and democrats and republicans passed trade deals that shipped our jobs overseas. now we have a pandemic, economic collapse, our supply chains aren't here. so the inflation reduction act is saying how do we bring the supply chains back and that's what we've been working on here. we've seen a stream of investments here in ohio since the inflation reduction act passed in electric vehicles, in batteries. honda just announced a huge investment here. the solar industry up in toledo, hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. natural gas was a big part of the inflation reduction act, which i helped get that in there because i think that's a huge bridge for us and a job creator here in ohio. that's how we eventually get it down, but in the short term, the answer is a tax cut for working people. it's not a gimmick. it's an actual economic tool to help relieve some of the

pressure. moderator: and mr. vance, your response? what would you do to solve the inflation problem if elected? mr. vance: first of all, we have to appreciate we're talking about $2 trillion in additional federal spending. that's not going to reduce inflation. that's adding more fuel to the fire of inflation. i really wish tim ryan had stood up to his party on this vote because it might have made the inflation crisis a lot better if he hadn't done what he always does, which is vote with nancy pelosi and joe biden 100% of the time. now, he says i believe the tax cut is a gimmick. i think it's a great idea, but when you propose it, tim, it is a gimmick because in your time in congress, you voted to raise taxes $6.7 trillion 113 times and just a few weeks ago, in the inflation reduction act itself, it raises taxes by $20 billion on working people in this state and in this country and it sends 87,000 irs agents to go after them. to bring down inflation, we need to stop spending money we don't have.

runaway spending is one of the reasons he have runaway inflation. larry sommers said inflation would get worse with this bill and he was right, republicans were right, but the leadership on capitol hill was wrong. the other thing we have to do is open up america's energy sector. joe biden shut down pipelines and permitting for oil and gas leases. he also made it impossible to invest in ohio's oil and gas sector. that rising energy price people see at the pump, farmers paying more for diesel, that's the direct result of policies enacted by joe biden and nancy pelosi and supported 100% by tim ryan. rep. ryan: if i may, j.d., you keep talking about nancy pelosi. if you want to run against nancy pelosi, move back to san francisco and run against nancy pelosi. you're running against me. i put the natural gas provision in the inflation reduction act. i was the one who made sure we

had all of the investments in electric vehicles in the inflation reduction act. do you not see what's happening at lordstown? we have four vehicles out there, trucks, two cars, and a tractor. we have a battery plant across the street that was $2.3 billion investment. this is the future for us, j.d., and i know you're not here a lot, but what we've been working on in this community and in ohio are the jobs of the future and the inflation -- we saw a stream of investments directly after the inflation reduction act. solar, gas, batteries, electric vehicles, honda, ford, big companies investing into communities like ours. fox con has four cars out there. i don't know how much clearer this could be, but this has been a good thing. if we don't do it, you know who's going to dominate these industries? china, and we can't have it. mr. vance: let me just address that here. tim ryan says i want to run against nancy pelosi. i don't care about running

against nancy pelosi. i did care about the fact that a guy who's running to represent ohio in the united states senate votes with her 100% of the time. now, tim ryan, of course, has a tv commercial out there right now. it's actually a pretty funny tv commercial, tim, to your team. rep. ryan: thank you. mr. vance: he says he only agrees with his own wife 70% of the time, but he agrees and voted with nancy pelosi 100% of the time. must make things a little awkward in the ryan household, but you vote with her 100% of the time. you can't run from the policies that she's supported and shoved down the throat of the people in ohio. moderator: gentlemen, gentlemen, let's refocus, move on to the next topic. moderator: gentlemen, political subservience is kryptonite to this hotly contested race. mr. vance, congressman ryan has called you donald trump's ass-kisser, the implication

being you would pay any price for the endorsement and support of the former president who publicly insulted you in youngstown. to profit congressman wrong and show ohio voters you are your own man, i would like you to identify one issue that mr. trump is wrong about and therefore deserving of public criticism. mr. vance: i disagree with the president on a number of things. he's a friend of mine and i'm proud to have his endorsement, but the thing that was wrong about the trump administration is they put a lot of people in the administration, a lot of bad personnel folks who actually advocated limitless nonstop wars that would mean a lot of folks from mahoning valley and a lot of folks from where i grew up would have to go off and fight those wars. a guy like john bolton, for example, should have never been national security advisor in the trump administration. let me address tim ryan's point. donald trump told a joke the a rally based on a false new york times story and tim ryan has decided to run his entire campaign on it. tim ryan is publicly out there on national television saying i love nancy pelosi.

a few months ago, he went before a national audience and said that he has to suck up and kiss up to chuck schumer. the guy who is subservient to the national party is tim ryan who's been begging for these guys to come into this race and save him from the campaign he's been running. look, it's ridiculous for him to accuse me of being anything because he has utterly failed to be independent to represent this valley and he will utterly fail to represent the people of ohio if he's elected to the united states senate. moderator: so i get this straight, when the former president said j.d. is kissing my ass because he wants my support, you took that as a joke? mr. vance: i know the president very well and absolutely, he was joking about a "new york times" story. that's all he was doing. i didn't take offense to it. i talked to the president before it, i talked to the president afterwards, everybody there took as a joke. this guy goes on national tv and says i love nancy pelosi and has the audacity of accusing me of

kissing anyone's rear end. that's pretty rich. moderator: congressman, mr. vance has portrayed you as a lap dog for house speaker nancy pelosi and other democratic leaders in congress and says ul -- you will do their bidding in the senate. to prove him wrong, i'd like you to point to an issue that speaker pelosi has totally bungled and therefore deserves public repudiation. rep. ryan: let me just first say that this is obviously a clip that j.d. is running to try to misrepresent people. i ran against nancy pelosi, j.d., for leadership and you have to have the courage to take on your own leaders. these leaders in d.c., they will eat you up like a chew toy, right? i mean, you were calling trump america's hitler. then you kissed his ass -- mr. vance: that's not true. rep. ryan: it is true.

then you kissed his ass and he endorsed you and you said he's the greatest president of all time. mitch mcconnell gave you 40 million dollars to prop up your campaign, peter till gave you $15 million. that's $55 million, j.d. what do you think they want for that? they want your loyalty and you proved you'll kiss their ass too. it's nothing personal. i'm just telling you i've been in this business, it's a tough business. if you think you're going to help ohio, you're not. if you can't even stand up for yourself, how you going to stand up for the people of this state? how are you going to take on the corporate interests? all the money you took are from the corporations who sent our jobs overseas. peter thiel, $15 million, buddy, what do you think he wants? moderator: can you answer the question? mr. vance: let me respond. tens of million of dollars, tim, from technology companies frrk

out of state money, what percent of your donors have come from the state of ohio? a very small share. his entire campaign is based on sucking up to the national democratic establishment and of course they support you, tim, because you support their policies 100%. here's what happened. he says he challenged nancy pelosi for leadership and then he goes on national tv and says that he loves her. if that's the price of challenging nancy pelosi, doing it for a few days before you failed like you've done with everything you've tried to get through for the people of -- moderator: congressman -- rep. ryan: derek, just let my answer that. the quote of me saying i love nancy pelosi was right before i said i was running against her? you know why? because i don't have to hate anybody. i don't have to hate republicans. i don't have to hate nancy pelosi or joe biden. we need to move the political discourse in this country from hate and anger and division to love and compassion and forgiveness and some grace. and all i'm saying is, i don't have to hate her.

i took her on. i took her on. she was the top democrat in the entire country, tough as nails, and i stood toe-to-toe with her in a room full of 220 of my colleagues with her sitting in the audience and i spoke my piece because when you're from the valley, what's you do and you shake shands. mr. vance: you voted with her 100% of the time. moderator: we're going to move on to our next topic, which is abortion. congressman ryan, you said i want to go back to roe v. wade where a fetus becomes viable at 24 to 28 weeks, but if republicans take control of the senate after midterms, that doesn't seem likely. what do you propose to protect a woman's right to choose? rep. ryan: at that point, it would be stopping a national abortion ban, so lindsay graham, a major leader in the republican

party in the senate, has said he wants a national abortion ban if -- and we've seen how difficult this has been here in ohio. we see a couple stories every week where women are in difficult circumstances and ohio healthcare workers won't take care of them. so they have to go to illinois or they have to go to indiana. it's a tragedy, a tragedy. pregnancy through rape, a tragedy towards the end of a planned pregnancy when you have a room, a crib, binkies, blankets, parties planned, tragic. and j.d. and his extreme crew, they want to have a national abortion ban. they're not happy with people having to go to illinois. they want people to get a passport and have to go to canada. largest governmental overreach in the history of our lifetimes. he called rape inconvenience. this is not a guy who's ready to protect the rights of women. these are complicated circumstances. so if the republicans control the house and the senate, we

won't be able to codify roe v. wade which i think is the smart move, move us away from chaos and back to stability. i'll spend all my time trying to fight a national abortion ban. moderator: mr. vance, you said in the previous debate you said of the ohio 10-year-old who was repeat, -- rate that she could , have been and lould to have an abortion in the state of ohio. we know that's one exception you support. are there any others? mr. vance: my basic view is me need to protect life in this country. in the case of that young girl, what i said is she should be able to get an abortion in this state and i think one obvious exception that applies there is it's very dangerous for a young girl to bring a baby to term like that, but let's just back up a second. two things on this. number one, the question presupposed that tim ryan supports codifying roe v. wade. yet, his actual voting record here has supported abortion without limits up to 40 weeks of pregnancy. tim ryan voted for a piece of legislation that would have prevent doctors from providing care to babies who survive botched abortions.

that's not the roe v. wade standard, tim. as much as you call me an extremist, you're the extremist on this issue. the other thing that's important to talk about, tim ryan talks about this poor girl who was raped, the 10-year-old girl ha -- had to travel to indiana to get an abortion. obviously an incredibly tragic situation. i'm the father of a nine-month-old girl. it's unbelievable. that little girl was raped by an illegal immigrant and both the media and tim ryan need to be honest about the fact that she would never have been raped in the first place if tim ryan had done his job on border security. let's talk about the full picture and the full slate of exceptions, absolutely, but let's not let the democrats off the hook for letting career criminals into our state to fray on our little girls in the first place. moderator: what are the full slate of exceptions? mr. vance: there's a number. here's the thing i want to say.

you can't say with total confidence what every single exception in every single case is going to be. let me offer an example here. i know a lot of pro life people, people who have been pro life since before i was born. one of the things they will tell you is they support an exception in the case of incest, for example. i've heard a number of pro life people say that, but in incest exception looks different at three weeks of pregnancy versus 39 weeks of pregnancy. so i don't think that you can say on a debate stage every single thing that you're going to vote for when it comes to an abortion piece of legislation. what i am willing to do and what i think is a lot more helpful for voters who are actually listening to this is to say, number one, what are my principles? my principles are i want to save as many lives as possible and i'd love to get to us a country where young people don't feel pressured by boyfriends and families to have abortions where adoption services are available and where young women can get access to the healthcare that they need to have babies. that's some of the principles that i really care about. the other thing that i think is so important here is there are

specific pieces of legislation that i'm willing to talk about where, look, you talked about the lindsay graham bill. that protects babies who are four weeks and older. fully formed babies who can feel pain and it provides reasonable exceptions. if you can't support legislation like that, you are making the united states the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world. you can have some minimum national standards which is my view while also allowing the states to make up their minds. california is going to have a different view than ohio. that's totally fine. i want to save as many lives as possible. that's the principle that guides me. moderator: you would vote for lindsay graham's 15-week ban? mr. vance: i think it's totally reasonable to say you cannot abort a baby, especially for elective reasons, after 15 weeks of gestation. no civilized country allows it and i don't want the united states to be an exception. moderator: for our next topic, lindsay. moderator: this goes to ohio's opioid death rate is among the

top in the nation. here in the mahoning valley, tremble county is on pace to have its deadliest year yet with 69 deaths to date. how would you use your role to address this problem? mr. vance: i know this is a tough issue. my mom, who struggled with dai,z i'm proud to say she's been clean and sober for seven years, i believe one of the reasons she got a second chance is because the fentanyl that's how coming into this country, the unbelievable poison that the mexican cartels are bringing through our open border, it wasn't going around the streets of ohio at nearly the same level when my mom was struggling with addiction. that brings me to the first answer here. you've got to close the borders. you've got to finish the wall and make it so that these drug cartels are not able to use the u.s. southern border as a drug trafficking zone.

i will say thanks to senator portman, who's endorsed me, we are better on this, but there's still so much work to do. we need to make sure that the people who want to take that first step to treatment and recovery actually have a bed available a detox center available, and that means probably resourcing our mental health and our addiction recovery services. the fentanyl crisis right now is so bad because joe biden and tim ryan have not done their job. they have not secured the united states southern border. it is a terrible tragedy. it cannot be allowed to continue and when i'm in the senate, it won't. moderator: congressman ryan you live and rep the top county for overdose deaths in the region. i mentioned a statistic earlier. how would you say the federal government is getting the war on drugs wrong? what would you propose to fight it? rep. ryan: i think a stronger border, more border patrol. i disagree with president biden when he's talking about relaxing regulations down on the border. completely disagree with that. again, taking on my own party

when i think they're wrong. i started the border technology caucus. how do we use technology today to keep this junk out of our country? and we have to punish the chinese because they know it's getting into our country. we have to punish the mexicans. the mexican government because it's coming in -- it's getting processed there and coming into our country. we have to do the security piece and i was a lead sponsor of with senator portman of the comprehensive addiction and recovery act, working again in a bipartisan way because that's how you get things done. you don't take these extreme positions. you work across the aisle and i'll just say, i think it would be a big mistake to send somebody to the united states senate who started a fake nonprofit to benefit people who are on opiates and addiction, which is what j.d. did. he started a nonprofit and didn't spend one nickel to help anybody. he did a poll for himself, which we still haven't seen the poll

so we don't know exactly what's in it, and he hired a spokesperson from perdue pharma. they were the ones pushing all these pills. killed a million people through opioids. all the pill mills in southern ohio and other states, they were pushing it and he hired somebody from there. and this didn't end. we've been talking about this all summer long. as recently as saturday, j.d. was doing a fundraiser with a guy who was raising him money, one of the top ten pill pushers, doctors, in the entire country. and he just cancelled it. you know why? because the press broke the story and he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. that's not the kind of person we want in the united states senate representing these families. i have a resolution to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction so we can have a whole of government approach in keeping this junk out of our

communities. i also supported money for local governments in the rescue package. i was one of the biggest advocates for us putting money, state and local money, so that local communities and cops and law enforcement can get funded so that we can catch this stuff on the ground when it does come in. it has to be a comprehensive plan, designate it as weapons of mass destruction and don't put somebody in the senate who started a sham nonprofit to fry to benefit from this whole thing. mr. vance: let me address this. tim ryan has run commercials falsely accusing my nonprofit of me taking money out of it and not helping people. it did help people and i put $80,000 of my own moan. -- money. those commercials are paid for by pharmaceutical blood money because tim ryan received tens of thousands of dollars from the very companies that profited off of this and that's exactly how he's able to fund the lies that he's putting on tv against me. let me address a bigger issue here. what tim ryan said about dealing with border security actually sounds okay, but it goes to the

heart of why tim ryan has been a failed leader and would be a failed senator. you cannot honestly pretend to be a defender of border security when you have voted for amnesty multiple times in the congress. you cannot pretend to be a defender of border security when you voted against border wall funding multiple times. you know, members of congress get to take somebody to the state of union address and a few years ago, tim ryan took somebody, not somebody affected by the opioid problem, not a steel worker who lost his job because tim ryan didn't do his, he took an illegal alien. his entire 20 years in congress, he has been anti-border security and now we're paying the consequences for it. my simple argument to tim ryan or to especially people in the mahoning valley is if you don't do your job, you don't deserve a promotion. do your job on border security, tim, then come and ask the people of ohio for promotion to the u.s. senate. rep. ryan: can i just have a comment there? moderator: real quick. rep. ryan: i'm not going to take

any guff from you, j.d., on this issue. this guy has invested into dozens of companies that use foreign workers. this is why j.d. vance, with all due respect, is a fraud. mr. vance: that's not true. also very relevant to the opioid problem. rep. ryan: he wants you to think that he's really tough on immigration. but on the other side of that, he's actually making money and investing in the companies that hire foreign workers. my little italian grandmother had a saying for this when she met somebody like j.d. vance. you have two faces. one for the camera, and one for your business dealings. moderator: thank you, mr. ryan. mr. vance: let me address this. moderator: we need to move on. mr. vance: just 15 seconds. here's the thing. he just accused me of hiring foreign workers. the implication, of course, is that i've hired illegal aliens.

no business i've ever been involved with has ever hired an illegal alien. i don't know what you're talking about, but people like tim ryan passed immigration laws that allow companies to take advantage of our country. that's step one. those companies take advantage of those and step three is tim ryan blames me and not himself for passing those laws in the first place. doesn't make any sense. if you'd like a changes for our visa system, vote for a system, not in lock step with your party. moderator: this is for both of you and deals with the threat to american democracy. the january 6th house select committee held its last public hearing thursday and voted unanimously to subpoena former president donald trump and documents he might have. the bipartisan committee made clear that mr. trump instigated the january 6th insurrection, the armed invasion of the u.s. capitol building to illegally keep mr. trump in power. i have two questions.

do you believe that mr. trump should honor the subpoena and publicly answer questions under oath from the committee? and two, secondly, in light of all of the evidence and testimony accumulated by the committee, was the january 6th insurrection an attack on american democracy or were the hundreds of insurrectionists just tourists visiting the capitol as republican congressman andrew clyde of georgia contended? congressman ryan, you go first. mr. ryan: i think that president trump should be afforded all of the rights that every other american citizen is afforded. he should respond to the subpoena. he should come clean. he should talk about -- we know there's been a call from the white house to somebody who was participating in the storming of the capitol. we should know all this, and if he has nothing to hide, he should come clean and we should figure out what's going on. and i do think that the insurrection was a group of people who were trying to overthrow the united states of america. and i think they were trying to

stop the peaceful transition of power from president trump to president biden and disenfranchise over 80 million of our own fellow citizens. i think that's absolutely wrong, and the fact that j.d. literally raised money -- now, there were 140 cops, united states capitol police, that were beat upside the head with lead pipes, pepper sprayed, jammed into doors, beat up with flag poles, one person died. these are cops protecting the capitol, right? they got kids, they got family members. and here this happened. so of all the things to do in that circumstance, our guy thought it would be a good idea to post on social media, raise money for the insurrectionists. raise legal defense money for those people who stormed the capitol. that's outrageous. of all the things you could have done, j.d., that's what you decided to do?

one of the guys went to jail for four years. we have a group of people that want to overthrow the company and -- or overthrow the country and one of the guys who talks about we got to let american democracy die is peter till, who gave him $15 million in the primary, who just today was saying he wants to become a citizen of malta. what are we talking about here? this is insane. mr. steyer: thank you, mr. ryan. mr. de souza: if he would answer both questions. should mr. trump honor the steen and secondly, was this an attack on american democracy? mr. vance: i'm not going to pretend to give the president of the united states legal advice about whether he should honor the subpoena. i think it would be a pretty enlightening piece of testimony if he did. but look, the january 6th committee has shown from the very beginning it's that not interested in the truth, that it's interested in a political hit job. and it goes back to four years ago, the obsession with the idea that donald trump somehow had the election stolen by the

russians. there has been a nonstop political effort to not honor the election of 2016 and i think that's just as much of a threat to democracy as the violence on january the 6th. now, january the 6th, i've condemned the violence repeatedly. and tim talks about absolutely some brave law enforcement officers who did their job and kept the capitol safe. of course, the fraternal order of police has endorsed me because you have stabbed the police of this district and of this entire state in the back many, many times. that's why they've endorsed me. why won't you condemn the violence in summer of 2020, when people were rioting and looting and burning down american streets? tim ryan was nowhere to be found. i'm sure now that he's running for senate, he might be willing to condemn it. look, the january 6th thing, here is the big problem i have with it. what happened was bad. i don't like violence anywhere and i certainly don't like it at the united states capitol. but the media obsession and tim ryan's obsession with this issue while people can't afford the

cost of groceries, where his policies made it impossible for people to support their families, where we have a massive border security problem, where we know that big tech companies were actively being involved in the 2020 election in a way that hid hunter biden and joe biden's corruption. we can talk and think about a lot of different issues and i think the media's obsession with january 6th suggestion they're not paying attention to the concerns of everyday voters in this state who are getting crushed by the policies that you supported. mr. ryan: you can walk and chew -- we are a very complicated democracy here, but we can walk and chew gum statement. if a group of people storm the capitol while we're trying to file the paperwork for an election and they're trying to prevent that from happening and they want to kill the vice president, that needs to be looked into! like, are we really -- you want to sweep it under the rug. i don't want to talk about this anymore than anybody else.

i want to talk about jobs and wages and pensions. i want to talk about making sure that people have, you know, dignity, but my god, you got to look into it, j.d. you can't sweep it under the rug. and liz cheney is not a democrat. adam kinsinger is not a democrat. liz cheney's dad was dick cheney, vice president of the united states under george w. bush as a republican. this is a bipartisan effort. mr. steyer: thank you, congressman. we're going to move to the topic of gun control. mr. vance, as recently as 2018, you supported gun reform measures, including red flag laws aimed at taking groups from people likely to use them in violent crimes, such as domestic abusers. but your position has shifted and said you would not vote on what you call gun grabs. instead, you are focused on real solutions. what measures or real solutions would you support to reduce gun violence and mass shootings and would they include any restrictions on gun ownership for anyone? mr. vance: let me be clear about what we mean by red flag laws. that's the big issue here.

look, we have multiple examples, just in the last couple years, terribly tragic situations where a convicted felon has walked in, passed a background check, gotten a firearm and killed a lot of innocent people. that's obviously totally unacceptable. i'm a big pro second amendment guy. i know a lot of people who have really defended the second amendment. none of them think that convicted felons should be able to buy firearms and then kill a large number or small number of people. but here's the thing. two issues. one, the reason why we have skyrocketing gun violence in this country is because tim ryan and a lot of democrats decided to declare war on america's police. that's why from youngstown to cleveland, to columbus to cincinnati, we have really, really high rates of gun violence. we didn't have it two years ago. we didn't have it five years ago. and nothing changed in the gun laws. we need to get back to common

sense law enforcement policies. the second thing is we cannot -- we need to fix the system that's broken as opposed to layering a bunch of additional regulations on top of it. the thing that i don't like is when you create a new background check system with new sets of regulations that go after law-abiding citizens. when we know the current system is broken, why don't we fix it instead of creating an entirely new system. mr. steyer: congressman ryan, you said you support the second amendment, but with that right comes the responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. what specific limitations on gun ownership do you support and what do you see as going too far in limiting gun ownership? mr. ryan: yeah, here we are in ohio. one of the great days, at least once a year we try to get out and do some hunting with our oldest, mason. he's a much better shot than i am and he would gladly admit that publicly, but it's one of the great days. you go up, you watch some football on sunday, get up early, go out hunting on monday.

we have to preserve that culture here in ohio. it is really important for us to do that. but you can't watch the school shootings, you can't watch the level of violence that we have here, and not think we need background checks, right? we need to close the gun show loophole. we need to make sure these weapons of war are not readily available, like what happened in the one community where an 18-year-old, just a few days after his 18th birthday, he's able to, like, stumble into a gun shop and get a semi-automatic rifle and 1600 rounds of ammunition. if we train a soldier and they go out, they get 300 rounds. this is not right, and kids are scared to go to school. they're climbing under their desks. we see the crime in the cities. how do all these people get these unlawful guns? j.d. wants to ban the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms,

the agency that helps us prevent gun crimes and helps to solve gun crimes. he wants to abolish the agency. and here is another example of how extreme j.d. is, right? he talked about the national abortion ban, we talked about he thinks that the election was stolen, which was one of the reasons trump agreed to support him. alex jones, a right-wing talk radio show with a huge following, said that the sandy hook murders of those young precious babies in connecticut, he said it was a hoax. and he went on and on and said it was a hoax. i've met these families from sandy hook. absolutely devastated. you lose a fourth grader to a madman. and this guy says it was a hoax. our guy j.d. says this is one of the most credible news sources in the whole country. and he just got convicted and he just got sued to the tune of billions of dollars that he owes the families for putting them through this grief. and i just want people to know,

it's like we're running for the united states senate. this is the highest office you can get in this country except for president. and he's running around backing these extremists. the most extreme people in the country, a guy who denied sandy hook. he's like, no, he's credible. mr. steyer: thank you, congressman. mr. vance: it's maddening. i've never said that, tim. he did not answer the question. he didn't give you a single example of something that would meaningfully reduce gun violence -- mr. ryan: is my microphone not working? mr. de souza: ohio has a law that allows teachers and other staff to carry guns on school property, after receiving only 24 hours of training. is that the answer to the growing epidemic of mass school

shootings in america? mr. vance: of course not. we need many, many solutions to find the answer to these ridiculous school shootings. look, i have three kids, a 5-year-old, 2-year-old, and nine month old. and when i see these terrible school shootings, my heart breaks for these kids and the families. but that means that we need to do things that actually work here. i think allowing properly trained teachers to carry firearms can be part of the solution. i think increasing funding for school resource officers can be part of the solution. i think a very, very important part of the solution of reducing crime, both in our schools and in our streets, is making sure -- and it sounds crazy common sense -- but making sure that we lock up violent criminals. here's the thing about tim ryan. tim ryan, when he was running for president, of course, he was a different guy two years ago when i was running for president. he supported ending cash bail. and we know, just in this community, a guy who was let out on nominal bail, who went and

got a gun and went and murdered somebody in this community because we don't have the proper policies in place to ensure the violent criminals go off for a long time. that really is the thing that's changed in this country. it's changed on our streets. it's changed everywhere else. we need to not do radical things. tim calls me an extremist. ending cash bail is on the far left of his own party and it's the very sort of thing that makes our streets less safe. we need more cash bail for violent criminals. we need to make sure we're not letting these complete scum bags out of jail because tim ryan is desperate to be president. mr. steyer: thank you, mr. vance. congressman, your answer to the question? mr. ryan: yeah, my wife is a school teacher. has been for 20 years. we had three kids go to public school. these school shootings scare parents to death and that's why the alex jones thing bothered me so much.

i just believe in watching the videos of some of these schools that it is a very risky proposition to have a person that's a school teacher trained to shoot in that environment with all those kids running around. like, that somebody who needs to be very well trained and a lot of experience, quite frankly, whether you're a police officer or you have some military experience, and you happen to be at that tragic situation that's happening. so i just -- i just think it's very, very dangerous to think that you're going to have a school teacher shooting into a crowd of kids. and i get the sentiment, for sure, because it's scary. but the question is, in all of these instances, we tried to pass some reasonable gun safety legislation that rob portman supported. it was a bipartisan effort, and j.d. vance opposed it.

like this was not an extreme bill. this didn't close the gun show loophole, it didn't into into background checks, didn't go into the charleston loophole, didn't go into any of that stuff which i support, but he was against it. it's like, if you're not -- cornyn from texas is for this, rob portman for this, strong second amendment guys, but he was against it. we have to come together and you have to find points of agreement here. you're not always going to get your way and i'm going to go to the senate and represent republicans and democrats and independents. i am going to promise to find common sense solutions. mr. vance: can we just talk about the mental health side of this? just briefly. i imagine tim ryan probably agrees with me on this. very often behind these shootings is clearly a person who was mentally unwell, not getting treatment and not being ordered into the types of

facilities that would prevent them from getting crime. rob portman, again endorsed me, has done a lot on the mental side of the equation. i think that's an important part of ensuring these school shootings -- mr. ryan: just quickly -- i'm not sure why rob portman endorsed you because you don't agree with any of the compromises he's been able to make in the last year and mental health issues happen around the globe. this is the only country where we have these kind of things happening. keep the guns out of criminals'hands and keep mental health -- mr. steyer: thank you, next topic. ms. mccoy: in policing, mr. vance, you've argued in keeping qualified immunity for police in excessive force. but in light of ongoing instances, what measures would you support holding police accountable? mr. vance: look, i think there are measures right now in place

to hold police accountable and i've talked to a number of the membership of the fraternal order of police, who endorsed me, and they will tell you there are a lot of things that are in place to make sure bad cops aren't able to continue to what they do and the good cops want the bad cops out of the police chief. i think we have proper protections right now to ensure that the police officers who aren't doing their job aren't able to continue on the force. here's the important thing here. because of what happened two years ago and because of the summer of rioting and looting that cost tens of billions of dollars of damage and, of course, 26 people, a lot of them police officers, lost their lives, the effort that tim ryan supported to strip the police of qualified immunity is why we have the violent crime on our streets right now. talk to a police officer and they will tell you they're terrified of doing their job because of what tim ryan did. talk to the youngstown chief of police, who wrote you a letter a couple years ago and called you a traitor for what you did to

the police in this community and the police all over the state. the problem that we had after 2020 is we were so worried about the rare bad cop that we completely turned the federal government loose on our law enforcement and the consequences is there are streets and that people do not feel safe to walk down. not just true in youngstown, true all over the state. ms. mccoy: and congressman ryan, you were criticized for the letter he mentioned from youngstown's police chief, a letter to attorney general william barr that you signed on june 23rd of 2020, that described police brutality and violence as being the leading cause of death among young men, particularly young black men, three times more likely to be killed by police than their white peers. do you believe law enforcement protocols need to be redefined in america? mr. ryan: i think we need a national discussion. this is clearly a problem. we do have police officers who don't like their job anymore, we have people who don't want to go into law enforcement, and that's a real problem.

we need more cops, we need better paid cops, and we have to get rid of the bad cops. we also have to understand there's a complicated relationship between the law enforcement and primarily the black community, which means we've got to have a national discussion about this because there are bad cops that do bad things. and i just think that we need to provide the kind of leadership that is needed to start the healing process, so we can take the temperature down. now, i've brought back $500 million to ohio for law enforcement. staffing, technology, even here in youngstown, right down the street, shot spotters. i got an earmark for them years ago, so they can identify gunshots in the city and immediately find where it is. those are the kind of investments that we need to make. i also, again, put money into the rescue package to make sure

that local governments and state governments have money for law enforcement. governor dewine is going around the state passing out that federal money, which i agree with, but it's federal money. i also have a bill, and this is what i hope is the model moving forward, i have a bill that is a police immersion training bill, that has the support of both the fop and the naacp. i want to be someone who tries to solve problems. i don't want to keep fighting for another 10 years about criminal justice reform or immigration or any of these polarizing issues. i want us to come together as americans and have some common sense solutions. and so i will use my position in the senate to sit down with both the naacp, the urban league, and the fop, and say how can we start working this out? how can we start building trust again? not someone who wants to throw jet fuel on the issue. mr. vance: this is a consistent theme of the debate and certainly of the entire campaign. tim ryan says he believes in reasonable solutions. tim, what were you doing on those reasonable solutions in your 20 years in washington, d.c.? what were you doing at the

moment that the lawless people were attacking our police officers? you were joining in and making our streets less safe. the critical issue here is that tim ryan keeps on saying he's reasonable. he keeps saying that he's a moderate. keeps saying that he believes in things that 90% of ohio believes, but when he gets to washington, he votes exactly the opposite way. i went to yankee kitchen for dinner about two hours ago, so many people came up to me, some of them democrats, and they said tim ryan has been in office for 20 years and he hasn't done his damn job. that's a direct quote from a union steel worker who you represent. if you were half as good of a legislator as you pretend to be, youngstown wouldn't have lost 50,000 jobs and those steelworkers would not be coming up to me telling me you failed them. mr. steyer: thank you. we need to move on. mr. de souza: immigration remains one of the most explosive issues confronting the nation, and an idea that is igniting the passions of some americans is called the great replacement theory.

the theory says whites are in danger of being replaced by nonwhites as a majority if the flow of non-white immigrations isn't stopped. mr. vance, you have warned of an immigrant invasion, according to a wire story from last may. who are these invaders and how are they coming into this country? mr. vance: well, the primary way they're coming into the country is through tim ryan and joe biden's wide open southern border to the tune of about 2.5 million people. and it's not just the people. it's the fentanyl and the other traffic they're bringing with them. the democrats are not -- look, not democratic voters and democratic people, but the democratic leadership, the people he answers to in washington, d.c., they're very explicit about that. they say they want more and more immigration because if that happens, they'll ensure that republicans are never able to win another national election. it's not whites or nonwhites. there are white immigrants and nonwhite immigrants in this

country who have enriched in country in an incredible way. i'm married to one, the daughter of south asian immigrants, and my wife has been unbelievably blessed and enrich because she decided to say yes i asked her to marry me, but she came in -- or i should say her family came in legally. they followed the laws of this country and the things i worry about with all of this illegal immigration is if you want to start a relationship with this country, we're all common citizens, we're on a great big american family. we look after each other. whether you came one generation ago or ten generations ago, we're all part of the same family. but your introduction to this country should not be breaking its laws. you should come in through the proper channels and again, every time he's got an opportunity, he's going to talk about how he disagree with his party on border security. go ahead, tim, but you voted for amnesty and voted against border wall funding. moderator: what is your opinion of the great replacement theory,

congressman? rep. ryan: i think it's nonsense, it's grounded in some of the most racially divisive writings in the history of the world, and this is who he's running around with, talking about replacement theory. there's no big grand conspiracy. this is a country who's been enriched by immigrants from all quarters of the world. there's no -- and the problem -- mr. vance: it's shameful for you to say that given my family. rep. ryan: and the danger -- my turn, pal, my turn. mr. vance: oh, buddy, you said -- rep. ryan: this great replacement theory was the motivator for the shooting in buffalo where that shooter had all the replacement theory writings that j.d. agrees with and some sicko got the information, again, those extremists he runs around with, marjorie taylor greene, ted cruz, all these guys, they just want to stoke this racial violence. we're tired of it, j.d.

this kid goes to a grocery store in buffalo where black people shop and shooting them up. no. we want to move on from that. everyone is exhausted. that's what i keep saying, i want to represent the exhausted majority. people that are tired of this stuff. democrats, republicans, and independents. moderator: thanks, congressman. rep. ryan: we have a -- hold on, j.d. mr. vance: this is disgusting. here's what happened when the media and people like tim ryan accuse me of engaging the great replacement theory. rep. ryan: you were peddling it. mr. vance: i'll tell you what happens. my own children, my biracial children get attacked by scum bags tonight and in person because you are so desperate for political four that you'll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies of engaging in racism. we are sick of it. you can believe in a border without being a racist. you can believe in the country

without being a racist and this just shows how desperate this guy is for political power. i know you've been in office for 20 years, tim, and i know it's a sweet gig, but you're so desperate not to have a real job that you'll slander me and my family. it's disgrateful. moderator: thank you, mr. vance. rep. ryan: hold on, derek. i think i struck a nerve with this guy. mr. vance: you absolutely struck a nerve. mr. vance: you strike a nerve with normal people talking about my family. rep. ryan: i would never talk about your family that way, j.d., i wasn't raised that. don't try to spin this because you don't want to talk about the fact that you're with the extremists and that belief which is grounded going back decades led to some crazy dude getting a gun and going to a black grocery store. mr. vance: it's disgusting and i've never endorsed it. rep. ryan: you talk about it and you're running around with popular joer taylor greene. mr. vance: to believe in a border, tim ryan thinks you endorse the great replacement theory? that's unbelievable. you join nancy pelosi and chuck schumer calling your own people racist for daring to believe in

a border wall. this is the game he plays. rep. ryan: i know better, j.d. moderator: thank you, candidates. it's now time for closing statements. we've run out of time. mr. vance, we'll start with you. you have two minutes. mr. vance: great. first of all, thank you guys for watching us. i know the guardians or the indians or whatever we're calling them these days are playing game 235 of the alds and we're rooting for them and i appreciate you guys spending a hour with us and caring about this country to invest in this race and invest your time. my simple argument is this. tim ryan had his chance. he's been in office for 20 years, he passed five pieces of legislation, three of those pieces of legislation were renaming post offices in the youngstown area. whenever i'm up here in the mahoning valley, i'm constantly approached by people who tell me

that tim ryan has failed them and tim ryan has failed to do his job. i think it's really simple here. we need to go in a different direction in this country and i make a few commitments to you about what you and your families deserve. number one, i think your family deserves to go to the grocery store and not have it break the bank, not have it ruin your bank account because you want to buy a nice meal for your kids to have on a friday night. number two, i think you deserve a country with a border and you deserve leadership who don't call you racist for thinking you should deserve a country with a border. i believe you should be able to walk down your streets in safety. i believe you should be able to take your children downtown for dinner without being mugged or without being carjacked. i believe in ohio's energy sector and a guy who thinks that we should ban gas powered cars as bernie sanderses and tim ryan argued a couple years ago doesn't deserve to represent this great state and its people. my argument here is i want you to have a better life.

and i think you're not going to get a better high of from federal leadership until we take this country in a different direction. joe biden has had his chance. did the policies work? nancy pelosi had her chance. did the policies work? tim ryan has had his chance for 20 years and i think we need to take this country and this state in a different direction. but to get there, to do anything worth doing, i need your help and i need your support and i'd be honored to have it. god bless you guys and have a good night. moderator: thank you very much, mr. vance. congressman ryan, two minutes. rep. ryan: we see a lot of important things happen on tv that are culture, culturally related, and people ask me all the time, why do you talk about jobs all the time? i said let me tell you about my grandfather. he's a steel worker in niles, ohio, for 40 years. he worked 40 hours a week five days a week. and he was able, because he had a good job, he was able to give back.

he was the lead usher at 10:45 mass at our lady of mount carmel church. he ran the beer tent at the summer festival because he had a good job and he was able to give back and participate in the civic life of our community because he had a good job. he said you always got to vote for the school vis -- levies, police and fire, mental health levies because that build and strong community. that's why we've got to get these good-paying jobs back at ultima, the electric vehicles, the two natural gas power plants, a billion dollars apiece, all the stuff we've been doing downtown in youngstown. these communities were boarded up 20 years ago. we worked hard, democrats, republicans, independents, to bring economic development back here, and it's a shame that someone running for senate wants to come to youngstown and trash all the hard work that we've done together over the last 20 years. and we've got to do the kind of things that my grandfather did: give back, serve, but it starts

with a good-paying job. rebuilding the great american middle class. getting rid of these bad trade deals, cutting taxes for workers, making sure we dominate the industries of the future, manufacturing of cars and trucks and electric vehicles and tractors and batteries. going all in on natural gas so that we can make sure we reduce costs for manufacturers here. we've got a bright future. i've been here my whole life. i never left. i didn't abandon this place and go for higher -- greener pastures in san francisco and then come back and want to parachute in with $55 million of out of state money from the biggest corporations in the entire country. the ones that ship the jobs overseas. i'm here, i'm going to stay here. i appreciate your vote. go to timforoh.com and chip in a few bucks because we're getting our money from the people and i'll be your senator when i get there. moderator: mr. vance, mother nature must have wanted to see the debate. the game is delayed, hasn't started yet.

this concludes tonight's coverage of the u.s. senate debate. we want to thank the candidates for being here and thank you to everyone who tuned in for that very special night. we want to thank the staff at stambaugh auditorium for all the hard work to put this together. tune in tonight for 21 news at 11:00, we'll have a complete recap. thank you very much. have a good night. >> wednesdayveng, we begin with live coverage of the governor's debate between reblan kevin stitt and democrat hofmeister hosted b oklahoma. at 7:30, democratic reprentive john and his challenger tom kane in the race for the congressional districts.

at 8:35 republican governor kim reynolds and democratic challenger mt a debate hosted b pbs's iowa press. watch the debates begin at 6:30 p.m. easte on c-span, c-span our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including cox. >> homework can be hard. that is why having to dial in for that homework is harder. we are providing lower income students access to affordable internet so that homework can just be homework. coconnect to compete. >> cox along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ >> middle and high school

students, it is your time to shine. you are invited to participate in this year's c-span studentcam documentary competition. in light of the upcoming midterm elections, feature yourself as a newly elected member of congress. what is your top priority and wife? make a five to six minute video that shows the importance of your issue from a closing and supported perspective. do not be afraid to take risks with your documentary. be bold. up to $100,000 in cash prizes and a $5,000 grand prize. viosostly submitted by january 20, 20 23. visit our website at studentcam's.org for competition rules. tips, resources and a step-by-step guide. >> florida senator marco rubio and democratic challenger in the states u.s. 2022 race val demings participated in a debate hosted at