With the Republican Party announcing Donald Trump as its official candidate for the upcoming US presidential election, the name of James David Vance, the US senator whom Trump chose for the position of Vice President in the event that he wins the US presidency for a second non-consecutive term, came to the fore.
Trump announced the news on his Truth Social website on Monday after earlier telling The New York Times that he wanted a running mate with experience and a measured demeanor. Trump also told Fox News last week that his camp was waiting to see how the backlash surrounding Biden’s debate performance would affect the race before announcing his running mate.
Who is James David Vance?
James David Vance, a 39-year-old Iraq War veteran, studied law at Yale University, practiced law, and ran for Senate in 2022 after being endorsed by Trump at the time, helping him defeat Republican primary challenger Josh Mandel and Democratic candidate Tim Ryan.
During his run on the Ohio Republican ticket for Senate, Vance garnered support from major donors, most notably PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who donated nearly $15 million, the largest amount ever to support an individual Senate candidate, according to Politico's support for Vance.
Before running for Senate, Vance rose to prominence in 2016 with the publication of Hillbilly Elegy , a book chronicling the social, economic and cultural impacts of deindustrialization in his hometown of Ohio. In it, Vance outlined priorities for reviving Ohio’s manufacturing industry, including reducing unnecessary spending and inflation, boosting domestic oil and gas production, combating the drug and opioid epidemic, ending abortion, securing the southern border, and changing immigration policy.
Netflix adapted the book into a film in Washington in 2020, and it became a hit for its portrayal of the culture of low-income, working-class white Americans. The book explored Vance’s own memories and experiences growing up in poverty, as well as his memories of observing others around him as they navigated the welfare system.
Speaking to NPR in 2016, Vance said the book was about "real people's lives as the industrial economy went south."
confrontational personality
Some see Vance as a confrontational figure. After Trump was shot Saturday, Vance tweeted that President Biden's campaign strategy "directly led to the assassination attempt on President Trump," and pointed to Democratic candidate Biden's statements calling Trump "an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped from the White House at all costs."
Vance was not initially a supporter of Trump, but he has evolved into an advocate for him and his ideas. He said he did not vote for the former president in the 2016 election, and his former roommate said Vance texted him saying Trump could be "America's Hitler," according to the Associated Press.
Vance has shifted his opposition to Trump to become one of his strongest supporters, supporting Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020, unlike then-Vice President Mike Pence. "If I were vice president, I would refuse to vote on the results unless the election was free and fair," Vance said at the time.
His upbringing and academic career and in the public sphere
Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio, and spent part of his childhood in Jackson, Kentucky, where he was raised by his maternal grandfather while his mother struggled with drug addiction. After graduating from high school in Middletown, he joined the Marines and was deployed to Iraq, later attending Ohio State University and Yale Law School. After graduating, he worked for billionaire Peter Thiel at PayPal, then founded his own venture capital firm, and is running for Senate in 2022.
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