COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — It was March 2022, and Senate candidate J.D. Vance was standing under hot lights in a Cleveland television studio, debating four fellow Republicans over whether the U.S. should support a no-fly zone over Ukraine, less than a month after its crushing war with Russia.
“Absolutely not,” Vance said.
“I’m in the minority here,” the Marine veteran added, “because ultimately we can accept as individuals: Look, it’s tragic, it’s terrible. What Vladimir Putin did was wrong by invading a sovereign country on his border. But we have our own problems in the United States that we need to focus on.”
Vance “put America’s priorities first,” his campaign said — and he had Donald Trump‘s attention.
Within 25 days, the former president had endorsed Vance, helping the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and Yale-educated Silicon Valley venture capitalist defeat a crowded Republican field and ultimately capture Ohio’s open Senate seat.
A relationship was born that has now placed Vance, 39, on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist. Trump has boosted Vance’s career, and Vance has returned the favor by relentlessly defending Trump’s policies and behavior. His debate skills, ability to articulate Trump’s vision and ability to raise money are all potential assets for Vance, say those familiar with the vetting process.
It’s a far cry from where Vance’s relationship with Trump began. His bestseller earned Vance a reputation as a “Trump whisperer” that helped explain the quirky New York businessman’s appeal in America’s middle, but Vance was a never-Trumper in 2016. He called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. Vance, whose wife, attorney Usha Chilukuri Vance, is Indian-American and the mother of their three children, also criticized Trump’s racist rhetoric and said he could be “America’s Hitler.”
After Trump won, Vance returned to his native Ohio establish an anti-opioid charityHe hit the speaking circuit and was a favorite guest at Republican Lincoln Day dinners. His sought-after appearances were less book signings than opportunities to sell his ideas for rebuilding the country—an approach that opponents would see as an all-too-easy grassroots exercise for entering politics in 2021.
Former Ohio Republican Senate President Larry Obhof, a fellow Yale graduate, often shared the stage with Vance at the time. He said Vance’s story, the hardships and heartbreak caused by his mother’s drug addiction, resonated. The opioid epidemic that ravaged Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia when he was growing up killed an average of a dozen Ohioans a day in 2016.
“The issues he’s talking about are issues that many people can identify with,” Obhof said.
Vance’s family left the Middletown home where he grew up, but a fan still lives there. Standing on the porch one recent morning, her six teenagers’ shoes strewn beneath a hammock, 35-year-old Amanda Bailey said she thought “Hillbilly Elegy” was doing well, and that Trump and Vance had “a great team would form.
“I grew up here my whole life; I left, and I came back. I think he did a really good job of portraying Middletown,” she said. “Everything. The struggle, the economic aspect of it, the cultural aspect of it. Just everywhere. I think it was pretty good.”
But not everyone sees the book – later adapted into a Ron Howard-directed film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams – that way. It drew criticism from scholars across Appalachia, many of whom said it trafficked in cheap stereotypes and failed to diagnose the origins of the region’s troubled history or provide workable policy solutions.
Some city officials in Middletown still cringe at the mention of it. They fear that their city will forever be labeled as a deserted backwater, even as investments are made in local production, infrastructure and recreational opportunities.
The Senate office Vance set up in the city sits anonymously behind a locked door.
“So many people from Appalachia were angry about it because he’s not telling his own story. Halfway through the book, he shifts from ‘I’ to ‘we,'” says 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 is monolithic, and not only does he represent it as a single place, but he also portrays it very negatively and blames the victim.”
Vance has acknowledged some criticism. He recently told The New York Times that he distanced himself from “Hillbilly Elegy” so as not to “wake up in 10 years and really hate everything I’ve become.”
Still, it introduced him to the Trump family. Don Jr. loved the book and knew Vance when he was launching his political career. The two hit it off and have remained friends. The Ohioan’s populist rhetoric seemed Trumpian.
When Vance met Trump in 2021, he had already changed his mind and pointed to Trump’s accomplishments as president.
McCarroll said of 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 put himself in a position of power.”
Once elected, Vance became a fierce ally of Trump on Capitol Hill. Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he is now a leading voice for a conservative movement on important issues including a shift away from interventionist foreign policy, free market economics and “American culture writ large.” .
“Given his upbringing, he not only overcame that, but used that to become a great patriot serving in the United States Marines, building a great career in business and now serving in the Senate,” said Roberts.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, said Vance convincingly articulates the America First worldview and could help Trump as a running mate in states that share similar values, demographics and economics as Ohio.
“I often say that J.D. Vance’s superpower is his ability to go into hostile media environments, be calm, cool and collected and say things that are very persuasive without raising his voice,” Kirk said.
Vance’s political views are difficult to categorize.
Democrats call him an extremist, citing provocative positions Vance has taken but sometimes later changed. For example, Vance expressed support for a national 15-week abortion ban during his Senate campaign, but softened that position when Ohio voters overwhelmingly supported a 2023 abortion rights amendment. In the 2020 election, he said he would not have immediately certified the results if he had been vice president and that Trump had “a very legitimate grievance.” He has set conditions for honoring the results of the 2024 election that mirror Trump’s.
“A Trump-Vance ticket would sink the GOP into 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 and Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown co-sponsored a rail safety bill after a fiery train derailment in the Ohio town of East Palestine. He has sponsored legislation that expands and increases funding for Great Lakes restoration, and supports bipartisan legislation that gives workers and families a boost.
Chris Tape, his high school science teacher, remembers Vance as an engaging, fun 17-year-old. Vance never talked about his rough upbringing, Tape said.
When Vance told him he was joining the Marines, Tape expressed surprise and told him he was gifted enough to write his own card. Vance said he loved his country and if he wasn’t willing to serve it, “it’s just talk.”
“So I know at least one thing about him,” Tape said. “He believes in his country, he believes in serving it, and he’s willing to take a harder path to do that.”
