GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence played up his affinity for JFK in an Irish stronghold in Ohio on Friday.
The Indiana governor campaigned in Cuyahoga County for Donald Trump, and praised President Kennedy, a descendant of Irish immigrants, multiple times in his stump speech. Cuyahoga County has more than 160,000 residents of Irish ancestry, the largest number of Irish descendants of any county in Ohio, according to 2016 data from Cleveland.com.
First, Pence leaned on JFK to tout Trump’s tax plan.
“Frankly we’re going to do what President John F. Kennedy did in the 1960s: Not raisin’ taxes like Hillary Clinton wants to do, we’re going to cut taxes across the board for working families, small businesses, and family farms,” Pence said.
Later when talking about his and Trump’s origin stories, Pence again praised Kennedy as a hero that motivated him to become involved in politics.
“We both were raised to believe that to whom much is given, much will be required,” Pence said about the GOP ticket. “And so for the kid from Queens that meant going over to Manhattan Island and building the big buildings, for me it was a calling into public service and living out a dream of my heroes like President Kennedy.”
Pence’s affection for Kennedy is well documented, and Pence was a Democrat who reportedly voted for President Carter’s re-election in 1980 before identifying with President Reagan in the years to come.
As new polling released late this week showed Clinton with a narrow 1-point lead on Trump in Ohio, Pence’s effort to stir up the Irish in a Cleveland suburb may prove critical to Trump’s chances in next month’s election.
