“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy. I never liked him.” “Oh my god, what an idiot.” “I find him reprehensible.” That’s what JD Vance, Trump’s running mate for USA Today, said in interviews and on Twitter in 2016, when the publication of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy catapulted his fame.
A few years later, Mr. Vance has transformed into one of Trump’s steadfast allies. And a few years later, the first-term senator from Ohio is now on Trump’s side as a vice presidential candidate — and, by extension, leading candidate for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
In fact, Mr. Vance has made something of a habit of transforming. How did he rise from a tough upbringing to reach the highest levels of American politics?
The memoir that made him famous
JD Vance was born James David Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, to a mother who struggled with addiction and a father who abandoned the family when JD was a toddler.
He was raised by his grandparents, “Mamaw” and “Papaw,” who he fondly described in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Even though Middletown is in Rust Belt Ohio, Vance identified closely with his family roots a little further south, in the Appalachian Mountains, the vast mountainous hinterland that stretches from the deep South to the fringes of the industrial Midwestern states. Some of the poorest areas of the country are located there.
Vance painted an honest portrait of the trials and bad decisions of his family members and friends. And his book also took a decidedly conservative view – describing them as chronic spendthrifts, welfare dependents and mostly people who can’t stand on their own two feet.
He wrote that he saw Appalachians “reacting to bad conditions in the worst possible way” and that they were products of “a culture that encourages social decline rather than confronting it.”
“Truth is hard,” he wrote, “and the hardest truths for hill people are the ones they have to tell about themselves.” While he scorned the “elite” and exclusive society, he painted himself as a counterweight to the chronic failure of those he grew up with.
By the time the book came out, Vance had moved away from Middletown: first to the US Marines and a stint in Iraq, and later to Ohio State University, Yale Law School and a job as a venture capitalist in California .
Hillbilly Elegy made him not only a best-selling author but also a sought-after commentator, often called upon to explain Donald Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters and rarely missing an opportunity to criticize the then-Republican nominee.
“I think this election is having a really negative impact, especially on the white working class,” he told an interviewer in October 2016. “What it’s doing is giving people an excuse to point the finger at somebody else, to point at the finger at Mexican immigrants, or Chinese trade, or Democratic elites, or whatever.”
From business to politics
In 2017 Mr. Vance returned to Ohio and continued working in venture capital. He and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, whom he met at Yale, have three children.
His name had long been floated as a political candidate, and he saw an opportunity when Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman decided not to seek re-election in 2022.
Although his campaign was slow to get off the ground, it was boosted by a $10m (£7.7m) donation from his former boss, Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel. But the real obstacle to his election in increasingly Republican Ohio was his past criticism of Trump.
He apologized for his earlier comments and managed to reconcile and win Trump’s support,. He thus reached the top of the Republican ballot and eventually the Senate.
Along the way, Vance has become an increasingly important player in the world of “Make America Great Again” politics — and has almost fully subscribed to Trump’s agenda.
In the Senate there was a reliable conservative vote, supporting populist economic policies. He thus emerged as one of the biggest skeptics in Congress regarding aid to Ukraine.
Vance, who was baptized Catholic in 2019, is anti-abortion but has recently supported Trump’s view that the issue should be left up to individual states.
Source: www.enikos.gr
