COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — It was March 2022, and Senate candidate JD Vance stood under heated lights in a Cleveland television studio, debating with four Republicans about whether the U.S. should support a no-fly zone over Ukraine, less than a month into the grueling war with Russia.
“No way,” said Vance.
“I’m in the minority up here,” the Marine veteran added, “because at the end of the day, we as individuals can accept that it’s tragic and terrible. It was wrong for Vladimir Putin to attack a sovereign country on its border. But we in the United States have our own problems that we need to focus on.”
Vance had “put America’s priorities above all else,” his campaign team said – and thus caught the attention of Donald Trump.
Within 25 days, the former president endorsed Vance, helping the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and Yale-educated Silicon Valley venture capitalist defeat a enormous Republican field and ultimately win Ohio’s vacant Senate seat.
A relationship was formed that has now put Vance, 39, on Trump’s shortlist for vice president. Trump has boosted Vance’s career, and Vance has returned the favor by relentlessly defending Trump’s policies and behavior. His debating skills, ability to articulate Trump’s vision and fundraising prowess are all potential assets for Vance, say those familiar with the vetting process.
Vance’s relationship with Trump didn’t start there, though. His best-selling book earned him a reputation as a “Trump whisperer” who can explain the unconventional New York businessman’s appeal to middle-class Americans. But in 2016, Vance was a “never Trumper,” calling Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. Vance, whose wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri Vance, is of Indian descent and the mother of their three children, has also criticized Trump’s racist rhetoric, saying he could be “America’s Hitler.”
After Trump’s election victory, Vance returned to his native Ohio and founded an anti-opioid charity, went on a speaking tour, and was a welcome guest at Republican Lincoln Day dinners. His coveted appearances were less book signings than opportunities to sell his ideas for improving the country – an approach his opponents would dismiss as an overly convenient exercise in preparation for entering politics in 2021.
Former Ohio Republican Senate President Larry Obhof, also a Yale graduate, was often on stage with Vance at the time. He said he was touched by Vance’s story, the hardship and heartache he endured because of his mother’s drug addiction. The opioid epidemic that ravaged Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia when he was growing up was killing an average of a dozen Ohioans a day in 2016.
“The struggles he talks about are struggles that many people can identify with,” Obhof said.
Vance’s family has left the Middletown home where he grew up, but he still has a fan there. Standing on the porch one morning, the shoes of her six teenagers scattered under a hammock, Amanda Bailey, 35, said she thought “Hillbilly Elegy” hit the nail on the head and that Trump and Vance “make a great team.”
“I grew up here my whole life, moved away and came back. I think he portrayed Middletown very well,” she said. “Everything. The struggle, the economic aspect, the cultural aspect. Everything. I think it pretty much captured it.”
But not everyone sees the book — later made into a movie by Ron Howard, starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams — that way. It drew criticism from scholars across Appalachia, many of whom said it traded in affordable stereotypes and failed to diagnose the origins of the region’s troubled history or offer workable policy solutions.
Some Middletown city officials still balk at the idea, fearing that their city will be forever labeled a deserted backwater despite investments in local manufacturing, infrastructure and recreational opportunities.
The Senate office set up by Vance in the city is unmarked and located behind a locked door.
“So many people from Appalachia were upset about this because he doesn’t tell 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 anything but monolithic, and not only does he portray it as a single place, but he portrays it in a very negative way 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.”
Nevertheless, it introduced him to the Trump family. Don Jr. was enthusiastic about the book and knew Vance when he started his political career. The two got on well and remained friends. The Ohioan’s populist rhetoric seemed Trumpian.
When Vance met Trump in 2021, he had changed his mind and pointed to Trump’s accomplishments as president.
McCarroll said Vance’s evolution in relation to his book and Trump shows that he is “really willing to do and say what he needs to do and say to get into a position of power.”
After his election, Vance became a forceful ally of Trump on Capitol Hill. Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he is now a leading voice in a conservative movement focused on key issues such as moving away from interventionist foreign policy, free-market economics and “American culture writ large.”
“Because of his upbringing, he not only overcame that, but used it to become a great patriot, serving in the U.S. Marines, building a great career in business and now serving in the Senate,” Roberts said.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, said Vance convincingly expresses the “America First” worldview and, as a vice presidential candidate, could support Trump in states that share Ohio’s values, demographics and economy.
“I often say that JD Vance’s superpower is his ability to remain calm, composed and collected in controversial media environments and to say very compelling things without raising his voice,” Kirk said.
It is arduous to pigeonhole Vance’s political views.
Democrats call him an extremist, pointing to provocative positions that Vance has taken but sometimes later changed. For example, during his Senate run, Vance signaled support for a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, but then softened that stance when Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a 2023 abortion law change. On the 2020 election, he said he would not have immediately certified the results if he had been vice president and that Trump has “a very legitimate complaint.” He has set conditions for recognizing the results of the 2024 election that are similar to Trump’s.
“A Trump-Vance ticket would plunge 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 relies on bipartisanship. He and Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown co-sponsored a railroad safety bill following a earnest train crash in the Ohio village of East Palestine. He sponsored a bill to extend and boost funding for Great Lakes restoration and supported bipartisan legislation to support workers and families.
Chris Tape, his high school physics teacher, remembers Vance as a personable, humorous 17-year-old. Vance never mentioned his scratchy childhood, Tape said.
When Vance told him he was going to join the Marines, Tape expressed surprise and told him he was talented enough to make his own choice. Vance said he loved his country and if he wasn’t willing to serve it, “it’s all just talk.”
“So I know 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 so.”
