JD Vance elected vice president and jumped from the Senate to the White House

WASHINGTON – J.D. Vance has become known as one of the best leaders of the next generation of the populist conservative movement president-elect Donald Trump sparked. Now he will officially be Trump’s heir apparent as Vice President of the United States.

It has been a remarkable rise for the junior senator from Ohio, who rose to national fame in 2016 as the author of a best-selling memoir“Hillbilly Elegy,” and who at just 40 years old will be one of the youngest vice presidents in American history.

Vance expects his job as vice president to be “very active.” told USA TODAY in September. “I know the president wants me to be involved in everything, and I certainly hope so.”

Vance has gone from a Republican who was never Trump to a loyalist who is often thought to have been a president one of the most important heirs to the Trump brand of conservative politics.

After a childhood marked by family addiction and abuse in a struggling industrial city, Vance joined the Marine Corps and rose to the elite circles of Yale Law School and Silicon Valley.

His memoir illustrated some of the working-class frustrations that led to Trump’s first victory in 2016, and laid the groundwork for issues that would be central to his politics today. foreign intervention, free trade policies and betrayal by American elites.

Vance became a translator of working-class misery in liberal and centrist circles rattled by Trump’s rise, even as he publicly called Trump “harmful” and “reprehensible.”The American Hitler‘In private.

In the following years, leading up to his election to the Senate in 2022, Vance would undergo a conversion that would make him one of the leading media messengers for Trump’s MAGA movement. He was persuaded to look past Trump’s attitude and found that he favored his policies, Vance said, while his critics have argued that this is evidence that he is duplicitous and willing to do anything for power.

“I think it actually makes him more relatable and even a better VP choice than others because he was a bit Trump-skeptical early on,” said Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. told USA TODAY earlier this year. “He became a believer when he saw President Trump implement policies and decisions that were consistent with what he believes in. I think it’s more authentic and realistic.”

Campaign victories and stumbling blocks

Vance was deployed on the campaign trail to defend the president at fundraisers, rallies and news programs that were not always friendly to him.

He emerged as the clear winner of the only vice-presidential debate against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who lacked Vance’s ease in front of the cameras, regularly ending his meetings by taking questions from reporters.

Vance stood by the president-elect during his most controversial moments of the campaign, including falsely claiming Trump won the 2020 presidential election and defending Trump’s claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating residents’ petswhich he said he heard firsthand from voters, but which local officials said was not true.

But he also caused his own share of controversy. Old comments in which Vance calls Vice President Kamala Harris one of the ‘childless cat ladiesGoverning the Country went viral shortly after he accepted the nomination, along with other previous statements suggesting parents should have more voting rights than childless adults.

Videos of awkward campaign encounters And stupid jokes fueled with ridicule from the left. The combination became fodder for Walz coin the term “weird” to describe those at the top of the Republican ticket.

Trump Vance elected when he thought he was on his way to victory in an easy race against President Joe Biden. When Biden dropped out of the race and Trump faced a younger, more popular Democratic candidate, it led to speculation that Republicans regret the choice of running mate – a rumor in the campaign pushed back.

Vance’s short tenure in the Senate

Vance’s election to the vice presidency will create an opening in his seat in the Ohio Senate, where he will have served for just two years.

Vance will have to resign before he is sworn in on Jan. 20, and Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, will appoint a replacement until the state can hold a special election to fill his seat until the end of his term in 2028.

Despite his short tenure in the Senate, Vance became known as one of the chamber’s leading critics of additional federal aid to Ukraine, arguing that the efforts reflected misguided support for the Iraq War. It puts him at odds with the leader of his own conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

But he has also shown a willingness to work across the aisle with populist senators from both parties on important economic issues. He pushed for action on internet affordability, working with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to crack down on executives at failed banks and with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to push federal regulations to strengthen railway safety.

As vice president, he is expected to continue advocating for the issues he touted during his campaign, including foreign isolationism, increased domestic oil production and tighter border security.

Multiple conservative leaders have told USA TODAY they believe he is modeling the future of the Republican Party.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou told USA TODAY in September, he represents “a realignment” of the party to focus on “working-class Americans who feel they are being left behind in a globalist economy.”

And Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, said both he and Vance believe “there has to be a new conservative movement” that integrates new ideas into long-standing policy goals and brings new constituencies with it. “I think Senator Vance is the leader of that effort, at least among elected officials in DC.”