(Breitbart) Former President Donald Trump has selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) to be his running mate. Here’s how Vance’s humble origins led him to become a champion for the working class.
Vance is 39 years old, and would serve as the first millennial vice president of the United States if Trump wins the election. He would be the first-ever Marine combat veteran on the presidential ticket of a major party. He is also the first major presidential or vice presidential candidate to sport facial hair in nearly a century.
Vance also converted to Catholicism and, if elected, would be the second Catholic vice president after Joe Biden.
James Donald (J.D.) Bowman was born in August 1984 in Middletown, Ohio. He was six years old when his biological father gave him up for adoption to his stepfather. From then, he became James David Vance.
He had in a “tumultuous” childhood, CBS News reports:
After graduating from high school, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.
.@JDVance1 on how his service in the USMC informs his approach to being a Senator🇺🇸
“There are a lot of ways in which my Marine Corps service intersects with my Senate service…I care about whether when we ask our kids to go to war that we make sure it’s for the right reasons.” pic.twitter.com/dazXsCBqmw
— William Martin (@wsmartin218) June 26, 2024
When attending Yale University for his law degree, he reportedly had to adapt to the nuances of the elite culture at the Ivy League university and it was a initially a challenge for him.
At Yale, he met his wife Usha.
The New York Times in 2022 described how Usha has helped guide J.D., even back at Yale Law School, where they organized a discussion group on the subject of “social decline in white America.”
“She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed,” Vance said.
Usha is accomplished in her own right. She is a litigator and clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, as well as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served as a federal judge.
Vance and Usha, who is Indian-American, have three children together, Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel.
In 2016, months before Donald Trump won the presidency, Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy, which told his personal story against the backdrop of Appalachia and Rust Belt America.
Vance’s memoir became a window into the lives of the “forgotten men and women,” who became a core part of Trump’s working-class coalition in 2016.
“J.D.’s book, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country,” Trump wrote on Monday when he announced Vance as his running mate.
“J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond,” he added.
Hillbilly Elegy even became a 2020 movie, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
Senate career
Vance joined Congress’s upper chamber after defeating Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a congressman first elected in 2002.
The Ohio senator serves on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee; the Joint Economic Committee, and the Special Committee on Aging.
In the Senate, Vance championed the populist and nationalist policies that propelled Donald Trump to the White House.
In a 2021 interview, Vance deconstructed many of the leftist frameworks, including critical race theory, white privilege, and globalist capital with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow:
