MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — Donald Trump announced Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate on Monday, the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Vance, a first-term senator, is relatively new to the political scene. At only 39, he would be the second-youngest vice president to ever assume office if Trump was nominated for another term.
He was previously critical of Trump, wondering if the former president was “America’s Hitler.” However, he began warming to Trump in 2018 and has been a consistent presence on his campaign trail.
Upbringing
The Middletown, Ohio, native rose to prominence after writing his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” reflecting on his time growing up in a working class family in Ohio and being exposed to hardships such as violence and addiction.
“I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember,” Vance wrote in his memoir.
The book reached unexpected success and was made into a Netflix film that documented Vance’s story of overcoming a tough childhood with divorced parents, to attending Yale Law School.
Vance’s name at birth was James Donald Bowman, but as his parents got divorced at a young age, Vance later adopted his grandfather’s name.
After finishing high school in Middletown, Vance enlisted in the US Marines and served as a journalist in the Iraq war. He then attended Ohio State University before going to Yale.
Family
Vance married his former law school classmate Usha Chilukuri Vance in 2014, one year after graduation. The two have three children, Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
His wife is an attorney who clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh before he got on the court.
She was born to Indian immigrants and grew up in San Francisco.
Political Career
He was first elected into office in 2022 as a Senator after defeating Democrat Tim Ryan (53%-47%) after he was endorsed by Trump.
Vance has previously been critical of Trump before changing his tune and fully supporting the former president in 2020.
He wrote an opinion piece in 2016 saying Trump’s policy proposals “range from immoral to absurd” before calling himself a “never-Trump guy” and saying in The Atlantic that Trump is “opioid for the masses.”
Vance was especially critical of Trump in private Facebook messages in 2016.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” he wrote to a colleague at the time in private.
In 2020, Vance apologized to Trump for his previous criticism and came to be a supporter. He deleted his previous critical posts of Trump and met with the then-president about his Senate run.
Notable Stances
Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 after being raised in an evangelical branch of Protestantism.
He has conservative stances on abortion and marriage, believing marriage should be between a man and woman and expressing deep criticism of abortion.
Vance is also expressly against minors receiving puberty blockers to undergo gender transitions. He proposed a bill to block the practice and make it a federal felony.
Like Trump, Vance supports building a wall on the southern border to mitigate illegal migration. He also proposed a bill to make English the official language in the US.
On foreign policy, Vance is a strong opponent of sending aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
He does support America funding Israel in its war against Hamas, and has not said that America should pull out of NATO.