COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — It was March 2022, and Senate candidate J.D. Vance stood under hot lights in a Cleveland television studio, debating with four Republican colleagues over whether the U.S. should support a no-fly zone over Ukraine, not a month after their oppression. war with Russia.
“Absolutely not,” Vance said.
“I’m in the minority here,” the Navy veteran added, “because at the end of the day, we can accept as individuals, look, it’s tragic, it’s terrible. What Vladimir Putin did was wrong, invading a sovereign country on its border. But we have our own problems in the United States to focus on.”
Vance was “putting America’s priorities above all else,” his campaign said — and he realized donald trumpattention.
Within 25 days, the former president supported Vance, helping the Author of “Elegia Caipira” and Yale-educated Silicon Valley venture capitalist defeat a crowded Republican field and finally win open Ohio Senate seat.
A relationship was born that has now placed Vance, 39, on Trump’s vice presidential list. Trump boosted Vance’s career, and Vance returned the favor by relentlessly defending Trump’s policies and behavior. His debating skills, ability to articulate Trump’s vision and his fundraising prowess are potential assets for Vance, say those familiar with the vetting process.
It’s far from where Vance’s relationship with Trump began. His best-selling book gave Vance a reputation as a “Trump whisperer,” which may help explain the independent New York businessman’s appeal in Central America, but Vance was never a Trumper in 2016. He called Trump “dangerous.” and “inappropriate” for the office. Vance, whose wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri Vance, is Indian-American and the mother of their three children, also criticized Trump’s racist rhetoric, saying he could be “America’s Hitler.”
After Trump won, Vance returned to his native Ohio It is create an anti-opioid charity. He took it to the lecture circuit and was a favorite guest at Republican Lincoln Day dinners. His coveted appearances were not autograph sessions but opportunities to sell his ideas for fixing the country – an approach that opponents would view as too-convenient groundwork exercises for entering politics in 2021.
Former Ohio Senate Republican President Larry Obhof, also a Yale graduate, often shared stages with Vance at the time. He said Vance’s story, the hardship and suffering he suffered because of his mother’s drug addiction, resonated. The opioid epidemic that ravaged Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia when he was a child was killing a dozen Ohioans a day on average in 2016.
“The struggles he’s talking about are struggles that a lot of people could relate to,” Obhof said.
Vance’s family has left the Middletown house where he grew up, but he still has a fan living there. On a recent morning, on her porch, with her six teenage children’s shoes spread out under a hammock, Amanda Bailey, 35, said she thought “Hillbilly Elegy” hit the nail on the head and that Trump and Vance “would make a great team.” .
“I grew up here my whole life; She walked away, came back. I think he portrayed Middletown really well,” she said. “All of it. The fighting, the economic aspect of it, the cultural aspect of it. Just all over it. I think it was pretty spot on.”
But not everyone sees the book – later adapted into a film directed by Ron Howard, starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams – that way. This drew criticism from scholars across Appalachia, many of whom said the country trafficked in cheap stereotypes and failed to diagnose the origins of the region’s troubled history or offer viable policy solutions.
Some city officials in Middletown still shudder at its mention. They fear that their city will forever be considered an abandoned backwater, even as investment goes into local production, infrastructure and recreational opportunities.
The Senate office Vance set up in the city sits unmarked behind a locked door.
“So many people from Appalachia were upset about this, because he’s not telling his own story. Halfway through the book, he switches from ‘I’ to ‘we,'” said Meredith McCarroll, co-author of the 2019 book “Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy.” “Appalachia is a 13-state region that is far from be monolithic, and he not only represents it as a singular place, but he also represents it in a very negative way and blames the victim.”
Vance acknowledged some criticisms. He recently told The New York Times that he distanced himself from “hillbilly elegy” so he wouldn’t “wake up in 10 years and really hate everything I’ve become.”
However, he introduced him to the Trump family. Don Jr. loved the book and met Vance as he began his political career. The two got along well and remained friends. Ohio’s populist rhetoric seemed Trumpian.
By the time Vance met Trump in 2021, he had already changed his mind, citing Trump’s accomplishments as president.
McCarroll said Vance’s evolution in his book and Trump shows that he is “really willing to do and say what he needs to do and say to find himself in a position of power.”
Once elected, Vance became a fierce Trump ally on Capitol Hill. Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he is now a leading voice for a conservative movement, on key issues including a move away from interventionist foreign policy, free market economics and “American culture writ large.” .
“Given his upbringing, he not only overcame that, but he also used it to become a great patriot serving in the U.S. Navy, to build a great career in business and now to serve in the Senate,” Roberts said.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, said Vance convincingly articulates the America First worldview and, as a running mate, could help Trump in states that share Ohio’s values, demographics and economy.
“I often say that JD Vance’s superpower is his ability to walk into adversarial media environments, be calm, cool and collected, and say things that are very persuasive without raising his voice,” Kirk said.
Vance’s politics can be difficult to classify.
Democrats call him an extremist, citing provocative positions that Vance took but sometimes later corrected. Vance signaled support for a national 15-week abortion ban during his tenure in the Senate, for example, he later softened this stance once Ohio voters overwhelmingly supported an abortion rights amendment of 2023. In the 2020 election, he said he would not have certified the results immediately if he were vice president and that Trump had “a very legitimate complaint.” He imposed conditions to honor the 2024 election results that echo from Trump.
“A Trump-Vance ticket would sink the Republican Party to new depths of extremism,” Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
In the Senate, Vance sometimes embraces bipartisanship. He is Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown co-sponsored a rail safety bill after a Burning train derailment in Ohio village in eastern Palestine. He has sponsored legislation that expands and increases funding for Great Lakes restoration and supported bipartisan legislation that boosts workers and families.
Chris Tape, his high school physics teacher, remembers Vance as an engaging and fun-loving 17-year-old. Vance never mentioned his difficult upbringing, Tape said.
When Vance told him he was joining the Marines, Tape expressed surprise — saying he was talented enough to write his own ticket. Vance said he loved his country and if he wasn’t willing to serve it, “it’s all talk.”
“So I know at least one thing about him,” Tape said. “He believes in his country, he believes in serving his country, and he is willing to take a more difficult path directly to do that.”
