You’re hired: Sen. J.D. Vance is Trump’s running mate

MILWAUKEE—The Merle Haggard song “America First” played as Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, walked onto the floor at the Republican National Convention to accept the party’s nomination as vice president. Former President Donald Trump’s newly announced running mate is a veteran, junior senator, former Trump critic, a bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

If elected, Vance, who turns 40 next month, will be the youngest vice president since Richard Nixon in 1952. In Washington, he is called a member of the “New Right,” a hardline conservative wing in the GOP. He has criticized sending military and monetary aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Vance endorsed a federal law protecting babies from abortion at 15 weeks of gestation and beyond but last month said that he supports access to the abortion pill mifepristone. He said that if he had been in the Senate in 2020, he would not have voted to certify Biden’s electoral victory. The former lawyer is also a close friend of Donald Trump Jr. Billionaire Peter Thiel has been Vance’s top donor.

Before announcing his pick, Trump drew out the suspense. He floated several names for weeks, regularly touted the accomplishments of an eight-member rotation of lawmakers and politicians, and teased that he likes to keep people guessing. On Monday morning, his campaign began calling vice presidential hopefuls one by one.

“It’s like a highly sophisticated version of The Apprentice,” Trump said last week, referencing the reality TV show he starred in for over a decade starting in 2004.

According to convention rules, Trump had to announce his running mate on Monday rather than waiting until later in the week. New rules passed this year sped up the process for formally nominating Trump and his vice presidential pick.

Before taking federal office, Vance had called Trump “America’s Hitler” and “a total fraud.” After a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump on Saturday, Vance accused the political left and the media of extreme rhetoric against the former president that led to political violence.

Vance is married to Usha, whom he met while at Yale Law School, and is the father of three children under age 8. Delegates at the RNC said Trump’s selection of a young running mate is a message about the future of the party.

“It’s almost a passing of the baton,” Arkan Somo, a California delegate, told me. “Vance has the conservative values. He is very loyal to Donald Trump and his policies and his vision for the country. Donald Trump is very thoughtful. He’s a very long-vision type of person. And he wants to make sure when he is termed out, he’s leaving it in good hands. And I think J.D. Vance is one of the best.”

In terms of election math, though, Vance might not add much to the ticket.

“Vance strikes me as a somewhat cautious choice,” Morris Fiorina, a political science professor at Stanford, told WORLD. “Trump already is strong in the Rust Belt states, so Vance doesn’t add a lot there, and he doesn’t help Trump broaden his appeal as an ethnic like Rubio or a woman might. But the guy is a Yale Law School graduate, so Trump can at least say that he’s chosen someone with the intellectual chops to be president.”

Some voters in swing states said that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley would have added better appeal for moderates to the ticket.

“If I’m looking at the math—and though he is from Ohio, and that’s an important state—I’m not sure he brings as much as a Nikki Haley to the party,” said Jesse Knight, a North Carolina delegate. “She knows world leaders. The fact that she’s a woman, the fact she was a great governor, herr strength she showed when the issue of bringing down the Confederate flag was something that could have destroyed many a leader, [but] she came up with that very successfully.”

Trump has already agreed to a vice presidential debate, but it has not yet been scheduled. In a press call on Monday, the Biden campaign called Vance an “extreme” addition.

“With Trump and Vance now entering the general election, they are coming to the Biden campaign, and I will take that matchup any day of the week,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said. “Biden and Harris are fighting for the American people. With Trump’s ticket set, it’s more clear than ever that our rights, our freedom, and our democracy are on the line.”