Carl P. Leubsdorf
Soon after word of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump flashed across the television screens and social media, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance became one of the first top Republicans to cast blame for the horrific event.
“Today is not just some isolated incident,” Vance tweeted on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Though Trump’s campaign later advised supporters to cool such hot rhetoric, Vance showed in that moment the gut-level political instincts that enabled him to overcome his “never Trumper” past and should serve him well as Trump’s vice presidential running mate, especially in an expected television debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
And despite his limited governmental experience — just two years in the Senate — he brings two other main attributes to the GOP ticket: His appeal through the rural Midwest could help Republicans win crucial states, and he provides Trump with an heir apparent who shares his philosophy and could extend the president’s MAGA movement to the future.
At just 39, he is a youthful counterpart to the 78-year-old Trump in his bid to unseat the 81-year-old Democratic incumbent, President Joe Biden, as well as someone who could build on what Trump has started, should the former president regain the White House.
A product of a broken home and a working-class upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, Vance has had a meteoric rise. In the 20 years since graduating from high school, he has been an Iraq combat correspondent in the Marines, graduated from the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, worked for a corporate law firm and three venture capital firms, and wrote a best-selling account of his childhood, “Hillbilly Elegy,” before winning election to the Senate from Ohio in 2022.
He married fellow Yale Law School classmate Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants. She subsequently was a law clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, then a circuit judge.
A crucial aspect of his 2022 race was winning Trump’s support in a multi-candidate primary, a somewhat tricky endeavor in view of Vance’s critical comments about the former president during his 2016 bid for the White House.
“I’m a never Trump guy,” he said then in an interview with Charlie Rose that an opponent used against him 2022. “I never liked him.” And in a message exchange that a law school classmate made public, he said, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Vance has long since conceded his apostasy. “I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance later said about Trump. “I think he was a good president; I think he made a lot of good decisions for people; and I think he took a lot of flak. He’s the best president of my lifetime.”
He persuaded Trump at a 90-minute March 2021 meeting to back him for the Senate in the race to succeed retiring Republican Rob Portman. He was helped by his Silicon Valley connections, especially his relationship with fellow venture capitalist Peter Thiel, a Trump friend who brought him to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and his son Donald Jr. and subsequently gave him $10 million.
Vance defeated Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan by six points, though he ran well behind the state’s GOP governor, Mike DeWine. And he completed his political transformation into becoming an all-out Trump supporter, declaring, “I think the (2020) election was stolen from Trump.”
He has said that if he had been in former Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes in 2021, he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election. “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” he said.
He echoes Trump’s support of higher tariffs against China and cracking down on illegal immigration, says he doesn’t consider climate change a problem, and opposes gun control and abortion rights.
Vance is also one of the leading Senate opponents of U.S. aid for Ukraine. “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” he said in a podcast interview with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
One thing that undoubtedly helped him gain Trump’s support for vice president is the close relationship he has developed with the president’s oldest son, Don Jr. (He is also close to former television commentator Tucker Carlson.)
Asked Monday by CNN why he thought Vance was a good choice, the president’s son praised his political skills. “I’ve seen him on TV,” Trump Jr. said. “I’ve seen him prosecute the case against the Democrats.”
And he said he thought Vance’s “story, his background really helps us in a lot of the places you’re going to need from an Electoral College standpoint.”
Democratic analyst David Axelrod acknowledged on CNN that Vance is a true populist who “speaks the language of the voters” in states Biden needs to win, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. “If he can help them win those states, he can seal the deal,” Axelrod added.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.
