Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, announced that he is running for mayor of Cincinnati.
Bowman, a pastor, coffee shop owner and registered Republican, revealed his candidacy in an interview published Tuesday by The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The last Republican to run for mayor of Cincinnati was Brad Wenstrup in 2009. Wenstrup later successfully ran for a U.S. House seat.
Cincinnati has been run by an all-Democrat, nine-member council since Republican Liz Keating was voted out in 2023.
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Eight people have filed petitions to run for mayor of Cincinnati, the newspaper reported. The deadline to submit the required 500 signatures to be on the ballot is Feb. 20.
None of the petitioners have met that requirement yet, including the current, first-term Mayor Aftab Pureval, a Democrat. Pureval told the newspaper he is running for re-election and has started hosting fundraisers.
As the Trump administration continues its crackdown on criminal illegal immigrants, Pureval notably said Cincinnati would not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, WXIX reported.
The mayoral contest is a non-partisan field race. The two top voter recipients advance to a general election. There is no primary if fewer than three candidates qualify to run.
Bowman said he spoke to Vance in the “initial stages” of considering running for mayor, describing Vance as his inspiration and adding that the two have a friendly sibling rivalry.
“I don’t necessarily speak for my brother because he speaks pretty well for himself. And he’s doing well,” Bowman told The Enquirer. “I will say that he’s an incredible role model of mine.”
Bowman grew up in Butler and Preble counties, and he and his wife moved back to Cincinnati in 2020, when they founded The River Church in the West End neighborhood.
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Having been pastor of a nondenominational Christian church for four years, Bowman told the Enquirer he considered running for local office as a way of giving back, an interest that was further ignited by attending President Donald Trump and Vance’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., last month.
“There’s nobody that cheered louder when he was getting sworn in than me, because he’s my brother,” Bowman said of Vance.
Vance and Bowman share the same father, Donald Bowman, who died in 2023. He was the second husband of Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins.
Donald Bowman put Vance up for adoption when the now vice president was in kindergarten. In his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance describes reconnecting with his father and his half siblings, including Cory, as a teenager.
Vance also describes living with his father at their family farm house in Preble County, contrasting that experience to growing up with his mother, who had battled addiction.
“It was a great childhood,” Cory Bowman told The Enquirer of his life on the farm. “We learned those foundations as kids. But there was always something about the city that enticed me.”
Vance’s mother changed his name from James Donald Bowman to James David Hamel when she remarried. He later took his grandfather’s last name, Vance.
Bowman also owns the Kings Arms Coffee in the West End of Cincinnati. “My heart fell in love with it,” he said of the neighborhood.
He resides in the College Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati.
Vance has not yet weighed in on his half-brother’s campaign announcement.
Bowman attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, when Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate. He said he observed many new Republicans, though he was not one of them.
“Half of those people [who were in attendance] wouldn’t have been caught dead in that room eight years ago,” Bowman said. “It wasn’t just established Republicans, it was more so people wanting a change.”
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