JD Vance | |
---|---|
United States Senator from Ohio | |
Assumed office January 3, 2023 Serving with
Sherrod Brown | |
Preceded by | Rob Portman |
Personal details | |
Born | James Donald Bowman
[a] August 2, 1984 Middletown, Ohio, US |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse | |
Children | 3 |
Education | |
Occupation |
|
Signature | |
Website | Senate website |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch/service | United States Marine Corps |
Years of service | 2003–2007 |
Rank | Corporal |
Unit | 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing |
Battles/wars | Iraq War |
Awards | |
James David Vance [a] [b] (born August 2, 1984) is an American politician, author, and Marine veteran who has served as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he is its nominee for vice president in the 2024 United States presidential election.
After graduating from Middletown High School, Vance joined the US Marine Corps, where he served from 2003 to 2007 as a combat correspondent, with six months in Iraq. He then attended Ohio State University, graduating in 2009. Vance graduated from Yale Law School in 2013. His 2016 bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy received considerable press attention during that year's election and was adapted into a feature film in 2020.
Vance won the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio, defeating Democratic nominee Tim Ryan. Initially opposed to Donald Trump's candidacy in the 2016 election, Vance has become a strong Trump supporter since Trump's presidency. In July 2024, Trump nominated Vance as his running mate at the Republican National Convention. He is the first Marine veteran to be nominated for vice president.
On social issues, Vance has promoted strongly conservative policies, opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and gun control, and has proposed banning transgender healthcare for minors. He differs from mainstream Republican views on market interventions, taxes, the minimum wage, unionization, tariffs, and antitrust policy, [4] [5] [6] [7] while opposing American military aid to Ukraine.
James Donald Bowman was born on August 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio, to Beverly Carol ( née Vance; born 1961) and Donald Ray Bowman (1959–2023). He is of Scots-Irish descent. [8] [9] His parents divorced when he was a toddler. After Bowman was adopted by his mother's third husband, Bob Hamel, his mother changed his name to James David Hamel to remove his father's name but used the name of one of her brothers to preserve his nickname, JD. [10] [11]
Vance has written that his childhood was marked by poverty and abuse, and that his mother struggled with drug addiction. [12] Vance and his sister Lindsey were raised primarily by his maternal grandparents, James (1929–1997) and Bonnie Vance (née Blanton; 1933–2005), whom they called "Papaw" and "Mamaw". His grandparents on both sides moved to Ohio from Kentucky's Appalachia. [8] [13] [14] [15] [16]
After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, [17] Vance enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served in Iraq as a combat correspondent for six months in late 2005. [18] He was part of the Public Affairs section of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing [19] [20] and said that his service "taught me how to live like an adult" and that he was "lucky to escape any real fighting". [21] His decorations included the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. [18]
Using the G.I. Bill, [22] Vance attended Ohio State University and graduated summa cum laude in August 2009 [23] with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and philosophy. [24] During his first year in college, he worked for Republican state senator Bob Schuler. [25]
After graduating from Ohio State, Vance attended Yale Law School, beginning in the fall of 2010, on a nearly full-ride scholarship for his first year. [26] He became close friends during Yale's orientation with Jamil Jivani, a future Conservative member of Canadian parliament. [27] During his first year, Professor Amy Chua, author of the 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, persuaded him to begin writing his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. [28]
Vance was an editor of The Yale Law Journal [29] and graduated in 2013 with a Juris Doctor degree. [26] In 2010 and 2011, he wrote for David Frum's "FrumForum" website under the name J. D. Hamel. [30] [31] Although Hillbilly Elegy implies that Vance adopted his grandparents' surname of Vance upon his marriage in 2014, [32] the name change actually occurred in April 2013, as he was about to graduate from Yale. [1]
After graduating from law school, Vance worked for Republican Senator John Cornyn. He spent a year as a law clerk for Judge David Bunning of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, [33] then worked at the law firm Sidley Austin. [34] Having practiced law for slightly under two years, Vance moved to San Francisco to work in the technology industry as a venture capitalist. [26] [35] [36][ unreliable source] Between 2016 and 2017, he served as a principal at Peter Thiel's firm, Mithril Capital. [37] [38]
In June 2016, Harper published Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2016 and 2017. The New York Times called it "one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win". [39]
The Washington Post called Vance the "voice of the Rust Belt", [40] while The New Republic criticized him as "liberal media's favorite white trash–splainer" and the "false prophet of blue America." [41] Economist William Easterly, a West Virginia native, criticized the book, writing: "Sloppy analysis of collections of people—coastal elites, flyover America, Muslims, immigrants, people without college degrees, you name it—has become routine. And it's killing our politics." [42]
Vance was a CNN contributor in early 2017. [43] [44] In April 2017, Ron Howard signed on to direct the film version of Hillbilly Elegy, which was released in select theaters on November 11, 2020. It was released on Netflix for streaming. [45]
In December 2016, Vance said he planned to move to Ohio and would consider starting a nonprofit or running for office. [46] [40] In Ohio, he started Our Ohio Renewal, a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization focused on education, addiction, and other "social ills" he had mentioned in his memoir. [47] According to a 2017 archived capture of the nonprofit's website, the members of the advisory board were Keith Humphreys, Jamil Jivani, Yuval Levin, and Sally Satel. [48] According to a 2020 capture of the website, those four remained in those positions throughout the organization's existence. [49] Our Ohio Renewal closed after less than two years with sparse achievements. [47] [50] [51] According to Jivani, the organization's director of law and policy, its work was derailed by his own cancer diagnosis. [52] [53]
During Vance's 2022 campaign for US Senate, Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, said the charity was a front for Vance's political ambitions. Ryan pointed to reports that the organization paid a Vance political adviser and conducted public opinion polling, while its efforts to address addiction failed. Vance denied the characterization. [54] [55] [c] A 2021 report by Business Insider revealed that Our Ohio Renewal's tax filings showed that in its first year, it spent more on "management services" provided by its executive director Jai Chabria, who also served as Vance's top political adviser, than it did on programs to fight opioid abuse. [59]
According to the Associated Press (AP), the charity's biggest accomplishment, sending psychiatrist Sally Satel to Ohio's Appalachian region for a yearlong residency in 2018, was tainted by the ties among Satel, her employer, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Purdue Pharma, in the form of knowledge exchange between Satel and Purdue and financial support from Purdue to AEI, as found by a ProPublica 2019 investigation. In an email to AP, Satel denied having any relationship with Purdue or any knowledge of Purdue's donations to AEI. [60] [61]
In 2017, Vance joined the investment firm Revolution LLC. [62] It was founded by Steve Case, who also cofounded AOL. [62] Vance was tasked with expanding the "Rise of the Rest" initiative, which focuses on growing investments in underserved regions outside Silicon Valley and New York City. [62] In 2019, Vance co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati with financial backing from Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen. [63] In 2020, he raised $93 million for the firm. [64] With Thiel and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton, Vance has invested in Rumble, a Canadian online video platform popular with the political right. [65] [66]
In early 2018, Vance considered running for the US Senate against Sherrod Brown, [67] but did not. [68] In March 2021, Peter Thiel gave $10 million to Protect Ohio Values, a super PAC created in February to support a potential Vance candidacy. [69] [70] [71] Robert Mercer also gave an undisclosed amount. [69] In April, Vance expressed interest in running for the Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman. [72] In May, he launched an exploratory committee. [73] Vance is an ally of Republican fundraiser Nate Morris, who has also financially supported Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. [74]
Vance officially entered the race on July 1, 2021. It was his first campaign for public office. [75] [76] On May 3, 2022, he won the Republican primary with 32% of the vote, [77] defeating multiple candidates, including Josh Mandel (23%) and Matt Dolan (22%). [78] On November 8, in the general election, Vance defeated Democratic nominee Tim Ryan with 53% of the vote to Ryan's 47%. [79] This vote share was considered a vast underperformance compared to other Ohio Republicans, especially in the coinciding gubernatorial election. [80]
While Vance had often previously spelled his name with periods after the initials of his given names ("J.D.") – including in the publication of Hillbilly Elegy – he dropped this styling after becoming a candidate for office by removing the periods ("JD"). [81]
On January 3, 2023, Vance was sworn in to the Senate as a member of the 118th United States Congress, the first US senator from Ohio without previous political experience since John Glenn, who took office in 1974.
Vance's Senate work has included:
Vance has also voted against raising the debt ceiling, standing against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. [85]
Vance was criticized for his delayed response to the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. [86] [87] [88] His office released an official statement on February 13, 2023, ten days after the derailment, though Vance had sent a message on social media about the derailment the day after it occurred. [89] [90] [91]
On February 26, 2023, Vance wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting the provision of PPP style funds to those affected by the derailment, which some Republican senators criticized. [92] [93] On March 1, 2023, Vance, Brown, and Senators John Fetterman, Bob Casey, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio proposed bipartisan legislation to prevent derailments like the one in East Palestine. [94] [95] [96]
On January 31, 2023, Vance endorsed former President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. [97] On July 15, 2024, the first day of the Republican National Convention, Trump announced that he had chosen Vance as his running mate in a post on Truth Social. [98] On July 17, the third day of the convention, Vance accepted the nomination to be Trump's running mate. [99] He is the first Marine veteran on a presidential ticket. [100] [101]
Trump's two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, advocated for their father to choose Vance. Several media and industry figures are said to have lobbied for Vance to be on the presidential ticket, including Elon Musk, David O. Sacks, and Tucker Carlson. [102] The Heritage Foundation, which drafted Project 2025, privately advocated for Vance to be Trump's vice-presidential pick. [103] Musk responded to Trump's vice-presidential pick hours after its announcement, saying the ticket "resounds with victory". David Sacks, a prominent GOP donor and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, wrote on Twitter: "This is who I want by Trump's side: an American patriot." In 2022, Sacks gave Vance's Senate campaign $900,000, and Peter Thiel added $15 million. While it was initially reported that Elon Musk would contribute $45 million monthly, [104] Musk later said he planned to donate "much lower amounts". [105] [106]
Media commentators noted that Vance could strengthen the Republican ticket in the Midwest. David A. Graham of The Atlantic wrote that Vance "brings youth and intellect to the Republican ticket". [107] Catherine Lucey and John McCormick of The Wall Street Journal wrote that Vance "offers Trump a natural successor to his MAGA movement" due to his populist stances. [108] As such, he is seen as a candidate who could increase voter turnout among the former president's loyal voting base. [109]
AP reported that Vance could help deliver new funding streams to Trump's campaign, particularly those connected to the tech industry. [110] On May 15, 2024, Trump attended a $50,000 per head private fundraising dinner with Vance in Cincinnati. [111] Guests included Chris Bortz and Republican fundraiser Nate Morris. [112] Vance appeared at significant conservative political events and was described as a potential running mate for Trump in June 2024. [113] [114] In July 2024, a former friend of Vance's from Yale Law School exposed to the media communications between them and Vance from 2014 to 2017, with the friend alleging that Vance has "changed [his] opinion on literally every imaginable issue that affects everyday Americans", in a pursuit for "political power and wealth". [115] [116]
When President Joe Biden stepped down as a presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris became a presidential candidate, Vance in July 2024 said at a private fundraiser that the "bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden … Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did"; while a day later Vance told the media: "I don’t think the political calculus changes at all" whether Harris or Biden was the rival presidential candidate. [117]
Shortly after being named Trump's running mate, Vance was condemned for saying in a 2021 Fox News interview, "we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too." [118] The resurfaced comments sparked immediate backlash across news and social media, infuriating Taylor Swift’s fanbase [119] and prompting Jennifer Anniston, who has been public with her fertility struggles, to slam Vance in an Instagram story, writing “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” [120] Once the comments went viral, MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski mocked Vance by appearing on her show petting a cat who was sitting on her lap asking “My kids are older. Does that make me childless? I want to qualify.” [121] On July 26, 2024, Vance clarified his remarks on The Megyn Kelly Show, saying, "It’s not a criticism of people who don't have children" and adding, "this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child". [122] Vance received further condemnation for additional resurfaced comments about childless people, including a 2020 podcast interview where he claimed that being childless "makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable,” [123] and a March 2021 interview on The Charlie Kirk Show, when he suggested that people without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children, adding that the US should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad". [124]
Within the first two weeks after his selection as Trump's running mate, an unfounded story that Vance had masturbated using a latex glove that he had sandwiched between couch cushions became widespread on the internet. An evident internet hoax, it appears to have originated in a July 15 post on Twitter making the false claim that Hillbilly Elegy contained an explicit description of this. While unfounded, the claim became widespread enough that the Associated Press published a fact check on July 24 to debunk it. The outlet removed this fact check from its website the next day as it had not gone through its "standard editing process". [125]
On The Daily Show, Ronny Chieng mocked JD Vance's sexist remarks about "childless cat ladies" after the comments resurfaced when Trump named Vance as his running mate. Chieng highlighted the absurdity of Vance's logic and referenced backlash from public figures like Jennifer Aniston. [126]
The week after the Republican convention, opinion polls showed Vance with a −6 net approval, vastly below the average of +19 that major-party vice-presidential nominees since 2000 have averaged in post-convention opinion polls. [80] The week after the convention, Vance's middling public reception and other concerns resulted in some prominent Republican politicians and political scientists saying that Vance may have been a poor choice of running mate, especially in light of the election's dynamics shifting upon the withdrawal of President Biden from the election and advent of Kamala Harris as the likely Democratic nominee. [127]
During his time in the Senate, JD Vance has been described as national conservative, [128] [129] right-wing populist, [128] [130] and an ideological successor to paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan. [131] [132] Vance describes himself, and has been described by others, as a member of the postliberal right. [133] [134] [135] [136] [137] [138] He is known for his ties to Silicon Valley. [139]
On social issues, Vance is considered conservative. [140] He opposes abortion, [141] [142] same-sex marriage, [140] and gun control. [143] He has linked childlessness with sociopathy, and further advocated that parents have more voting power than non-parents. [144] [145] Vance has lamented that increased divorces adversely affect children of divorced parents. [146] He has proposed federal criminalization of gender transition care for minors [147] and said he wants to ban pornography. [148] He opposes continued American military aid to Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion. [149] [150] [151]
Vance was an outspoken critic of Donald Trump in 2016, describing himself as a " never Trump guy" and Trump as "reprehensible" and "America's Hitler". [152] In 2021, after Vance announced his Senate candidacy, he publicly announced support for Trump, apologizing for his past criticisms of Trump and deleting some of them. [153] [154] That year, Vance advised Trump to fire "every civil servant" to replace them with "our people". [155] Vance has said that if he were vice president during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, he would have deviated from certifying the election results, and instead would insist that some states that Trump lost should send pro-Trump electors so that Congress could decide the election. [156]Vance wrote in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that he was raised in a low-income family by his single mother and grandmother [157] and his family had a difficult life in his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents had moved from Kentucky. As a child, he longed for "the American dream, with a happy family at its core", and admired Bill Clinton for his similar background, noting that Clinton had been "a poor boy with a vaguely Southern accent, raised by a single mother, with a heavy dose of loving grandparents." [158]
Around 2011, [159] Vance met his wife, Usha Chilukuri, while both were students at Yale Law School. [160] He has called her "my Yale spirit guide". [160] In 2014, they married in Kentucky, in an interfaith marriage ceremony, [161] [162] as she is Hindu and he Christian. [161] [163] Their wedding included a Bible reading by Vance's "best friend", Jamil Jivani, [52] [164] and the bride and groom were blessed by a Hindu pandit. [160] [159] The couple have three children.
After graduating from Yale, Vance and his wife moved to San Francisco, where he worked with a venture capital firm for a few years and she joined a law practice. [165] In 2017, after the success of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote in The New York Times that, as someone who had yearned for the American dream as a child, he found hope in Barack Obama's personal story, which showed that domestic hardships need not defeat us; Vance also saw similarities in terms of his own early personal accomplishments: "a prestigious law degree, a strong professional career, and a modicum of fame as a writer", though he noted his political disagreements with Obama. [158]
Vance was raised in a "conservative, evangelical" branch of Protestantism. By September 2016, he was "not an active participant" in any particular Christian denomination, but was "thinking very seriously about converting to Catholicism". [166] In August 2019, Vance was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church in a ceremony at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio. He chose Augustine of Hippo as his confirmation saint. Vance said he converted because he "became persuaded over time that Catholicism was true [...] and Augustine gave me a way to understand Christian faith in a strongly intellectual way", further describing Catholic theology's influence on his political views. [167]
In an interview with First Things, Vance said: "The core Christian insight into politics is that life is inherently dignified and valuable [...] If you actually believe that, you want certain legal protections for the most vulnerable people in your society, but you also want to ensure that workers get a fair wage when they do a fair job. You want to make sure that people don't have their town poisoned because they happen to live next to a railway line", referring to the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. [168]
Vance intends to be buried in a "cemetery plot on a mountainside in eastern Kentucky" where multiple generations of his family have been laid to rest. [169]
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | JD Vance | 344,736 | 32.22% | |
Republican | Josh Mandel | 255,854 | 23.92% | |
Republican | Matt Dolan | 249,239 | 23.30% | |
Republican | Mike Gibbons | 124,653 | 11.65% | |
Republican | Jane Timken | 62,779 | 5.87% | |
Republican | Mark Pukita | 22,692 | 2.12% | |
Republican | Neil Patel | 9,873 | 0.92% | |
Total votes | 1,069,826 | 100.0% |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | JD Vance | 2,192,114 | 53.04% | N/A | |
Democratic | Tim Ryan | 1,939,489 | 46.92% | N/A | |
Write-in | 1,739 | 0.04% | N/A | ||
Total votes | 4,133,342 | 100.0% | N/A | ||
Republican hold |
I got a third job (as an SAT tutor at the Princeton Review), which paid an incredible eighteen dollars an hour. Three jobs were too much, so I dropped the job I loved the most – my work at the Ohio senate – because it paid the least.
Over the next three years, Yale dramatically influenced the trajectory of his life, leading to important connections, a job in venture capital and marriage to a classmate...
Even his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," was partly the outgrowth of a paper he wrote in a Yale class. A close look at Mr. Vance's record at Yale, though, shows that he adapted rapidly, taking advantage of the school's heady social and academic opportunities. He cooked for charity fund-raisers, organized reading groups, doted on his German shepherd, Casper, and led The Yale Law Journal's flag football team...
Mr. Thiel would become a major supporter of both Mr. Vance's venture capital firm and his Senate campaign.
Paid For By The Ohio Democratic Party
Purdue's hidden relationships with Satel and AEI illustrate how the company and its public relations consultants aggressively countered criticism that its prized painkiller helped cause the opioid epidemic.
{{
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)Vance says he is 'plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures'. He draws from a whole new political lexicon, one that would seem baffling to his more starched colleagues in the Congress.
But its support for this agenda – grouped for simplicity's sake under the heading of 'national conservatism' – is grounded in more obscure intellectual sources: Catholic-inflected 'post-liberalism,' conservative populism and localism, and various strands of neo-reactionary thought that flourish online.
On X, he follows niche but popular anonymous posters such as Bronze Age Pervert, Raw Egg Nationalist, and Lomez...
He's against same-sex marriage and said he would not support federal legislation to codify marriage equality...
Major Republican donors opposed Vance because they viewed his inclination toward economic populism as hostile to their model of small-government, free-market conservatism.
JD Vance | |
---|---|
United States Senator from Ohio | |
Assumed office January 3, 2023 Serving with
Sherrod Brown | |
Preceded by | Rob Portman |
Personal details | |
Born | James Donald Bowman
[a] August 2, 1984 Middletown, Ohio, US |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse | |
Children | 3 |
Education | |
Occupation |
|
Signature | |
Website | Senate website |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch/service | United States Marine Corps |
Years of service | 2003–2007 |
Rank | Corporal |
Unit | 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing |
Battles/wars | Iraq War |
Awards | |
James David Vance [a] [b] (born August 2, 1984) is an American politician, author, and Marine veteran who has served as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he is its nominee for vice president in the 2024 United States presidential election.
After graduating from Middletown High School, Vance joined the US Marine Corps, where he served from 2003 to 2007 as a combat correspondent, with six months in Iraq. He then attended Ohio State University, graduating in 2009. Vance graduated from Yale Law School in 2013. His 2016 bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy received considerable press attention during that year's election and was adapted into a feature film in 2020.
Vance won the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio, defeating Democratic nominee Tim Ryan. Initially opposed to Donald Trump's candidacy in the 2016 election, Vance has become a strong Trump supporter since Trump's presidency. In July 2024, Trump nominated Vance as his running mate at the Republican National Convention. He is the first Marine veteran to be nominated for vice president.
On social issues, Vance has promoted strongly conservative policies, opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and gun control, and has proposed banning transgender healthcare for minors. He differs from mainstream Republican views on market interventions, taxes, the minimum wage, unionization, tariffs, and antitrust policy, [4] [5] [6] [7] while opposing American military aid to Ukraine.
James Donald Bowman was born on August 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio, to Beverly Carol ( née Vance; born 1961) and Donald Ray Bowman (1959–2023). He is of Scots-Irish descent. [8] [9] His parents divorced when he was a toddler. After Bowman was adopted by his mother's third husband, Bob Hamel, his mother changed his name to James David Hamel to remove his father's name but used the name of one of her brothers to preserve his nickname, JD. [10] [11]
Vance has written that his childhood was marked by poverty and abuse, and that his mother struggled with drug addiction. [12] Vance and his sister Lindsey were raised primarily by his maternal grandparents, James (1929–1997) and Bonnie Vance (née Blanton; 1933–2005), whom they called "Papaw" and "Mamaw". His grandparents on both sides moved to Ohio from Kentucky's Appalachia. [8] [13] [14] [15] [16]
After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, [17] Vance enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served in Iraq as a combat correspondent for six months in late 2005. [18] He was part of the Public Affairs section of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing [19] [20] and said that his service "taught me how to live like an adult" and that he was "lucky to escape any real fighting". [21] His decorations included the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. [18]
Using the G.I. Bill, [22] Vance attended Ohio State University and graduated summa cum laude in August 2009 [23] with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and philosophy. [24] During his first year in college, he worked for Republican state senator Bob Schuler. [25]
After graduating from Ohio State, Vance attended Yale Law School, beginning in the fall of 2010, on a nearly full-ride scholarship for his first year. [26] He became close friends during Yale's orientation with Jamil Jivani, a future Conservative member of Canadian parliament. [27] During his first year, Professor Amy Chua, author of the 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, persuaded him to begin writing his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. [28]
Vance was an editor of The Yale Law Journal [29] and graduated in 2013 with a Juris Doctor degree. [26] In 2010 and 2011, he wrote for David Frum's "FrumForum" website under the name J. D. Hamel. [30] [31] Although Hillbilly Elegy implies that Vance adopted his grandparents' surname of Vance upon his marriage in 2014, [32] the name change actually occurred in April 2013, as he was about to graduate from Yale. [1]
After graduating from law school, Vance worked for Republican Senator John Cornyn. He spent a year as a law clerk for Judge David Bunning of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, [33] then worked at the law firm Sidley Austin. [34] Having practiced law for slightly under two years, Vance moved to San Francisco to work in the technology industry as a venture capitalist. [26] [35] [36][ unreliable source] Between 2016 and 2017, he served as a principal at Peter Thiel's firm, Mithril Capital. [37] [38]
In June 2016, Harper published Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2016 and 2017. The New York Times called it "one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win". [39]
The Washington Post called Vance the "voice of the Rust Belt", [40] while The New Republic criticized him as "liberal media's favorite white trash–splainer" and the "false prophet of blue America." [41] Economist William Easterly, a West Virginia native, criticized the book, writing: "Sloppy analysis of collections of people—coastal elites, flyover America, Muslims, immigrants, people without college degrees, you name it—has become routine. And it's killing our politics." [42]
Vance was a CNN contributor in early 2017. [43] [44] In April 2017, Ron Howard signed on to direct the film version of Hillbilly Elegy, which was released in select theaters on November 11, 2020. It was released on Netflix for streaming. [45]
In December 2016, Vance said he planned to move to Ohio and would consider starting a nonprofit or running for office. [46] [40] In Ohio, he started Our Ohio Renewal, a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization focused on education, addiction, and other "social ills" he had mentioned in his memoir. [47] According to a 2017 archived capture of the nonprofit's website, the members of the advisory board were Keith Humphreys, Jamil Jivani, Yuval Levin, and Sally Satel. [48] According to a 2020 capture of the website, those four remained in those positions throughout the organization's existence. [49] Our Ohio Renewal closed after less than two years with sparse achievements. [47] [50] [51] According to Jivani, the organization's director of law and policy, its work was derailed by his own cancer diagnosis. [52] [53]
During Vance's 2022 campaign for US Senate, Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, said the charity was a front for Vance's political ambitions. Ryan pointed to reports that the organization paid a Vance political adviser and conducted public opinion polling, while its efforts to address addiction failed. Vance denied the characterization. [54] [55] [c] A 2021 report by Business Insider revealed that Our Ohio Renewal's tax filings showed that in its first year, it spent more on "management services" provided by its executive director Jai Chabria, who also served as Vance's top political adviser, than it did on programs to fight opioid abuse. [59]
According to the Associated Press (AP), the charity's biggest accomplishment, sending psychiatrist Sally Satel to Ohio's Appalachian region for a yearlong residency in 2018, was tainted by the ties among Satel, her employer, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Purdue Pharma, in the form of knowledge exchange between Satel and Purdue and financial support from Purdue to AEI, as found by a ProPublica 2019 investigation. In an email to AP, Satel denied having any relationship with Purdue or any knowledge of Purdue's donations to AEI. [60] [61]
In 2017, Vance joined the investment firm Revolution LLC. [62] It was founded by Steve Case, who also cofounded AOL. [62] Vance was tasked with expanding the "Rise of the Rest" initiative, which focuses on growing investments in underserved regions outside Silicon Valley and New York City. [62] In 2019, Vance co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati with financial backing from Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen. [63] In 2020, he raised $93 million for the firm. [64] With Thiel and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton, Vance has invested in Rumble, a Canadian online video platform popular with the political right. [65] [66]
In early 2018, Vance considered running for the US Senate against Sherrod Brown, [67] but did not. [68] In March 2021, Peter Thiel gave $10 million to Protect Ohio Values, a super PAC created in February to support a potential Vance candidacy. [69] [70] [71] Robert Mercer also gave an undisclosed amount. [69] In April, Vance expressed interest in running for the Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman. [72] In May, he launched an exploratory committee. [73] Vance is an ally of Republican fundraiser Nate Morris, who has also financially supported Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. [74]
Vance officially entered the race on July 1, 2021. It was his first campaign for public office. [75] [76] On May 3, 2022, he won the Republican primary with 32% of the vote, [77] defeating multiple candidates, including Josh Mandel (23%) and Matt Dolan (22%). [78] On November 8, in the general election, Vance defeated Democratic nominee Tim Ryan with 53% of the vote to Ryan's 47%. [79] This vote share was considered a vast underperformance compared to other Ohio Republicans, especially in the coinciding gubernatorial election. [80]
While Vance had often previously spelled his name with periods after the initials of his given names ("J.D.") – including in the publication of Hillbilly Elegy – he dropped this styling after becoming a candidate for office by removing the periods ("JD"). [81]
On January 3, 2023, Vance was sworn in to the Senate as a member of the 118th United States Congress, the first US senator from Ohio without previous political experience since John Glenn, who took office in 1974.
Vance's Senate work has included:
Vance has also voted against raising the debt ceiling, standing against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. [85]
Vance was criticized for his delayed response to the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. [86] [87] [88] His office released an official statement on February 13, 2023, ten days after the derailment, though Vance had sent a message on social media about the derailment the day after it occurred. [89] [90] [91]
On February 26, 2023, Vance wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting the provision of PPP style funds to those affected by the derailment, which some Republican senators criticized. [92] [93] On March 1, 2023, Vance, Brown, and Senators John Fetterman, Bob Casey, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio proposed bipartisan legislation to prevent derailments like the one in East Palestine. [94] [95] [96]
On January 31, 2023, Vance endorsed former President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. [97] On July 15, 2024, the first day of the Republican National Convention, Trump announced that he had chosen Vance as his running mate in a post on Truth Social. [98] On July 17, the third day of the convention, Vance accepted the nomination to be Trump's running mate. [99] He is the first Marine veteran on a presidential ticket. [100] [101]
Trump's two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, advocated for their father to choose Vance. Several media and industry figures are said to have lobbied for Vance to be on the presidential ticket, including Elon Musk, David O. Sacks, and Tucker Carlson. [102] The Heritage Foundation, which drafted Project 2025, privately advocated for Vance to be Trump's vice-presidential pick. [103] Musk responded to Trump's vice-presidential pick hours after its announcement, saying the ticket "resounds with victory". David Sacks, a prominent GOP donor and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, wrote on Twitter: "This is who I want by Trump's side: an American patriot." In 2022, Sacks gave Vance's Senate campaign $900,000, and Peter Thiel added $15 million. While it was initially reported that Elon Musk would contribute $45 million monthly, [104] Musk later said he planned to donate "much lower amounts". [105] [106]
Media commentators noted that Vance could strengthen the Republican ticket in the Midwest. David A. Graham of The Atlantic wrote that Vance "brings youth and intellect to the Republican ticket". [107] Catherine Lucey and John McCormick of The Wall Street Journal wrote that Vance "offers Trump a natural successor to his MAGA movement" due to his populist stances. [108] As such, he is seen as a candidate who could increase voter turnout among the former president's loyal voting base. [109]
AP reported that Vance could help deliver new funding streams to Trump's campaign, particularly those connected to the tech industry. [110] On May 15, 2024, Trump attended a $50,000 per head private fundraising dinner with Vance in Cincinnati. [111] Guests included Chris Bortz and Republican fundraiser Nate Morris. [112] Vance appeared at significant conservative political events and was described as a potential running mate for Trump in June 2024. [113] [114] In July 2024, a former friend of Vance's from Yale Law School exposed to the media communications between them and Vance from 2014 to 2017, with the friend alleging that Vance has "changed [his] opinion on literally every imaginable issue that affects everyday Americans", in a pursuit for "political power and wealth". [115] [116]
When President Joe Biden stepped down as a presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris became a presidential candidate, Vance in July 2024 said at a private fundraiser that the "bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden … Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did"; while a day later Vance told the media: "I don’t think the political calculus changes at all" whether Harris or Biden was the rival presidential candidate. [117]
Shortly after being named Trump's running mate, Vance was condemned for saying in a 2021 Fox News interview, "we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too." [118] The resurfaced comments sparked immediate backlash across news and social media, infuriating Taylor Swift’s fanbase [119] and prompting Jennifer Anniston, who has been public with her fertility struggles, to slam Vance in an Instagram story, writing “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” [120] Once the comments went viral, MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski mocked Vance by appearing on her show petting a cat who was sitting on her lap asking “My kids are older. Does that make me childless? I want to qualify.” [121] On July 26, 2024, Vance clarified his remarks on The Megyn Kelly Show, saying, "It’s not a criticism of people who don't have children" and adding, "this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child". [122] Vance received further condemnation for additional resurfaced comments about childless people, including a 2020 podcast interview where he claimed that being childless "makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable,” [123] and a March 2021 interview on The Charlie Kirk Show, when he suggested that people without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children, adding that the US should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad". [124]
Within the first two weeks after his selection as Trump's running mate, an unfounded story that Vance had masturbated using a latex glove that he had sandwiched between couch cushions became widespread on the internet. An evident internet hoax, it appears to have originated in a July 15 post on Twitter making the false claim that Hillbilly Elegy contained an explicit description of this. While unfounded, the claim became widespread enough that the Associated Press published a fact check on July 24 to debunk it. The outlet removed this fact check from its website the next day as it had not gone through its "standard editing process". [125]
On The Daily Show, Ronny Chieng mocked JD Vance's sexist remarks about "childless cat ladies" after the comments resurfaced when Trump named Vance as his running mate. Chieng highlighted the absurdity of Vance's logic and referenced backlash from public figures like Jennifer Aniston. [126]
The week after the Republican convention, opinion polls showed Vance with a −6 net approval, vastly below the average of +19 that major-party vice-presidential nominees since 2000 have averaged in post-convention opinion polls. [80] The week after the convention, Vance's middling public reception and other concerns resulted in some prominent Republican politicians and political scientists saying that Vance may have been a poor choice of running mate, especially in light of the election's dynamics shifting upon the withdrawal of President Biden from the election and advent of Kamala Harris as the likely Democratic nominee. [127]
During his time in the Senate, JD Vance has been described as national conservative, [128] [129] right-wing populist, [128] [130] and an ideological successor to paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan. [131] [132] Vance describes himself, and has been described by others, as a member of the postliberal right. [133] [134] [135] [136] [137] [138] He is known for his ties to Silicon Valley. [139]
On social issues, Vance is considered conservative. [140] He opposes abortion, [141] [142] same-sex marriage, [140] and gun control. [143] He has linked childlessness with sociopathy, and further advocated that parents have more voting power than non-parents. [144] [145] Vance has lamented that increased divorces adversely affect children of divorced parents. [146] He has proposed federal criminalization of gender transition care for minors [147] and said he wants to ban pornography. [148] He opposes continued American military aid to Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion. [149] [150] [151]
Vance was an outspoken critic of Donald Trump in 2016, describing himself as a " never Trump guy" and Trump as "reprehensible" and "America's Hitler". [152] In 2021, after Vance announced his Senate candidacy, he publicly announced support for Trump, apologizing for his past criticisms of Trump and deleting some of them. [153] [154] That year, Vance advised Trump to fire "every civil servant" to replace them with "our people". [155] Vance has said that if he were vice president during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, he would have deviated from certifying the election results, and instead would insist that some states that Trump lost should send pro-Trump electors so that Congress could decide the election. [156]Vance wrote in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that he was raised in a low-income family by his single mother and grandmother [157] and his family had a difficult life in his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents had moved from Kentucky. As a child, he longed for "the American dream, with a happy family at its core", and admired Bill Clinton for his similar background, noting that Clinton had been "a poor boy with a vaguely Southern accent, raised by a single mother, with a heavy dose of loving grandparents." [158]
Around 2011, [159] Vance met his wife, Usha Chilukuri, while both were students at Yale Law School. [160] He has called her "my Yale spirit guide". [160] In 2014, they married in Kentucky, in an interfaith marriage ceremony, [161] [162] as she is Hindu and he Christian. [161] [163] Their wedding included a Bible reading by Vance's "best friend", Jamil Jivani, [52] [164] and the bride and groom were blessed by a Hindu pandit. [160] [159] The couple have three children.
After graduating from Yale, Vance and his wife moved to San Francisco, where he worked with a venture capital firm for a few years and she joined a law practice. [165] In 2017, after the success of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote in The New York Times that, as someone who had yearned for the American dream as a child, he found hope in Barack Obama's personal story, which showed that domestic hardships need not defeat us; Vance also saw similarities in terms of his own early personal accomplishments: "a prestigious law degree, a strong professional career, and a modicum of fame as a writer", though he noted his political disagreements with Obama. [158]
Vance was raised in a "conservative, evangelical" branch of Protestantism. By September 2016, he was "not an active participant" in any particular Christian denomination, but was "thinking very seriously about converting to Catholicism". [166] In August 2019, Vance was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church in a ceremony at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio. He chose Augustine of Hippo as his confirmation saint. Vance said he converted because he "became persuaded over time that Catholicism was true [...] and Augustine gave me a way to understand Christian faith in a strongly intellectual way", further describing Catholic theology's influence on his political views. [167]
In an interview with First Things, Vance said: "The core Christian insight into politics is that life is inherently dignified and valuable [...] If you actually believe that, you want certain legal protections for the most vulnerable people in your society, but you also want to ensure that workers get a fair wage when they do a fair job. You want to make sure that people don't have their town poisoned because they happen to live next to a railway line", referring to the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. [168]
Vance intends to be buried in a "cemetery plot on a mountainside in eastern Kentucky" where multiple generations of his family have been laid to rest. [169]
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | JD Vance | 344,736 | 32.22% | |
Republican | Josh Mandel | 255,854 | 23.92% | |
Republican | Matt Dolan | 249,239 | 23.30% | |
Republican | Mike Gibbons | 124,653 | 11.65% | |
Republican | Jane Timken | 62,779 | 5.87% | |
Republican | Mark Pukita | 22,692 | 2.12% | |
Republican | Neil Patel | 9,873 | 0.92% | |
Total votes | 1,069,826 | 100.0% |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | JD Vance | 2,192,114 | 53.04% | N/A | |
Democratic | Tim Ryan | 1,939,489 | 46.92% | N/A | |
Write-in | 1,739 | 0.04% | N/A | ||
Total votes | 4,133,342 | 100.0% | N/A | ||
Republican hold |
I got a third job (as an SAT tutor at the Princeton Review), which paid an incredible eighteen dollars an hour. Three jobs were too much, so I dropped the job I loved the most – my work at the Ohio senate – because it paid the least.
Over the next three years, Yale dramatically influenced the trajectory of his life, leading to important connections, a job in venture capital and marriage to a classmate...
Even his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," was partly the outgrowth of a paper he wrote in a Yale class. A close look at Mr. Vance's record at Yale, though, shows that he adapted rapidly, taking advantage of the school's heady social and academic opportunities. He cooked for charity fund-raisers, organized reading groups, doted on his German shepherd, Casper, and led The Yale Law Journal's flag football team...
Mr. Thiel would become a major supporter of both Mr. Vance's venture capital firm and his Senate campaign.
Paid For By The Ohio Democratic Party
Purdue's hidden relationships with Satel and AEI illustrate how the company and its public relations consultants aggressively countered criticism that its prized painkiller helped cause the opioid epidemic.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)Vance says he is 'plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures'. He draws from a whole new political lexicon, one that would seem baffling to his more starched colleagues in the Congress.
But its support for this agenda – grouped for simplicity's sake under the heading of 'national conservatism' – is grounded in more obscure intellectual sources: Catholic-inflected 'post-liberalism,' conservative populism and localism, and various strands of neo-reactionary thought that flourish online.
On X, he follows niche but popular anonymous posters such as Bronze Age Pervert, Raw Egg Nationalist, and Lomez...
He's against same-sex marriage and said he would not support federal legislation to codify marriage equality...
Major Republican donors opposed Vance because they viewed his inclination toward economic populism as hostile to their model of small-government, free-market conservatism.