MARK MARONEY/Sun-Gazette City of Williamsport public works department crews install security barriers Monday ahead of the Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance rally on Wednesday. Security will be tight and the perimeter to Liberty Arena will be closed off, as doors open at noon with the rally starting at 3 p.m., former President Donald J. Trump campaign said. City sources said U.S. Secret Service has begun its deployment of security measures throughout the arena and its surrounding locations downtown.

JD Vance’s story is much like those in rural Lycoming County.

The Republican vice presidential nominee and U.S. Senator from Ohio will hold a rally at 3 p.m. Wednesday at Liberty Arena, 315 Hepburn St.

Doors open to the public at noon, according to the campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Security already began to be buttoned up around the arena perimeter on Monday, with installation of water-filled barriers by the city streets and parks department.

The Trump team will need all the votes in this battleground state, which has 19 electoral votes.

In 2020 in Lycoming County, Trump captured 41,455 votes to Joe Biden’s 16,956, according to Lycoming County Voter Services.

Republicans are touting this state for its abundant energy resources and available workforce, small business entrepreneurship and transportation links.

Vance recently scored high marks in his televised debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. Trump, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Walz have made Pennsylvania a second home of late.

GOP loyalists thrilled with opportunity

“As chairman of our Lycoming County Republican Committee, I could not be more pleased with Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate, and with the fact that Senator Vance now plans to visit us in Williamsport this Wednesday,” said Donald Peters, chairman of the county GOP committee.

“This visit to a region that already votes strongly for Republican candidates is a signal to ALL conservative-minded voters in our county and region, regardless of party affiliation, that every vote is critical in this election.

“To be complacent with our vote is to be complicit with the current Democratic regime that is busy destroying our borders, our economy, our law enforcement and the safety and sanctity of our daughters’ sports and locker rooms,” Peters said.

Carol Sides, who has spent 24 years as a state Republican Committee person, said what she saw in the debate Vance had with Walz, impressed her. Sides has had the chance to be greeted personally by Trump and received a voicemail of gratitude from his daughter, Ivanka.

“I was pleased and honored he singled out Williamsport, but not shocked,” Sides said of Vance.

She credited Peters and the whole volunteer team for their strong advocacy with the headquarters for the county at the recently revitalized River Valley Plaza, she said.

Scott Metzger, chairman of the Lycoming County Commissioners, expressed his gratitude to Vance and the team for deciding to hold a rally in Williamsport.

He was hopeful that Vance would focus and highlight the abundance of natural gas and oil energy in Pennsylvania.

Metzger said everything starts with energy, and noted under Trump the nation was energy independent and less reliant on foreign sources of less clean energy. He also said tapping energy resources would be a means of controlling inflation, lowering costs of fuel, costs at the grocery stores and other higher costs that he said grew under the Biden-Harris administration.

Metzger said he hoped Vance would touch on these issues and would be warmly received at the rally.

State Rep. Joe Hamm, R-Hepburn Township, said he appreciated vice presidential nominee and senator JD Vance coming to Lycoming County because “his story is like many who live in and around the county.”

“Sen. Vance grew up in a poor family and was taken care of by his grandmother as his mother suffered from drug addiction,” Hamm said. “Sen. Vance worked hard and put himself through college after serving the U.S. military and then has been a very successful businessman and author. Sen. Vance is a shining example of the American dream, which is only available here in America. So I believe his connection with Lycoming County and rural Pennsylvania is important because his story is much like many of ours.”

Hamm also noted how it was a chance for those who may be uncertain of who they want to vote for to hear directly from Trump’s running mate and a U.S. Senator.

“He has a compelling story to tell and one I believe will connect with the voters here in Lycoming County and the community,” Hamm said.

“As much as Sen. Vance’s opposing Democrat ticket attempts to be relatable as ‘middle class,'” Peters also remarked, “it is Sen. Vance’s turbulent childhood and life path make him more relatable to many work-class Americans,” he said.

“In his 2016 memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ Vance describes how he was able to rise above his circumstances of an impoverished, difficult upbringing with a drug-addicted mother and no father in the home,” Peters said.

“He would later enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps and then go on to graduate from Ohio State University, and eventually, Yale Law School,” Peters said.

To summarize his relatability to the American working class, regardless of race, he would write, “I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty’s the family tradition. Their ancestors were day laborers in the southern slave economy, sharecroppers, after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and mill workers during more recent times.

Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family,” Vance stated.

“And that is a background that many voters in 2024 can relate to, and the type of leader the American working-class has long-awaited to see on a presidential ticket,” Peters said.

In terms of citywide security ahead of the rally, the Williamsport public works department (aka streets and parks) crews spent Monday installing plastic street barriers that will be filled with water and prevent any unwanted vehicles from getting near the arena perimeter. A city source said the Secret Service has been preparing for the rally.

Downtown is expected to become busy as of Wednesday morning, with several detours in place where the barricades are up, a city worker told the Sun-Gazette.