JD Vance has had a rough week and some Republicans are making no secret of their frustration.
Despite the momentum after the former president Donald Trump named him as his running mate, the Ohio senator began to receive unwanted attention after old clips surfaced of him calling some Democrats “childless cat ladies” and suggesting that parents should have more political power than non-parents.
Vance’s change of fortunes also clashed with the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has broken fundraising records and is on track to win the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race. And Harris — who would be the first Black and South Asian female president and is campaigning on the unofficial slogan “we’re not going back” — has further sharpened the contrast with the Trump-Vance ticket.
It’s starting to worry — and frustrate — some Republicans. Some, like Arizona Republican operative Chuck Coughlin, admitted Vance has had a “rough week.”
“There’s nothing like a baptism of fire,” Coughlin said.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro bluntly questioned whether Trump should have chosen Vance, saying on his show: “If you had a time machine, and you went back two weeks, you would… [Trump] chose JD Vance again? I doubt it.”
Other Republicans also wondered aloud whether the Trump campaign really anticipated the flood of surfaced comments, book texts and statements that would come if it chose a 39-year-old recently elected senator who had grown up online and was firmly on the right of the Republican Party.
“Of the people who were mentioned as finalists, he was the most at risk because he had never been nationally vetted,” said Bill McCoshen, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin. “Doug Burgum ran for president, he was largely vetted. Marco Rubio ran for president, he was vetted. J.D. Vance was not. So there was a risk in the choice. And we’re going to see over the next 102 days how he holds up under the bright lights of a national campaign.”
A Republican member of the House of Representatives said concerns about the screening were not just coming from experts.
“Find me one publicly elected official in the Senate who is pushing J.D. Vance other than Mike Lee,” said the Republican lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. “I’ll wait.”
Since Harris began her presidential campaign, Democrats have been on the offensive against Vance, and polls suggest those attacks are starting to bite. Vance averages a net favorability rating of -5 percent in all polls, lower than any other vice presidential candidate in history, CNN analyst Harry Enten said this week — a lower mark than former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, perhaps the GOP’s most notorious running mate choice.
Vance’s popularity was 3 percentage points underwater in two polls of the Harris-Trump race released this week by the New York Times/Siena College and NPR/PBS News/Marist College — the latter found that 28 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of Vance, while 31 percent viewed him unfavorably. Forty-one percent were unsure or had never heard of him, the Marist poll found.
The lawmaker accused Donald Trump Jr. of pushing Vance as a way to secure a legacy for the former president. Instead, Republicans are growing increasingly concerned after a week of resurfaced clips in which Vance calls Harris and other Democrats “childless cat ladies” and suggests that parents should have more political power than non-parents.
Harris’ campaign responded to Vance’s comments by releasing a statement titled, “Happy World IVF Day To Everyone Except JD Vance.” Even actress Jennifer Aniston, who has no children, responded: “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to have children of her own one day. I hope she doesn’t have to have IVF as a second option. Because you’re trying to take that away from her too.”
Critics also pointed out that Vance wrote the foreword for a forthcoming book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation who advocates for a “second American revolution” that he hopes will remain “bloodless.” Roberts is the head of Project 2025 — a far-right policy blueprint that Trump has fought to distance himself from.
In a review of the book, Vance wrote: “We all realize now that it is time to line up the wagons and load the muskets. In the battles ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
“I’m a little surprised that they didn’t vet him as thoroughly as they should have, or if they did, they didn’t know that he wrote the foreword for Kevin Roberts’ book,” said one Republican strategist and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “So, you have Trump trashing this Project 2025, and Vance writing the foreword.”
And that’s without even getting into the countless memes suggesting that Vance had intimate relations with a bank in his youth, following a disinformation post on social media. This was made worse by the fact that the Associated Press ran a story with the headline “No, J.D. Vance Did Not Have Sex with a Bank,” then retracted it because the story “did not go through our standard editorial process,” according to AP spokesperson Nicole Meir.
Vance spokesman Luke Schroeder referred POLITICO to reports that Vance’s rallies this week had reached maximum capacity and to news reports about seven-figure fundraising events he hosted.
Vance was chosen during a very different phase of the presidential race — the Biden-Trump contest just a week ago — as a way to mobilize a base already strongly united behind Trump rather than to win over new constituencies, experts said.
“Vance was not a political choice,” said Joshua Novotney, a Republican political strategist in Pennsylvania. “He wasn’t chosen to get an edge in any particular area, he was chosen as someone Trump trusted and wanted to work with.”
Democratic vice presidential candidates have also gone on the offensive against Vance. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear criticized the “Hillbilly Elegy” author as a “fraud,” saying “he’s not from here” and accusing him of writing his memoir to “profit off of our people.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said “people like J.D. Vance don’t know anything about small town America,” adding, “none of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale.” And Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he met a lot of people like Vance at Harvard “who would say whatever they had to say to get ahead.”
Despite Vance’s terrible week, Trump has insisted he has no regrets about his choice of the Ohio senator. On Thursday, he told Fox News that he wouldn’t have made a different choice if he had known Harris would come out on top.
“He’s essentially pro-worker. He’s seen the workers being horribly abused and exploited and he’s pro-worker,” Trump said, citing the message of Vance’s book as one of the main reasons he chose the Ohio senator.
Still, strategists said the fringe aspects of that “Hillbilly Elegy” message make it even harder for Vance to advance Trump on the electoral map.
“He’s Tucker Carlson’s boy now, and that represents a certain segment of the base of the Republican Party,” Coughlin said. “I just don’t see how that plays out to someone who can grow the base, especially when he’s tripping over his own words.”
