Just two years after winning his first run for political office, Ohio Sen. JD Vance is set to become vice president — ushering a new generation into power and offering a potential glimpse at the Republican Party’s future after President-elect Donald Trump’s second term ends.
Vance, 40, was the first millennial on a major party’s presidential ticket and will become the third-youngest vice president in American history.
He is also a former Trump critic whose political evolution, culminating in him becoming the president-elect’s running mate, showcases how Trump has taken over the GOP and reshaped it in his own image.
Raised by his grandparents in southeastern Ohio as his mother battled drug addiction, Vance joined the Marine Corps after high school, and later went on to attend Ohio State University and Yale Law School — where he met his wife, Usha Vance — and become a venture capitalist.
His 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” shot Vance to stardom in a nation seeking to understand the Rust Belt appeal of Trump, who first won the presidency that same year. At the time, as he emerged as a political commentator, Vance was a strident Trump critic.
In private messages, Vance wondered ahead of Trump’s first election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”
He changed his tune later, fully embracing Trump by 2020. After courting Trump in person at Mar-a-Lago and through Fox News appearances, he earned the former president’s endorsement in the late stages of a competitive Republican primary in Ohio’s Senate race in 2022. Vance, in his first run for office, went on to win that race.
In a display of loyalty, Vance was one of several potential running mates and Republican lawmakers to stand by Trump’s side at a New York courthouse during his criminal hush money trial earlier this year.
He’s also made clear that his view of the constitutional limits on a vice president’s role in certifying election results differs from that of former Vice President Mike Pence, who drew the ire of Trump in January 2021, when he opted not to interfere in the process of approving electoral votes for Joe Biden.
In Congress, Vance has been a vocal opponent of foreign aid, opposing legislation to send more aid from the US to Ukraine amid Russia’s war.
He has embraced conservative culture wars, sponsoring legislation targeting gender-affirming care for transgender minors and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But he has also taken populist positions, supporting tariffs, opposing corporate mergers and working with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
How Trump picked Vance
Trump sought to maintain drama in his search for a running mate, delaying his selection until after the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, and on the first day of the Republican National Convention.
The two had met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club the same day Trump was shot in the ear. Then, two days later, Trump called Vance to offer him a spot on the ticket. He announced his pick 20 minutes later on Truth Social.
Ahead of Trump’s selection, the Ohio senator’s supporters, including Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, had argued that Vance had the strongest relationship with Trump of a group of finalists that also included Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and that he would be the most loyal selection, multiple sources familiar with the discussions said.
They made the case that Vance can appeal to working-class voters viewed as essential to winning the key battleground states in November, given his upbringing in a poor Rust Belt town in Ohio. They also pointed to his wife, Usha Vance — the child of Indian immigrants — as being someone who could appeal to minority voters, the sources said.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, on the convention floor, described Trump’s selection of Vance as “a great day for Ohio.”
“He is consistent with Trump’s appeal to working men and women,” DeWine said, adding that he thought it was wise for Trump to pick someone younger. “Also, someone who shares his desire to expand the base of the Republican Party.”
Controversy on the campaign trail
Vance’s selection led opponents to mine years of podcasts and other interviews that he had participated in. And one of them — a 2021 podcast in which he told Fox News that the Democratic Party was led by “childless cat ladies,” including Vice President Kamala Harris — immediately ignited controversy when it was resurfaced.
Democrats pointed to Vance’s comments as evidence of a GOP hostile to women, in a campaign that saw a sizable gender gap, due in part to Trump’s appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade’s national abortion rights protections in 2022.
Vance spent weeks explaining that the remarks were not intended to lambast people who do not have children — particularly those who want to but are unable — but rather as a criticism of the Democratic Party as “anti-family.”
Weeks later, he repeated false social media claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — and defended his decision to do so despite the lack of evidence to support those claims, arguing that he was attempting to draw attention to the issue of immigration.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash in September.