Cory Bowman, JD Vance’s Brother, Prepares for Cincinnati Mayoral Primary

CINCINNATI, Ohio—It’s a Friday morning, and Kings Arms Coffee stirs with conversations among customers.

Cory Bowman stands behind the counter of the neighborhood gathering place in the west end of Cincinnati and grins when a patron asks him about a Spanish beverage called a cortado.

It consists of espresso mixed with an equal amount of warm milk, which reduces the acidity, Bowman explains.

“I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that five years ago. I was a guy who bought his coffee from a gas station until my wife urged me to up my coffee game, and here I am,” Bowman joked.

Coffee was an unfamiliar venture when Bowman opened Kings Arms in 2022.

The 36-year-old father of three entered another unfamiliar arena earlier this year. He is running for mayor of Cincinnati, a city that hasn’t elected a Republican to that post since the 1970s.

Bowman’s mayoral bid is drawing national attention. He is the younger brother of Vice President JD Vance.

On April 25, Bowman told The Epoch Times that he never envisioned a foray into local politics, until he attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration and saw his brother sworn in as vice president.

“When I flew back to Ohio after the inauguration, something clicked that running for mayor could be an avenue to impact lives,” Bowman said. “I have seen the inspiration and the impact that he is making on a national level, and that motivated me to do the same here.”

“I’m not focused on debating policy about Ukraine. I want to talk about fixing the potholes here. What is going on in Washington is not my stage. My focus is Cincinnati,” Bowman added, noting that he has a background in economics, statistics and administration, “so I can see certain areas where city officials can do better.”

Bowman and his wife, Jordan, live in Cincinnati’s College Hill neighborhood. They co-pastor The River Church in the city’s west end, not far from the coffee shop. The couple is expecting their fourth child in June.

Bowman was raised on a farm outside of Hamilton, around 25 miles north of Cincinnati.

“We always considered Cincinnati home and spent a lot of time there going to baseball games and concerts,” he said.

Bowman earned a degree in economics and business administration from Miami University in Oxford, also located in southwest Ohio.

He moved to Tampa to study for the ministry at River University, where he met Jordan, who is from Oklahoma.

“I prayed that the Lord would place it in her heart to love Cincinnati as much as I do. After a visit, she told me this is where she wanted us to raise our family,” Bowman said.

The couple moved to Cincinnati in 2020, after living nine years in Tampa. They launched The River Church Cincinnati in 2020.

JD Vance was born and raised in Middletown, situated between Cincinnati and Dayton in southwest Ohio. He and his wife, Usha, purchased a house in Cincinnati in 2018.

Bowman and Vance share the same father. Vance’s mother is Beverly Aikins; Donald Bowman was her second husband.

In Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” he wrote that his biological father was mostly absent during his childhood.

When Vance was a toddler, Bowman—who died in 2023—walked out on the family. Vance was eventually placed in the care of his maternal grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance, and took their name.

Cory Bowman said that when Vance was 13, he asked to meet Donald Bowman and his younger brother and sister. He spent a few weeks with the Bowman family at their western Ohio farm one summer.

The siblings have since cultivated a strong bond, Bowman told The Epoch Times.

Vance occasionally texts and asks how the mayoral campaign is going, Bowman said, but he does not have a role in the campaign.

“JD is my brother, he’s not a political counselor,” Bowman said. “I don’t speak for my brother because he speaks pretty well for himself. I will say that he’s an incredible role model of mine, and I’m proud of him.”

Bowman said he was also motivated to run for mayor because, at the time, incumbent Democrat mayor Aftab Pureval was unopposed in his reelection bid.

Another Republican candidate, Navy veteran Brian Frank, entered the race around the same time, creating a three-way primary on May 6.

Cincinnati, which is Ohio’s third-largest city with around 310,000 residents, has nonpartisan mayoral races. The top two vote-getters in the primary advance to the November general election.

Ohio has a strong Republican presence.

Trump comfortably won the state three times. Vance was elected senator in 2022, replacing longtime Republican lawmaker Rob Portman. Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno defeated longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. Ohio has a Republican governor, Mike DeWine, and a Republican super-majority in the state legislature.

Yet Democrats control Cincinnati, which has an all-Democratic city council.

Last November, when Trump registered a resounding victory, 77 percent of Cincinnati’s electorate voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ten of the 15 U.S. House members in Ohio are Republicans.

Ohio’s 1st Congressional District, which includes Cincinnati, is represented by Democrat Greg Landsman, who defeated incumbent Republican Steve Chabot in 2022 and Republican challenger Orlando Sonza last November.

Ken Blackwell was the last Republican mayor in Cincinnati, serving from 1978 to 1980. A Republican hasn’t run for mayor in the city since 2009, when Brad Wenstrup lost before eventually becoming a U.S. Representative.

Pureval, 42, is seeking a second term as Cincinnati’s mayor. The Democrat is a lawyer and former special assistant U.S. attorney who served as Hamilton County Clerk of Courts before winning the 2021 mayoral race with around 66 percent of the vote.

Bowman is widely aware of the significant challenges that confront Republicans running for office in Cincinnati. He remains undeterred.

“We have a 100 percent Democrat-controlled council and a mayor that’s simply just echoing all of their views, and those views haven’t worked the last four years, Bowman said. “I truly believe that the people of Cincinnati should have the option to elect another leader.”

Bowman’s platform is centered around reducing gun violence and improving economic development and overall living conditions in neighborhoods like the west end and downtown. Other sections of Cincinnati are not getting the same attention from city government as the downtown area, Bowman believes.

“The conversations I have with people about running for mayor don’t start out with, ‘Are you red or blue, right or left?’ They want to know my ideas and plans to make the city a better place,” Bowman added.

Bowman did not vote in the last mayoral race and has said he has never voted in a Cincinnati election. Pureval has said that the candidate “doesn’t necessarily have a track record or a deep commitment to the city, or relationships in that way.”

When Pureval ran for mayor the first time, the voter turnout was a record-low 24 percent.

About his voting record, Bowman told The Epoch Times that only 26 percent of the voters cast their ballots in the last mayoral election.

“You’re talking about around three-fourths of the voters who just didn’t see a point. Perhaps many of them didn’t feel like they had a choice. This time, they have a choice,” Bowman said.

“Ever since we started our church and started our business in the west end, we’ve had a front row seat to some of the policies that impact our city and its residents and citizens,” Bowman added. “Our purpose is to have a positive impact in the city we love.”

Frank is the second Republican in the mayoral primary. He has said that he is not a MAGA Republican—one that wholeheartedly supports Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda—though he has voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections.

“There are some good things that Trump is doing. But I don’t embrace all of it,” Frank told the Cincinnati Enquirer earlier this year.

While Pureval has criticized Bowman for only living in Cincinnati since 2020, he has chastised Frank for his “Make Cincinnati Great Again” campaign theme.

“Cincinnati is great right now,” Pureval said at a recent debate.

When asked about Bowman, Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Alex Linser told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “That’s the beauty of our system. Anyone can run for mayor. Mayor Pureval has done a great job and anyone can see the city is better run today than before he took office.”

Linser added that Cincinnati voters “have put a lot of trust in Democratic leaders” and “it is a safe, well-run city where you can raise a family.”

“We don’t need the kind of chaos that is coming out of the Trump presidency infiltrating City Hall,” he said.

Bowman would not say if Vance would return to Cincinnati and attend a rally leading up to November’s general election, if he advances past the May 6 primary.

“What I would most like to do is have lunch with him because he’s my brother,” Bowman said. “What I do hope is that the national attention on this election continues because it shows the importance of local politics.”

Bowman believes that “every aspect of local government is valuable because it’s what impacts you directly in your own backyard.”

“It’s good to have opinions on national issues, but what about the streets we are driving on and the crime in our neighborhoods? What about economic development and education in Cincinnati?” Bowman added.

“If we get elected, what we can accomplish could positively set up the city for years to come, and that is the intent of this campaign.”