WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has chosen Sen. JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, to be his vice presidential running mate, catapulting the first-term senator into the national spotlight.
Vance was an outspoken Trump critic during the 2016 presidential campaign, the same year Vance was promoting his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” He has since transformed into one of Trump’s staunchest MAGA allies over 18 months in the Senate since winning a 2022 race for an open seat in red-trending Ohio.
As a senator, Vance is known for his “America First” skepticism of U.S. involvement in global affairs like the war in Ukraine and his opposition to bipartisan deals on government funding. He has also helped lead a rail safety bill across party lines in the wake of last year’s deadly train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. And Vance has echoed Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, which the ex-president has put front and center in his campaign as he continues to promote false claims that it was stolen from him.
Unlike some other vice presidential prospects, Vance was not in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and didn’t vote on certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. In a Feb. 2024 interview on ABC, Vance endorsed the claim that the 2020 election was problematic and said Congress should have considered competing slates of electors.
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance said. “That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, [had] a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”
Vance’s potential ascension to the vice presidency would deliver a hit to the Republicans who favor more robust U.S. involvement to shape world affairs, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who plans to continue making that a top priority after he steps down from leadership next year.
An opponent of Ukraine aid and abortion rights
Vance has carved out a niche as a vocal opponent of aid to Ukraine, arguing that the U.S. should encourage a deal in which Ukraine cedes land to Russia in order to end the war. He has dismissed concerns that Vladimir Putin would continue his territorial march through Europe if he takes Ukraine. And while he has continued to express support for Israel, he has broadly stood against interventionist U.S. foreign policies.
“There’s still this fundamental inability to deal with the limits of American power in the 21st century,” Vance told NBC News in April after the Senate passed $95 billion in Ukraine aid, adding that his colleagues — who have “have presided over the declining relative strength of this country” — should instead work to rebuild it.
During his year-and-a-half in the Democratic-controlled Senate, Vance has led the introduction of 57 bills or resolutions, none of which have become law, according to the legislative tracking website Congress.gov. He has cosponsored many more, just two of which have made it to President Joe Biden’s desk. They would have undone Biden’s consumer and environmental regulations. Biden vetoed both. Vance has cosponsored symbolic resolutions that have been adopted by the chamber, including a resolution to celebrate the U.S. flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, and another resolution to honor the life of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
Vance has been a reliable vote with the right flank of the party against most of Biden’s legislative priorities, judicial nominees and bipartisan government funding deals that have been championed by Republican leaders in both chambers.
Like most Republicans, Vance has consistently voted against Democratic-led legislation to codify abortion rights, restore the protections of Roe v. Wade, establish federal rights to access contraception and create protections for in vitro fertilization. He has rejected calls for tougher gun laws and clashed with Democrats over the politically thorny issue.
Rail safety and Trump ‘persecution’ allegations
One major bipartisan pursuit that Vance has led, alongside Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is the Railway Safety Act of 2023. It has not yet come up for a vote in the Senate. Vance has also signed onto a bill by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to empower regulators to claw back compensation from top executives of failed banks.
Last month, Vance led a letter threatening to oppose the fast-tracking of even non-controversial Biden nominees, accusing the administration of waging “persecution of President Donald Trump” through the legal system. (Biden has said he had no involvement in the Justice Department’s cases and there is no evidence that he was behind the prosecutions of Trump.)
The selection of Vance also means that both members of the GOP ticket have helped raise funds for individuals who engaged in political violence on Jan. 6.
On the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, Vance — a Yale Law School graduate — falsely claimed that “dozens” of people “who haven’t even been charged with a crime yet” were being held in “D.C. prisons” pre-trial when, in fact, every person who was held in pretrial custody had been charged and had been ordered held by a judge. Vance linked to a fundraiser for Jan. 6 defendants including Jack Wade Whitton, who subsequently confessed to his crime and was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison.
“You’re gonna die tonight!” Whitton admitted yelling at officers, before bragging in a text that he’d “fed” an officer to the mob.
Frank Thorp V and Ryan J. Reilly contributed.
