Vance joined the United States Marine Corps immediately after finishing high school. From 2003 to 2007, he worked as a military writer. Both Ohio State and Yale Law School were under his pedagogical wing. He was a venture capitalist in the computer business before briefly practicing corporate law. In 2020, a film based on his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, was released.
Vance defeated Democratic Party contender Tim Ryan to become Ohio's senator. Although he was against Trump's candidacy in 2016, Vance has changed his mind and is now a staunch Trump supporter. Trump chose Vance to be his running partner in July 2024, just before the Republican National Convention.
Vance identifies with the postliberal right and has been described as a national conservative and right-wing populist. Abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and U.S. military assistance to Ukraine are all causes he strongly opposes. Having no children is something that Vance strongly disagrees with. His social and political views have been shaped by his Catholic upbringing, as he has admitted.
From childhood through military duty and schooling The Middletown, Ohio, native James Donald Bowman was born to Beverly Carol and Donald Ray on August 2, 1984. From Scots-Irish ancestry he hails. He was just a toddler when his parents split up. To avoid confusion with his biological father, Bowman's mother changed his name to James David Hamel when his third husband, Bob, adopted him. To keep his nickname, JD, she added an uncle's name.
Vance has spoken publicly about his mother's battles with drug addiction and the hardships he endured as a youngster. James and Bonnie Vance, often known as "Papa'w" and "Mama'w" by Vance and Lindsey, were the primary caregivers for the Vance children during their childhood. His grandparents emigrated from the Appalachians of Kentucky to Ohio.
Vince in the United States Marine Corps in 2003 Vance joined the United States Marine Corps after finishing high school in Middletown, New York, in 2003. He was a military journalist with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. In 2005, he spent six months serving in Iraq in a non-combat capacity, contributing to the Public Affairs office's publications and photography. His service lasted four years. When Vance got back, he took care of the press. He was "lucky to escape any real fighting" and his military "taught me how to live like an adult." He was decorated with the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, among others, and rose to the rank of corporal.
Vance earned a BA in political science and philosophy from Ohio State University from 2007–2009 on the G.I. Bill. He graduated with honors. He was an aide to Republican state senator Bob Schuler throughout his first year of college.
Vance went to Yale Law School after finishing his undergraduate degree at Ohio State. He befriended Jamil Jivani, who would go on to become a Conservative lawmaker in Canada. He was encouraged to start writing Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir, by Professor Amy Chua, who had written Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). This was during his first year.
After earning his J.D. in 2013, Vance served as one of 99 editors for volume 122 of The Yale Law Journal. For the years 2010 and 2011, he contributed as J. D. Hamel to David Frum's 'FrumForum' website. The name change really happened in April 2013, just before Vance was set to graduate from Yale, but Hillbilly Elegy makes it seem like he took his grandparents' surname in 2014 when he got married.
Beginning of professional life Vance was an aide to Republican Senator John Cornyn after finishing law school. After working as a legal clerk for Judge David Bunning of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky for a year, he began a brief career as a business lawyer and worked at the law firm Sidley Austin. Vance relocated to San Francisco to pursue a career as a venture investor in the technology business after spending just under two years practicing law. He was a partner with Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital from 2016 until 2017.
Vance was a member of the With Honor Fund's board of advisers in 2019, a super PAC that supports veterans running for government. American Moment is a Project 2025 affiliate that provides networking and training opportunities for young conservatives. He was a member of their board of advisers from 2020 through 2023.
In 2017, Vance A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Hillbilly Elegy, was released by Harper in June 2016 and was written by Vance. This autobiography details the social and cultural challenges that Vance faced as a child growing up in a tiny town in Appalachia.
Two years in a row, Hillbilly Elegy appeared on the Best Seller list of The New York Times. In addition to being named one of "6 Books to Help Understand Trump's Win" by The Times, Vance was profiled in The Washington Post and called "the voice of the Rust Belt" in regards to his biography. Sarah Jones accused Vance of being a "false prophet of blue America" and "liberal media's favorite white trash-splainer" in her critique of the book 'nothing more than a collection of falsehoods about welfare queens' published in The New Republic.
Both 2017 and 2018 saw Vance serve as a CNN contributor. Ron Howard directed the 2020 film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, which had an April 2017 casting call. The picture opened in select cinemas on November 11, 2020. It is available to view on Netflix now.
When we renew our Ohio After announcing his intention to relocate to Ohio in December 2016, Vance hinted that he would launch a nonprofit or seek public office. In Ohio, he established a nonprofit advocacy group called Our Ohio Renewal. Its primary focus is on education, addiction, and other "social ills" that he had discussed in his biography. Sally Satel, Yuval Levin, Jamil Jivani, and Keith Humphreys were listed as members of the advisory board on a 2017 archived copy of the nonprofit's website. A webpage screenshot from 2020 indicates that the four held those roles for the entirety of the organization's existence. By 2021, our Ohio Renewal had accomplished very little. A cancer diagnosis, according to the group's director of policy and legislation, Jivani, halted all of their efforts. In 2017, it spent most of the approximately $221,000 it received on overhead and travel. The following years had donations of less than $50,000.
The Democratic candidate for US Senate in 2022, Tim Ryan, accused Vance of using the charity as a pawn in his political campaign. Ryan brought up allegations that the group polled the public and hired a political advisor named Vance, all while failing to combat addiction. The accusation was rejected by Vance. Our Ohio Renewal's executive director Jai Chabria was also Vance's senior political strategist; according to the organization's tax records, Chabria received more funding for "management services" in the first year than for initiatives to combat opiate misuse. From 2017 until 2023, Vance raised around $69,000 through a 501(c)(3) organization with a similar name, Our Ohio Renewal Foundation. No expenditures had been made by the foundation since 2019 as of September 2024.
Psychiatrist Sally Satel was sent to the Appalachian region of Ohio for a yearlong residency in 2018, which was the charity's crowning achievement. However, a 2019 investigation by ProPublica revealed that the ties among Satel, her employer, American Enterprise Institute, and Purdue Pharma, including knowledge exchange between Satel and Purdue as well as financial support from Purdue to AEI, 'tainted' the project, according to Newsweek and ProPublica. Satel told AP via email that he was unaware of Purdue's contributions to AEI and had no connection to the university.
Financial Investment Revolution LLC, an investment business, welcomed Vance in 2017. It was co-founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case. To increase investment in neglected areas outside of New York City and Silicon Valley, Vance was given the mission of creating the 'Rise of the Rest' program. With the support of Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen, Vance co-founded the Cincinnati-based venture capital company Narya Capital in 2019. For the company, he managed to raise $93 million in 2020. Vance has invested in Rumble, a right-wing Canadian internet video company, alongside Thiel and former Trump advisor Darren Blanton.
The firm AppHarvest, which engaged in vertical farming indoors in Kentucky, had Vance on its board of directors from March 2017 to April 2021. Among Narya Capital's initial investments that were made public was AppHarvest. In February 2021, Vance spoke to the media about AppHarvest, stating that it was "not just a good investment opportunity, it's a great business that's making a big difference in the world." This was his public endorsement of the company. With over $340 million in debt, AppHarvest declared bankruptcy in 2023. According to CNN's reporting based on interviews with former employees, AppHarvest "offered a grim job experience for many of the working-class Kentuckians Vance has vowed to help" because workers were "forced to work in grueling conditions inside the company's greenhouse" and subsequently started hiring migrant workers from Mexico and Guatemala instead of Americans.
Vance thought about challenging Sherrod Brown for the US Senate in early 2018, but ultimately decided against it. A super PAC called Protect Ohio Values was established in February 2021 to back a possible Vance campaign, and in March of that year, Peter Thiel contributed $10 million to it. Also contributing an unknown sum was Robert Mercer. During April, Vance made it clear that he was considering a bid for Rob Portman's vacant Senate seat. An exploratory group was established by him in May.
Ohio governor Mike Vance declared his candidacy for the Senate on July 1, 2021. He defeated other contenders, including Josh Mandel and Matt Dolan, to win the Republican primary on May 3, 2022, with 32% of the vote. Vance won the general election over Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, by a margin of 53% to 47% on November 8. In comparison to other Republicans in Ohio, this vote percentage was seen as much lower, particularly in the governor race that took place at the same time.
Vance removed the periods from his name after becoming a candidate for office, even though he had frequently used them in the past (such as in Hillbilly Elegy), following his given names.
joined Senator Raphael Warnock in proposing a measure to reduce the cost of insulin. Worked with Senator Elizabeth Warren to recover CEO compensation in the event of a failure at large banks. Presented a companion measure with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene that would make it a crime to provide kids with gender-affirming medical treatment, with penalties of up to twelve years in jail. Vance has opposed the final approval of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 and has voted against lifting the debt ceiling.
When a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio in 2023, Vance was chastised for not responding quickly enough. Ten days following the crash, on February 13, 2023, his office issued an official statement; however, Vance had already posted a social media remark on the derailment the day after it happened.
Several Republican senators attacked Vance's February 26, 2023, op-ed in The Washington Post, in which he argued in favor of providing PPP-style funding to those impacted by the derailment. To avoid future derailments similar to the one in East Palestine, Vance and Brown co-sponsored bipartisan legislation on March 1, 2023.
Things You May Not Have Known About JD Vance:
1. One of his names was not usually James David Vance. James Donald Bowman was it at birth. After his mother remarried, it became James David Hamel; then it changed once again.
2. Two years yearning for a role model. His father departed at six years old. 'It was the saddest I had ever felt,' he writes in his book. 'Of all the things I hated about my childhood,' he said, 'nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.'
3. He got along poorly with his five-time married mother. One of the most horrific passages in the book is when he is a small boy riding in a car with his mother, who often plunged into cycles of abuse. She accelerated to 'what seemed like a hundred miles per hour and told me she was going to crash the car and kill us both,' he says. She slowed down to reach in the rear of the car to beat him, then he jumped out of the car and fled to the house of a neighbor who reported the incident to the police.
4. Democrats with blue-dogs raised him. In his hillbilly patois, he spent much of his early years with his grandfather and grandmother — papaw and mamaw. He spoke of his mama'ws 'affinity for Bill Clinton' and how his papaw changed his vote from the Democrats only once to support Ronald Reagan. In one interview he commented, 'The parents who reared me were typical blue-dog Democrats, union Democrats, right? They were socally conservative and adored their nation.
5. He adored Black Sabbath, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin while a teen. Then his highly pious biological father entered his life. 'He made it plain when we first got back in touch that he didn't care for my taste in classic rock, especially Led Zeppelin,' he said. 'He basically suggested that I listened to Christian rock instead.'
6. He learned to welcome gay people. Mr. Vance noted he would 'never forget the time I convinced myself I was gay.' Not yet old enough to be drawn to the other sex, he fretted something was amiss. His mamaw said, 'You're not gay,' and even if he were, she assured him, 'that would be OK.' God would still want you. 'Now that I'm older, I realize the depth of her feeling: Gay people, though unfamiliar, threatened nothing about mama'ws being,' he said. A Christian should be more concerned about more vital issues.
7. Declared a candidate, he claimed he would vote against government safeguards for interracial and homosexual marriage. He termed the topic a 'bizarre distraction' from more urgent problems. Still, he also declared that 'gay marriage is the law of the land in our nation. I am not attempting to do anything to alter it either.
8. He practices late-life Catholic. Mr. Vance was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2019, thirty-five years old. He declared St. Augustine his patron saint. 'Augustine provided me with a highly intellectual approach to grasp Christian faith,' he said in an interview that year. 'I too went through an enraged atheist period. Augustine truly showed in a poignant manner that that's not true as someone who spent a lot of his life purchasing into the idea that you had to be ignorant to be a Christian.”
Nine. He was a young Marine. Following high school, Mr. Vance joined the Marines and finally fought in Iraq, where he stated, 'I was lucky to escape any real fighting,' but it was a time that 'affected me greatly nonetheless.' Working in public affairs, he also temporarily served as 'the media relations officer' for Cherry Point, a large military base in North Carolina.
Ten times he gets 'Proud to Be an American.' 'I choke up when I hear Lee Greenwood's cheesy anthem 'Proud to Be an American,',' he said. 'When I was sixteen, I vowed that every time I met a veteran, I would go out of my way to shake his or her hand, even if I had to reluctantly interrupt to do so.'
11. He never was a 'birther.' Mr. Vance has claimed he was upset by the racial birther conspiracy against Barack Obama, promoted most notoriously by Mr. Trump, and worried about how easily people in his area seemed to be influenced by such things.
Later on, he warmed to Trump but soured on Mr. Obama. Mr. Vance stated in 2022 that the former president was 'unable of saying anything outside of the elite consensus,' calling Mr. Obama 'a walking, talking Atlantic magazine subscription.'
13. At Yale Law School he developed imposter syndrome. 'I lived among the newly christened members of what folks back home pejoratively call the 'elites,' and by every outward appearance, I was one of them: I am a stale, white, straight man,' he wrote. My my life, I have never felt uncomfortable. But at Yale, I did.
14. Mr. Vance visited Yale to meet his bride, Usha. 2013 saw them married in Kentucky, sanctified by a Hindu pundit. Mr. Vance remarked in a 2021 interview with Megyn Kelly, 'Usha absolutely brings me back to earth.'
15. In 2016 he voted against Mr. Trump. He chose instead the independent candidate Evan McMullin.
16. He professed, nonetheless, to grasp Mr. Trump's attraction. Though he did not believe Mr. Trump would win the general election, he projected he would be the G.O.P. nominee in 2016. 'It's amazing, and I was super wrong about his prospects in the general,' he recalled in an interview the following year, 'as much as I saw Trump winning the nomination.'
17. He erased his previous criticism of Mr. Trump social media entries. Among other things, Mr. Vance questioned Mr. Trump if he would be 'America's Hitler' and referred to him as 'cultural heroin.'
18. His wife worked for Brett Kavanaugh prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, and for Chief Justice John G. Roberts. A turning point in Mr. Vance's political path as much as in his wife's seems to be the debate over Mr. Kavanaugh's judicial appointment. 'My wife worked for Kavanaugh, loved the guy,,' he told Times writer Ross Douthat. 'You start looking about and say, 'If they can do this to him, can they just do this to any of us?'