DAVID MARCUS: Why JD Vance's reshoring message is a perfect fit for struggling small towns like St. Cloud
Three weeks ago in Dallas, at the midterm convention, Republicans chose to put Vice President JD Vance in the spotlight, to lead the troops to November. His speech, about the future of the nation, could have been addressed directly to the town of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and its environs.
In those remarks, referring to the future of his own kids, Vance said, "I want, whether they work in tech or manufacturing, American businesses to hire American workers, to rely on American people and to ensure that we build the next generation of great American products with American hands."
You can almost hear those words echoing around the historic downtown of 19th century red brick, and it is a bit of a puzzle, because usually it is fairly obvious whether a city of this size — about 80,000 souls — is ascending or descending. But St. Cloud seems, well, stuck in the middle.
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On the positive side of the civic ledger is the fact that the businesses that are open seem to be thriving. It's not in every minor metro downtown that you see packed restaurants for lunch on a Tuesday. There were also volunteers out painting the planters that line the sidewalk, another very positive sign of civic engagement.
On the downside, almost half of the available commercial space is empty — like a handsome hockey player with some missing teeth — and foot traffic, at least for now, is not heavy enough to support many more retailers.
Rob, now in his 40s, went to college at the nearby university in the early 2000s and told Fox News Digital, "Back then downtown was packed every night, you could barely move, I don’t think it's ever getting back to that."
When I asked how he thought the town was doing, he said, "Better these days, better since COVID, but it's kind of plateaued," and he was not the only person I spoke to who used that particular word.
One that can also be applied to much of the broader nation.
Janice, another long-time resident dating back to the 1990s who works in real estate, set the date of the town’s downturn a bit earlier, with the closing of Herberger's department store — which opened in 1927 and shut down for good in 2018.
"It’s a huge hole, right in the heart of downtown," she said, "and there isn’t anything to fill it."
It was around this time that several factories in the area also closed down. To add insult to injury, in 2019, St. Cloud State University dropped its football program, never a great sign for a college town.
But there are seeds of growth as well, and one of the planters, Chad O’Brien, opened a vintage store downtown in March 2025, just after Trump’s inauguration, and now has two on the same block, as businesses bubble up to life.
"I think that the way the downtown works, the way that it draws people in, our business model and structure and the things that we sell seems like a really good fit," O’Brien told Fox News Digital, though he also said that more people living in the area would certainly help.
Ultimately, this is why Vance’s mission to reshore manufacturing and reward firms that stay in America is such a perfect fit for St. Cloud. Honestly, a handful of businesses, with a few thousand jobs, could easily bring some of the hustle and bustle back.
Perhaps one big plant with 1,500 factory jobs that can fill the single-family homes that semicircle the city, and a big tech firm hiring 300 to 500 younger workers to live downtown in walking distance to the bars and eateries. In a city this small, that's all it takes to make a difference.
The biggest concerns you hear in St. Cloud surround the Somali immigrant community, but this issue is actually two distinct problems — both of which are firmly in the Vice President’s portfolio, the first being the massive fraud scandal.
Even on the ride back to the airport, Lynn, who also works in the beauty industry, told me of a ride she had given recently where an immigrant woman was bragging to her friend that she had just secured government-subsidized housing — but her boyfriend already had it, so they were going to rent hers out for cash.
I could see Lynn’s knuckles whiten on the steering wheel as she said, "It just makes me so mad, I want to help the poor, but this can’t be the way."
Everyone can agree that the fraud is bad, and hopefully, that the efforts spearheaded by Vance to stop it are good.
But, the second part of the Somali issue is trickier and more intractable. It is the cultural component, another strong theme in Vance’s convention speech, and here opinions vary.
Several people I spoke with expressed deep frustration at the seeming unwillingness of Somalis to assimilate, but not everyone. Trey, in his late 20s, is the sales manager at a local phone store who hired a Somali to help with customers of Somali descent.
"He’s worried that their kids are becoming too Americanized and losing their roots," Trey said, adding, "I do see some of that, a lot of the teenagers don’t even speak their language now."
Another gentleman in his 60s, who I met at a fairly high-end lounge told me, "There is no downside to these immigrants, it is all upside and the only reason to be against it is racism." I gently suggested that there are certainly people who think they have non-bigoted objections, but he doubled down, "It’s only racism."
Downtown, though, is the place where the cultural and economic concerns meet, or, in this case, do not meet, because just as is true with the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, the Somalis in St. Cloud are not to be seen downtown — living instead, almost exclusively in their own enclave.
The influx of Somali immigrants has not revitalized downtown because they don’t go there. A few thousand blue and white collared native-born workers absolutely would.
More broadly, the Somali community sends so much of its income back to Somalia, money not being reinvested in St Cloud, that their overall economic contribution has to be questioned.
Just northwest of St. Cloud is Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the real-life inspiration for Sinclair Lewis’ seminal novel Main Street, which over a century ago captured the uniqueness of the American small town — something that still charmed so many foreign World Cup travelers this past summer.
In these towns, like St. Cloud, and there are hundreds, Vance’s message is a perfect fit. His blend of America first and reshoring jobs to small communities truly does resonate, and makes sense.
Just as Vance and his muscular populist message kicked off the midterms for the GOP, in October, it must carry it through. In other words, Mr. Vice President, are you ready for your close-up?