Half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, Cory Bowman, apparently had a flame lit beneath his spirit of patriotism after watching his brother be inaugurated for his current position, because he’s about to launch a campaign to be the mayor of Cincinnati. Bowman, 36, is already a highly active member of his community and church, located in the West End of the city.
He later opened up a coffee shop in the area. At the time, involvement in politics didn’t seem like his calling. Bowman and Vance share a father.
“There was nobody that pushed me into it, nobody that told me that this is a pathway I should go,” he went on to comment in an interview one morning. “But I just thought this would be a great way to help impact the city in another realm as well, because that’s always been the focus.”
“Were he to pull an upset in this predominantly Democratic city, Bowman would be the latest family member of a president or vice president to serve in office. That includes the brother of Mike Pence, Trump’s first vice president, elected to Congress during their previous administration. In this case, however, Bowman says his run isn’t tied to national politics as much as a desire to improve the city,” AP News reported.
“What I want to run as is I’m somebody that deeply loves Cincinnati,” Bowman added. “I do have a background in economics, statistics and administration, and so I can kind of see certain things with the city that we can do better at.”
Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, who is seeking reelection, is viewed as a rising star within the Democratic Party. Pureval, 42, is a lawyer and former special assistant U.S. attorney who previously served as Hamilton County Clerk of Courts and ran for Congress. He won the 2021 mayor’s race in Ohio’s third largest city with nearly 66% of the vote.
Bowman, a Republican like his brother, revealed one of the reasons he decided to run for the office is that it’s the seat that is immediately up for grabs. He also said that Pureval running unopposed didn’t sit well with him. So he decided to do something about it.
Another member of the GOP, Brian Frank, 66, also got intot he mayoral race for the exact same reasons at the same time, which created a three-way primary that will be held next month.
“Cincinnati mayoral races are nonpartisan, so the top two vote-getters on May 6 will face each other in November,” the article explained.
“I think it’s fantastic that I’m not running unopposed,” Pureval said, saying he believes it’s important for Cincinnati voters to have different visions from which to choose.
He was standing outside the ribbon-cutting on a new apartment complex downtown that had just opened inside the former Macy’s headquarters. It’s the type of transformation Pureval cites among his accomplishments, also pointing to the city’s growing population and double-digit drop in violent crime.
Bowman moved to the city of Cincinnati in 2020 and didn’t cast a ballot in the previous mayoral race, which Pureval raised some concerns about, saying, “he doesn’t necessarily have a track record or a deep commitment to the city, or relationships in that way.”
The vice president’s half-brother is a farm boy raised on the outskirts of Hamilton, which is located 26 miles north of Cincinnati. Addressing Pureval’s concerns, Bowman said that he and his family “always considered Cincinnati our home, this area our home, this (Ohio River) valley.”
Cory Bowman attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he earned a degree in economics and business administration, then returned to Florida to study the ministry at River University in Tampa. It was there that he met his wife, who’s from Oklahoma, and “convinced her to love Cincinnati as much as me.”
They moved back and started The River Church Cincinnati, where they are co-pastors, then opened Kings Arms Coffee two years later. Vance, who was born in Middletown, Ohio, had moved back to the state a little earlier. He and his wife, Usha, bought their house in Cincinnati in 2018. According to Vance’s best-selling memoir, “ Hillbilly Elegy,” Donald Bowman’s other children were more or less strangers to him when he was a child. Vance’s biological father had given him up for adoption and his mother even changed his name to erase any memory of the man from their lives.
Bowman went on to say that Vance fixed that situation. When he was in his early teens, Vance asked to meet his dad and younger siblings. Cory recounted with fondness the visit they had from the future vice president, which included the two of them playing basketball.
He revealed that since that first meeting, the two have created a strong bond. They both went to college in Ohio at roughly the same time and ended up getting married and having children in tandem as well. Both of the men have three kids, two boys and a girl.
However, Vance is not going to be taking an active role in his brother’s campaign.
“As far as the relationship with JD, I tell people he’s my brother, he’s not a political counselor to me,” Bowman explained. “He is not somebody who planted me here in this city.”
At campaign events and debates, Bowman opposed Cincinnati’s sanctuary city status, promised to keep children safe and pledged to improve snow removal and fill potholes.
Cincinnati is a pretty bad city and is in desperate need of someone who has good, moral values to help put it on the right path. Is that person Cory Bowman? Maybe. He definitely won’t do worse than Pureval, that’s for sure. Let’s hope he wins the seat and makes some positive changes.
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