SOMERSET (TNS) — JD Vance’s rural working-class upbringing, as chronicled in his bestseller ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, fits right in with the lived experiences in large swaths of small-town Pennsylvania.

Or does it?

Since the first-term Ohio senator was picked as Republican Donald Trump’s running mate, something of a book-club debate has been ongoing in towns like Somerset, a one-time coal-mining powerhouse left to struggle on the fringes of Appalachia.

In other words, a setting similar to Vance’s Middletown, Ohio-based book.

So, do Somerset residents see something of themselves and their town reflected in Vance’s memoir that chronicled his unlikely rise from the addiction struggles and social ills that afflicted his corner of Appalachia?

Turns out, appreciation for Vance’s tome, much like for the VP candidate himself, cuts sharply along political party lines.

Among Republicans, who outnumber Democrats 3-to-1 in Somerset County, 140 miles west of Harrisburg, many say they connect with Vance’s story – as well as the candidate.

They describe 40-year-old Vance, fresh from a strong performance in last Tuesday’s vice presidential debate with Democrat Tim Walz, as young, energetic and intellectually formidable. In short, the perfect complement and potential political heir to the 78-year-old tart-tongued Trump.

“I didn’t have some of the hardships he had. But I was very close to my grandmother,” said Clyde Naugle, who read “Hillbilly Elegy” after Trump selected Vance as his running mate. In the book, Vance’s head-strong, swear-happy grandmother plays a pivotal role in his rearing as his mother battles addiction.

“Family is a big part of Somerset County and the surrounding towns,” said Naugle, 68 of Stoystown. “His values that he grew up with are definitely reflected in Somerset County. A lot of the people I see in these small towns, the old coal mining towns, they are real Americans. They worked hard, and they struggled. They want better times, and they want an honest government.”

Trump and Vance are the ones to deliver it, according to Naugle, a former defense contractor now working for a local civil engineering firm.

“I compare him to the opposite party and who they’re running,” he added, referring to Democrat Kamala Harris and running mate Walz — a pair Naugle says favor a “globalist approach.”

“Let’s get back to being a strong nation, with the U.S. leading,” he said. “He (Vance) favors the American nationalist view of America being a strong country. This is what this country needs. He’s a veteran. He really likes his country and his countrymen. The Trump-Vance ticket will do well in Somerset County.”

Nostalgia, not realityNot so fast, says Paula Eppley Newman, a Democrat who worked in social services.

She read Vance’s book, not once, but twice. The first time was after it first was published to much acclaim in 2016. The second time was just recently after Trump tapped Vance in late July. On both occasions, she said she came away unimpressed, as if the characters were cardboard cutouts, not flesh-and-blood people in need she’s encountered in her frontline work.

“Once you break it all down, it was kind of like a made-for-TV kind of thing,” said Eppley Newman, who described herself as a life-long Republican who switched parties after the insurrection on January 6, 2021. The 68-year-old resident of nearby Jenner Township now proudly displays the only Harris-Walz sign on her street.

“It tells you what a lot of people’s assumptions are about the working class. Not the reality. I don’t believe a lot of that was really his experience,” she added of Vance and his tome.

What the book does tap into is nostalgia for an idyllic version of small-town life that probably never existed – either in Vance’s hometown or in Somerset. Still, many people misguidedly long for it, Eppley Newman said.

“‘Oh man, I wish we could go back to the good old days’,” she said, echoing this line of thinking. “We kind of romanticized everything. His book did that.”

Instead, Eppley Newman said Somerset should accept losing the coal industry and embrace new possibilities as a recreation and tourist destination, with the Pennsylvania Turnpike traffic teeming right by the town.

“Things have changed in our area, and there are a lot of people still upset,” she said. “But if you’re not changing, you’re dying. Living in the beautiful area we are living in, we just need to home in on what could be, as opposed to what was.”

‘Speaks to me’Patricia Witt, a Republican who worked with homeless people for decades in upstate New York before moving back home to the Somerset Lake area, sees Vance and his story as an accurate reflection of the coal town and its people. She added Vance’s hardscrabble roots should help Trump shore up the rural working-class vote that could swing Pennsylvania into his Electoral College column.

“It kind of speaks to me,” the 77-year-old said of ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’ “He speaks for me,” she added of Vance.

This, despite Witt growing up rich in Pittsburgh, the daughter of a steel company executive. But in the 1970s as the American steel industry collapsed, her father, then 60, lost his lucrative job and the family moved to what had been their “summer house” on the outskirts of Somerset.

These experiences helped inspire her life’s work. She studied to be a nurse at West Virginia University in the 1960s, training in medical offices that served the poorest of the poor.

“There were patients who hadn’t taken baths all winter long because it was too cold,” Witt said. “This is need that I have never seen as a rich girl from Pittsburgh. That led me on a career path of service to people considered ‘the least of thee,’” she added, quoting the Bible.

“I know those people. I met those people.”

Not only did Vance capture them in his book, but his story could help Trump win their votes in the many forgotten places like Somerset that make up so much of small-town Pennsylvania, Witt added.

“I like that JD has a biblical world view,” she said. “That teaches you to be strong in the might of the right. Hold your values. Don’t lower yourself. Be wise. Be knowledgeable. I see that in Trump and in Vance. We have to have people willing to stand up.”

She predicted many people in Somerset and other rural communities will be willing to stand with the ticket because of what she said is at stake: socialism, loss of gun rights and small towns overrun by immigrants.

“It’s the idea of a full-blown almost socialistic left-leaning administration,” Witt said. “The comparison is so frightening, so wrong. That’s where the fear is – that they’re not going to be represented.”

While she said America is and always will be “a country of immigrants,” Witt said the flood of undocumented migrants under Biden-Harris administration is simply unsustainable, straining resources and services.

“All these people are going to come, and it’s going to be illegal people who the government tells me they have to occupy my peaceful enjoyment (of small-town life). That’s your rights being impinged. It’s not about cats,” she said.

‘Childless cat ladies’Still, other Republicans said Vance should be more cautious with his words, noting his remarks about “childless cat ladies” and Haitians in Ohio eating dogs and cats came to define him, driving up his unfavorable ratings and potentially turning off independent voters.

Somerset Democrats seized on these comments, accusing Vance of falling right in line with Trump’s “mantra of untruths.”

“This is what sticks in people’s minds — immigrants in Springfield and the ridiculous, ridiculous claims about eating people’s pets. I can’t even say it with a straight face,” said Jarred Romesburg, a 54-year-old former Marine with two deployment tours under his belt.

Vance’s over-the-top rhetoric — not his more appealing life story — is how voters see him, he said.

“If you would ask most voters, I don’t think they would know that,” Romesburg said of Vance’s poverty-stricken upbringing. “I don’t think he’s used that to his advantage enough.”

Still, Romesburg credited Trump as being a master when it comes to energizing rural working-class voters like those in Somerset. Therefore, his choice of Vance can’t be underestimated.

“He’s done a good job from Day One of energizing the rural vote. He was very smart to energize that. You have to hand it to him,” he said of Trump.

Likewise, Bill Lloyd, a Democrat who represented southern Somerset County in the Pennsylvania House from 1981-98, said his former high regard for Vance and his book hit rock bottom after the writer became a flame-throwing politician.

“I think he’s just an opportunist,” Lloyd said, pointing to Vance’s much-publicized change of heart after suggesting Trump might be “America’s Hitler” in 2016.

“He has the intellectual ability. But he seems to be someone who is willing to sacrifice sensible policymaking for what’s going to get him the headline of the moment,” he added of Vance. “Whether Trump wins or not, Vance is getting himself lined up for four years from now.”

Where Democrats see a shoot-from-the-hip firebrand, Republicans laud Vance as agile, articulate and absolutely fearless when going toe-to-toe in interviews with the “mainstream media.” The fruits of Vance’s many sharp media exchanges were on full display during the vice presidential debate, they added.

“I think he comes across to me as someone that’s very strong in his wording,” said Jan Remington, 76, who described herself as a “Mountain Mamma” dwelling on Somerset County’s Mount Davis, Pennsylvania’s highest peak.

“I’m trying to be polite, but I think he’s got some cojones in his pants,” she added. “JD Vance, he had a hardship. His grandmother took over raising him. He could’ve been laid back. But he took advantage of what America has to offer. Everybody has that opportunity, but you got to work. He knows the value of who he is. That means a lot.”

Remington, a local school board member, said she admires this because of her own struggles after her first husband left her all-but barefoot and pregnant. She landed on public assistance – but not for long.

“It wasn’t much money, but it’s easy to fall into that,” she said. “It comes once a month, and you get everything free, free, free.”

Vance’s story should inspire others in such situations, Remington said. “They can be accountable for themselves and have self-pride. Dignity – that’s a good word. He’s an encourager. He could have been slacking. But he has a brain and he’s using.”

‘A fraud’By contrast, a college professor and registered Democrat called BS on Vance’s entire life history.

“JD is, to put it succinctly, a fraud,” said Erin Shifflet, 50, who taught ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ as an English professor when it first came out. Her theme was the power of rhetorical approaches.

Shifflet said she came to the book with an open mind, long before Vance was a political figure. She had an added interest due to her Somerset upbringing.

“I come from a long line of hillbillies and coal miners. I was hoping it would be impactful for me,” she explained.

Shifflet found herself repelled, instead.

“He manipulated the facts and situation surrounding his upbringing, putting him in a favorable light and exploiting the area where he claims to have grown up,” she said. “He painted the people of Appalachia as poverty stricken, drug addled and backwards. He is using them to elevate himself. He is stepping on their shoulders and calling himself tall.”

Shifflet did concede Vance’s narrative is powerful. Perhaps, it could even persuade some voters in towns like Somerset, where she said interest in the book has heated up since Trump tapped him.

“A lot of local bookstores had requests for it. There are book groups discussing it, and it’s been constantly checked out of the library,” she said. “I do think it’s effective, but it’s a fairy tale. It was good enough to fool (director) Ron Howard, who turned it into a Netflix movie.”

In something of a twist, the age dynamic of the campaign has been turned on its head. After 81-year-old Biden bowed out, it leaves Trump as the oldest candidate at 78.

Both sides agree this increases the scrutiny Vance will receive from voters. But the outcomes of this evaluation are once again split along party lines.

Republicans applauded 40-year-old Vance’s youthful energy, while Democrats found him wanting in gravitas and experience.

“This man could be president. I don’t think he’s capable,” Eppley Newman said. “I don’t think he has the experience he would need. I could be wrong. But just writing a book about poor people doesn’t do that for me. I’m not voting for the vice president. But in this case, I would be looking at the VP because the president is old,” she added, referring to Trump.

Where Democrats see risk, Republicans see a fresh face and a new, articulate voice for modern conservatism.

“When you hear him speak or when he’s interviewed, he’s so fast on his feet,” Witt marveled. “He doesn’t get rattled – always calm, cool, collected. He answers questions, tough questions, from legacy media. He answers tough questions on the fly.”

Added Terri Mitchell, a 50-year-old business manager from Friedens: “I like his zest that he brings. He brings a younger age base to Trump’s side.”

Moreover, she fully embraces Vance’s “hillbilly” brand, adding many others in Somerset will too.

“If they want to call us deplorables and hillbillies, I’ll take that any day,” Mitchell said. “JD is such a fit with Trump. We need blue-collar workers more than we need a Hollywood elite telling us how to vote. We’re a small town. Everybody’s feeling the pinch with this inflation. This is exactly what this country needs. We’re all tired of these career politicians.”