(NewsNation) — Vice President JD Vance’s younger half-brother, Cory Bowman, is running for Cincinnati mayor but stresses Vance hasn’t gotten involved, beyond wishing him luck.
“I tell people I don’t speak for JD — he speaks pretty well for himself nowadays,” Bowman told “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” on Thursday. “He’s a great role model for me. He’s an older brother, first and foremost.”
Still, the 36-year-old Bowman credits Vance’s successful 2024 campaign running alongside Republican Donald Trump as being inspirational. The pastor and businessman, who became a Cincinnati resident around 2020, says he’s running on a platform of basic city services, such as filling potholes and snow removal, as well as public safety.
“The crime has not gotten better in our city, and you can ask anybody on the streets and they’ll tell you that,” Bowman said.
He and Vance share a biological father, but the two did not meet until Vance was 13 and Bowman was 9. Since then, they have grown close, he has said.
When told that he sounds like Vance, Bowman joked: “I ask people, ‘Can you imagine what he would do if he had the good looks that I have?’”
Bowman is running against incumbent Mayor Aftab Pureval and procurement professional Brian Frank. The top two vote getters in the primary next month will square off in November’s general election. The mayoral contest is nonpartisan.