Donald Trump announced Ohio U.S. Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate Monday, January 15, during the first day of the Republican National Convention, capping off months of speculation about who would get the nod as his vice presidential pick.
Vance has not been a member of Congress long, having less than two years of experience as a senator and having voted against major bipartisan bills throughout his tenure in the upper chamber.
Before becoming a U.S. lawmaker, Vance served in the Marine Corps during the Iraq War, worked as a venture capitalist and wrote a best-selling book about growing up in Appalachia, Hillbilly Elegy. He holds a law degree from Yale. “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump, who will be nominated as the 2024 Republican presidential candidate on Thursday night, posted on social media.
“J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond,” Trump added.
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, received the news while he was speaking to reporters at the foundation’s all-day policy fest in downtown Milwaukee.
“You will see a broad smile on my face,” Roberts said, adding that he and Vance are “good friends” and that he “personifies” Heritage’s values.
“He listens. He’s thoughtful. He’s funny. He and I had a similar upbringing, challenging childhood, so we hit it off like that when we met. He’s obviously going to be his own man. He’s got to work with our conservative standard bearer,” Roberts said. “The second thing is in terms of policy, he understands the moment we’re in in this country, which is that we have a limited amount of time to implement great policy on behalf of forgotten Americans.”
Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, has distanced himself from Trump since the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building — requiring Trump to find a different person to join him on the ticket this year.
Pence was in the Capitol when a pro-Trump mob attacked police officers, broke into the building and disrupted Congress’s certification of the electoral college votes for Joe Biden.
Pence has been critical of how the Republican Party has changed under Trump’s leadership, including rejecting how the platform evolved on abortion this year.
The Biden-Harris campaign immediately slammed the selection of Vance.
“Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” said Biden-Harris 2024 Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.
“Over the next three and a half months, we will spend every single day making the case between the two starkly contrasting visions Americans will choose between at the ballot box this November: the Biden-Harris ticket who’s focused on uniting the country, creating opportunity for everyone, and lowering costs; or Trump-Vance — whose harmful agenda will take away Americans’ rights, hurt the middle class, and make life more expensive — all while benefiting the ultra-rich and greedy corporations.”
Vance background
Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio, in August 1984. After graduating from high school in 2003, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, later deploying to the Iraq War.
He attended Ohio State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009. Vance went on to attend Yale Law School, graduating in 2013 before working for the law firm Sidley Austin LLP.
Vance gained national attention with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which tells the story of him growing up in poverty in the Rust Belt. However, the book faced backlash from many historians and journalists over his depictions of Appalachia and the people who live there.
The 39-year-old worked in San Francisco in the tech industry as a venture capitalist. He served as a principal at one of the firms of Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal.
Vance later moved back to Ohio and raised more than $90 million to co-found a venture capital firm in Cincinnati, Narya Capital, which received financial backing from Thiel.
Vance ran his first campaign for U.S. Senate in 2022, defeating Democratic candidate and former U.S. House Representative Tim Ryan with 53 percent of the vote.
Since being sworn into office in January 2023, Vance has voted against several big-ticket legislative items, including the law that raised the debt limit, the national defense policy bill and two must-pass government funding packages.
Aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan
Vance also voted against legislation that held $95 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as a ban on TikTok within the United States unless the social media app’s Chinese parent company sold it.
Vance was among the 18 senators who voted against that emergency spending bill heading to President Joe Biden’s desk. Another 79 senators voted to approve the legislation.
During floor debate on the supplemental spending package, Vance spoke out against sending more aid and arms to Ukraine, arguing that there were parallels between its fight to eject Russia from its borders and the U.S. war in Iraq.
“And the same exact arguments are being applied today, that you are a fan of Vladimir Putin if you don’t like our Ukraine policy, or you are a fan of some terrible tyrannical idea because you think maybe America should be more focused on the border of its own country than on someone else’s,” Vance said.
“This war fever, this inability for us to actually process what is going on in our world to make rational decisions, is the scariest part of this entire debate,” he added.
Bipartisan efforts
Vance has also worked across the aisle on bipartisan legislation during his somewhat brief tenure in the U.S. Senate.
He sponsored a bill alongside Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, Pennsylvania Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman, all three of whom are Democrats, to address rail safety in the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine.
Vance wrote in a statement released when the bill was unveiled in March 2023 that with the legislation, “Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again.”
“We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind,” Vance wrote. “Action to prevent future disasters is critical, but we must never lose sight of the needs of the Ohioans living in East Palestine and surrounding communities.”
The bipartisan legislation has yet to advance in the Senate to either a committee markup or a floor vote.
This story was first published by the Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ashley Murray contributed to this report.
