Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are readying for the big electoral battle in the United States that will choose the next Vice President of the country. One of them will be part of the long list of political leaders who have been the integral part of a President’s administration. Democrat Walz and Republican Vance are reinforcing their running mates’ messages to voters, just weeks before the November 5 election. While Mr Vance is Vice Presidential pick of Donald Trump, Mr Walz has been chosen by Kamala Harris.
Here’s a look at the life and political career of 2024 US election Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance:
Mr Vance is a politician, an author and a Marine veteran who has been serving as junior senator from Ohio. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, in the Rust Belt region of Ohio to Don and Bev Bowman who had Scottish ancestry.
James’ parents divorced when he was young and his mother changed his middle name to David. He eventually took his mother’s middle name Vance as his surname.
Mr Vance was raised mostly by his maternal grandparents as his mother struggle with drug and alcohol abuse disorders.
His military background
It has happened for the first time since 1996 that both political parties in the US have picked a veteran as Vice President nominee. Mr Vance enlisted in the United States Marine Corps after graduating from Middletown High School in 2003. He spent four years in USMC, including six-month deployment to Iraq.
After his military service, Mr Vance attended the Ohio State University where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009. He later studied in Yale University, earning a law degree in 2013.
National fame
Mr Vance gained national recognition with his memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy‘, which was published in 2016. It became a bestseller and was later adapted into a Netflix movie. The book tells Mr Vance’s personal story against the backdrop of his struggles.
The book carries an excerpt about how the Marine Corps taught Mr Vance adulthood. “The day I graduated from boot camp was the proudest of my life,” he wrote in the book, as per NPR.
Mr Trump also wrote about the book on his Truth Social platform while announcing Mr Vance’s name as his running mate. “JD’s book, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country,” said Mr Trump.
JD Vance’s family
While studying at Yale, Mr Vance met Usha Chilukuri and they got married in 2014. Her parents moved to the US in the late 1970s and now teach engineering and molecular biology in San Diego.
While Usha Vance studied at Yale and Cambridge, her father and grandfather both taught or studied at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India’s premier engineering college. Her younger sister is a mechanical engineer with a semiconductor company in San Diego and an aunt a medical professional in the southern Indian city of Chennai.
In his memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy‘, Mr Vance calls his wife a “supersmart daughter of Indian immigrants”. The couple have three children.
JD Vance was once critical of Trump
In the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Mr Vance was a bitter critic of Donald Trump. The BBC carried his two quotes about Mr Trump – “My god, what an idiot” and “I find him reprehensible” – that resurfaced in July. He had also compared Mr Trump to Hitler, as per a report in The Telegraph.
But when Mr Trump narrowed his search and announced Mr Vance as his running mate in July this year, the Ohio native became one of his most ardent defenders.
By the time Mr Vance ran for Senate in 2022, his demonstrations of loyalty, which included downplaying the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Mr Trump’s supporters, were sufficient to score the former president’s coveted endorsement. Mr Trump’s support helped put him over the top in a competitive primary.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Before Mr Vance developed a relationship with the former president, he grew close with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, according to news agency Reuters. He attracted the attention of Mr Trump’s son by opposing aid to Ukraine during the Ohio Senate primary in 2022.
In February 2023, Mr Trump and Mr Vance visited East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a toxic train derailment, a trip that raised Mr Vance’s national profile.
Behind the scenes, Mr Vance has helped convince wealthy donors to open their wallets to Mr Trump, Reuters said quoting people with knowledge of the Republican leader’s fundraising operations. Mr Vance helped put together a Bay Area fundraiser in June hosted by venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya.
Vance’s scepticism of corporate America, support for tariffs, weariness of foreign entanglements and his youth make him a leading voice of a new Republican Party that is more focused on the working class than big business in the eyes of supporters.
How the Vice President is elected in the US?
The Vice President is the second-highest office in the executive branch of the US government, after the President. According to the White House, the Vice President is elected along with the President by the Electoral College. Each elector casts one vote for President and another for Vice President. Before the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804, electors only voted for President, and the person who received the second greatest number of votes became Vice President.
The primary responsibility of the Vice President of the United States is to be ready at a moment’s notice to assume the Presidency if the President is unable to perform his or her duties. This can be because of the President’s death, resignation, or temporary incapacitation, or if the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet judge that the President is no longer able to discharge the duties of the presidency.
