“When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq. And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan and states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war,” he said, prompting “Joe must go” chants from the forum.
Vance described his hard-scrabble upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, “a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington,” he said. He described Biden’s influence on foreign policy and its effect on his community from his childhood and on. And Vance, once a Trump critic, praised Trump for being “right on all of these issues while Joe Biden was wrong.”
Vance rose to prominence in 2016 after writing the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” about growing up in a steel mill community in Ohio in a family beset by drug addiction and poverty. In his speech, he shouted out his mother and grandmother, whom he described in his book. The crowd chanted both “Mamaw” and “J.D.’s mom” as he talked about his upbringing.
He later served in the Marines, went to Yale Law School, worked in business and is now a U.S. senator.
Vance’s nomination to the vice presidency comes during an unprecedented presidential election: Trump on Saturday faced a shooting at a Pennsylvania rally; the Democratic Party is still debating whether President Biden should even be the party’s nominee amid questions about his mental acuity; and a former president and incumbent president are running against one another. (On Wednesday, Biden also tested positive for covid-19, canceling planned events in Las Vegas.)
Vance emphasized the unity message that the convention speakers have emphasized throughout the past three days amid reports of a growing rift within the Democratic Party.
For all of Trump’s unpredictability, Vance was seen by many in Republican circles as his likely pick. Yet Trump kept the suspense going almost as long as possible, waiting until roughly an hour and a half before Vance was officially nominated to the ticket.
At 2:04 p.m. on Monday, the first day of the Republican National Convention, it was official: Vance became the latest senator to be chosen as a running mate. (Vice President Harris and Biden were previously U.S. senators before being selected as running mates.)
Vance had otherwise kept a relatively low profile since, but signs of the rapid transition from senator to running mate were evident: On a Tuesday-morning walk with his family to Walgreens, he was flanked by his new security detail. He took a prominent seat next to Trump in the former president’s convention box Monday and Tuesday night. And he has done a walk-through of the convention floor, where he saw his friend Donald Trump Jr. as they both prepared for their Wednesday night speeches. He also spoke at a fundraiser earlier Wednesday.
On Wednesday night, Trump Jr. spoke before Vance, pointing out their unusual connection as “a kid from Appalachia and a kid from Trump Tower in Manhattan.”
“We grew up worlds apart,” he said. “Yet now we’re both fighting side-by-side to save the country we love.”
Usha Vance, J.D. Vance’s wife, then introduced her husband, calling him “the most interesting person” she knew and the embodiment of the American Dream, offering a personal account of the vice-presidential candidate new to the national stage.
The rapid changes to Vance’s day-to-day are familiar to those who have experienced the transition from member of Congress to vice-presidential candidate. Al Gore got a call from then-Democratic candidate Bill Clinton just a few days before the 1992 Democratic National Convention while at his farm in Tennessee, according to Roy Neel, Gore’s chief of staff in his Senate and vice-presidential offices. By 5 a.m. the next day, Gore was on his way to Little Rock and “everything changed.”
“It was a whole different world. It was going from the Senate, which was a fairly predictable and, in many respects, a slow-moving operation, to just almost chaos every day,” Neel said. “Suddenly your entire schedule, your work plan, your travel all becomes a part and a subordinate to a different, larger operation. In the Senate, you’re pretty much an island unto yourself.”
The Trump campaign had hired an operations director for the running mate before the official announcement, and Trump’s communications team is working with Vance’s team amid the transition, according to a person familiar with the dynamics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about internal planning. Vance’s campaign plane has a decal ready, but it’s not in Milwaukee.
Shortly after the announcement, Vance appeared on the convention floor with Usha Vance by his side. He shook hands with delegates as he approached the stage, and he stood next to his friend U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno as Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted made his nomination official.
Tuesday afternoon, the media and public got another brief glimpse of Vance when he visited the convention hall to practice his entrance onstage ahead of his Wednesday speech. Surrounded by a phalanx of staff and Secret Service agents, Vance looked around at the growing mass of media below him on the floor and ignored shouted questions about how he was feeling and his preparedness for the job.
Jake Kastan, who was a personal aide to former vice-presidential candidate Paul D. Ryan, said among the biggest adjustments to being named a running mate are the security detail and the schedule.
“Paul Ryan described it as being shot out of a cannon,” Kastan recalled. “You’re going from a routine day-to-day in the Capitol as a congressman to on many days visiting three different cities for four to five different events, fundraisers, rallies. Your schedule is so packed to 15-minute increments, so just that pace is quite exhilarating and a pretty big change from Congress.”
During the walk-through Tuesday, Vance spoke with a convention staffer out of earshot of the press, smiling for the cameras. His smile grew when Trump Jr. walked up to him. The two hugged, and Vance jokingly asked whether anyone other than the journalists gathered below the stage to see him would show up for his speech.
Hours later, he was back on the convention floor, shaking hands and smiling. He greeted Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Trump’s box. He also spoke to former New York congressman Lee Zeldin and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), as they waited for Trump to arrive.
On Wednesday, Vance talked about Trump’s resilience after the assassination attempt and attacked the media at a fundraiser lunch.
“I was so terrified that we had just lost a great president … so afraid for him and so afraid for our country,” Vance said. “The media keeps on saying they want somebody to tone down the temperature. Well, Donald Trump got shot and he toned down the temperature. That’s what a real leader does.”
Many Republicans viewed Trump’s decision to pick Vance as a sign he would be the former president’s successor, given that Trump can only serve one term. Yet Vance is one of the least experienced major-party running mates in decades and has undergone a significantly rapid rise from becoming a freshman senator two years ago, said Joel Goldstein, an expert on the vice presidency and professor at St. Louis University School of Law.
“Being selected for a national ticket transforms someone’s life,” he said. “The fact that he’s historically inexperienced is noteworthy.”
Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
