Vance goes West as his VP campaign looks to find its footing

LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump’s big bet on Sen. JD Vance faces a big test in the West this week, beginning Tuesday afternoon nearly 15 miles from the Las Vegas Strip.

Vance, the Ohio Republican who has endured a bumpy rollout as Trump’s running mate, will start the campaign swing with a speech at a high school in Henderson.

From there, Vance will head to an event in Reno and then on to California on Wednesday for a fundraising luncheon near Fresno. Later that day, Vance will rally at Arizona Christian University near Phoenix. Other stops could be added to the already-packed schedule.

For Vance, it’s a chance to quickly move beyond a debut that was engulfed by fresh scrutiny last week over his past provocative comments, including his thoughts on the societal value of women who do not have children — “childless cat ladies” in his words.

Those and other old remarks, many of which a wide national audience is learning about for the first time, served as a rough introduction that Vice President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, has been eager to exploit. Harris and her allies are rushing to define Vance as “weird” before the Trump team can define him on its own terms. Some of Vance’s fellow Republicans and leaders on the party’s right flank have voiced concern.

“Typically, after the convention, your vice presidential pick is crisscrossing the nation, introducing himself ... and trying to win over swing voters,” Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former Trump State Department appointee, told NBC News. “Right now, JD Vance is trying to clean up his mess and win over the Republican Party. It’s a very odd dynamic.

“I think that’s the challenge right now — to reassure the Republican Party that he was the