MILWAUKEE – Republicans are leaning into Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) rise-from-poverty backstory as Democrats attempt to reduce the senator to a carbon copy of former President Donald Trump.
In the hours after Trump chose Vance as his running mate at the GOP’s nominating convention in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden retorted that he saw no difference between the two men, at least regarding policy.
“He’s a clone of Trump on the issues. A clone of Trump,” Biden said on Monday shortly before boarding Air Force One.
Democrats have been claiming for months that Trump’s running mate would be a MAGA lackey no matter who he picks. The Biden campaign continued that line of attack in a Monday press call denouncing Vance’s embrace of the former president’s election fraud claims.
“Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because he will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on Jan. 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law, and certainly no matter the harm to the American people,” said Biden campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon.
Republicans readily acknowledge that of all the candidates Trump considered for vice president, he and Vance are the most aligned ideologically. Vance has emerged as one of the most consistent defenders of his “America First” agenda since joining the Senate in 2023.
But Republicans are betting Vance’s upbringing – he grew up in a home marked by poverty and drug abuse – will serve as a counterweight that both humanizes him and puts a face and story behind Trump’s brand of populist conservatism.
Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), another Trump defender who arrived in Congress at the same time as Vance, described the adversity he overcame as an example of American exceptionalism.
“I think that’s the greatness of America, is that you can rise from a background like that, you know, it really says that your socioeconomic background doesn’t define who you are,” he told the Washington Examiner.
“And that really is unique in this country,” Mills added, relating it to his own upbringing in a broken home.
Vance’s childhood is not incidental to his meteoric rise in politics. His best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, spoke to the concerns of working-class Americans by chronicling his upbringing in the Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio.
He entered the national spotlight as a critic of Trump, but his political outlook eventually led the two to forge a close alliance that helped propel him to the Senate.
Vance was seen as the least helpful vice presidential hopeful in terms of diversifying his ticket. He represents a red state and appeals to the same base of voters that won Trump the White House in 2016.
Other contenders, such as Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) or Marco Rubio (R-FL), could have helped Trump make further inroads with the black and Hispanic vote.
The choice suggests Trump does not think he needs to expand his pool of supporters with Biden trailing in swing state polling. The president’s deficit has only gotten worse since his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month.
But Republicans argued Vance could still help Trump build further inroads with the Midwestern voters whose communities were decimated by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs.
“I think J.D. Vance speaks to the frustration of middle America, the hollowing out of middle America,” said Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague. “Because this is not just a story in Middletown. It’s also the story of Ohio, like Dayton and Toledo. And Youngstown and Akron.”
Ohio is a relatively safe state for Trump. He won his last race there by 8 points. But Sprague suggested Vance’s blue-collar background could help tip the scales in states like Pennsylvania, which Trump carried in 2016 before his narrow loss there in 2020.
Republicans at the Milwaukee convention cited everything from Vance’s relative youth – he would be the second youngest vice president ever – to his years spent in the Marines in praising Trump’s choice.
“J.D. is a bit of a folk hero, I think, to people in their 30s and 40s,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said of the younger Republicans who have embraced Trump’s populism.
However, Democrats believe the race will be won by lumping Vance in with the same narrative they have used against Trump.
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In its press call, the Biden campaign claimed that Vance would “enable” Trump to enact the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a second term that Trump has in recent days disavowed.
“Trump selecting J.D. Vance as his running mate underscores just how extreme and harmful a second term would be for Trump and his MAGA allies,” the Biden campaign said in a statement.
