JD Vance half-brother survives Cincinnati mayoral primary, reaches general election
Politics runs in this family.
Cory Bowman, the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, secured a top-two finish in Cincinnati's mayoral primary Tuesday night, earning the right to face incumbent Aftab Pureval in the November general election.
Bowman, 36, will need a miracle to defeat Pureval, who received 82.5% of the vote in the three-person race. Bowman finished a distant second with 12.9% of the vote, followed by Brian Frank with nearly 4.6%.
Municipal elections in Cincinnati are officially non-partisan, but Pureval is aligned with the Democratic Party and Bowman with the GOP.
3 River Church Cincinnati pastor Cory Bowman, who is Vice President JD Vance's half brother and Cincinnati mayoral candidate, preaches during Easter worship service in the Hays Porter Elementary School gym Sunday, April 20, 2025, in Cincinnati.
AP
Bowman, 36, runs The River Church in the city's West End with his wife, Jordan, and owns a local coffee shop. He and Frank were the first Republicans to throw their hats into Cincinnati's mayoral race since 2009.
Bowman — the son of Vance's estranged father, Donald Bowman, who died in 2023 — reconnected with his older half-brother when he was a teenager. The elder Bowman put Vance up for adoption when he was in kindergarten, and the future VP was primarily raised by his maternal grandparents — whose last name he eventually took.
'Hey Cincinnati!' Vance wrote on X Tuesday. 'My brother Cory Bowman is running for mayor and is on the ballot today for the primary. He's a good guy with a heart for serving his community. Get out there and vote for him!'
Cincinnati, like most major US cities, is heavily Democratic and went for then-Vice President Kamala Harris by more than three-to-one in the 2024 presidential election.
'You can't get that far as a Trump-Vance Republican in the city of Cincinnati,' David Niven, a professor of politics at the University of Cincinnati, told the New York Times.
3 US Vice President JD Vance speaks during a discussion at the Munich Leaders meeting hosted by the Munich Security Conference at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, May 7, 2025.
AFP via Getty Images
3 Cory Bowman, half-brother of Republican JD Vance, right, hugs Vance during the Republican National Convention, Wednesday, July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee.
AP
Pureval, the son of Indian immigrants, was the first Asian American to be elected mayor of the Queen City in 2021, winning 66.8% of the vote.
Bowman has accused Pureval of failing to make necessary infrastructure repairs, imposing a new zoning plan without sufficient review, and responding inadequately to a major snowstorm in January.
The Republican, who cites his half-brother as an inspiration for his own political ambitions, said he decided to run for mayor after learning that Pureval was likely going to be unopposed in his bid for a second term.
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