Squiz Shortcuts - JD Vance

Your Shortcut to JD Vance

If you’ve been paying attention to US politics over the last couple of years, you might have clocked the rise of JD Vance in the Republican Party - but you can be forgiven if the first you’d heard of him was when former President Donald Trump announced him as his running mate for November’s election. So in this Shortcut, we’ll get you across:

• who he is

• his brand of politics

• and what the experts say about what he would bring to office.

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Who is JD Vance?
He first became famous for writing his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. It had already sold 3 million copies before he became Trump’s Vice Presidential pick in July - and acclaimed director Ron Howard adapted it into a feature film released in 2020 starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close. 

That rings a bell. What does the JD stand for?
The JD stands for James David. He’s had a few surnames but he was born with the surname Bowman in Middletown, Ohio. That was his father's surname, but when his parents divorced and his mother remarried, he took his new stepfather’s surname of Hamel. That’s the name he went by in high school, into the army, and then through to university. 

What was his childhood like?
It was tough. He grew up in the Appalachian region which is known for high levels of poverty and drug addiction. His mother was an addict and in his book he talks about heroin and prescription drugs being a huge problem for her. That saw him and his sister live with their grandparents for long periods. He was devoted to his grandmother, who they called Mamaw, and that home gave them some stability, but it was far from ideal… For example, he’s recounted the time his alcoholic grandfather came home drunk and Mamaw poured gasoline on him before lighting him on fire.

That’s a lot… 
Yep. After high school he did what a lot of kids in the US do who want a better life for themselves but can’t afford college fees - he joined the military. He was deployed in 2005 as a Marine to Iraq where he worked as a combat correspondent, which is essentially a military journalist. After that he served in the Public Affairs section until 2007. He says his service taught him “how to live like an adult" and afterwards he knew “exactly what I wanted out of my life and how to get there.”

What did he do next?
He went to Ohio State University in 2007 and graduated with a degree in political science and philosophy before enrolling at Yale Law School in 2010.

That’s a fancy place…
It’s an elite school, that’s for sure… He was on a full scholarship for his first year there but had to pay from then on, and as the tuition alone is $100,000 a year, he left with big student debts… But Yale dramatically influenced the trajectory of his life, leading to important connections, including with billionaire Peter Thiel. 

Who’s Peter Thiel?
He’s an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, co-founder of PayPal, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He’s also a political activist. But he’s not what you might expect of a Silicon Valley elite - he’s a conservative libertarian who’s made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. 

How did Vance meet him?
They first connected when Thiel gave a talk at Yale, and Vance ended up working for him in his venture capital fund. A couple of other things happened for Vance at Yale - he was encouraged to write the book on his younger life - that became Hillbilly Elegy - and it’s where he met his wife, Usha Chilukuri. She’s the daughter of prosperous Indian Hindu immigrants who was raised in Southern California and carved out a successful career in the law. They married in 2014, which was around the time he changed his name to Vance… 

So many names… Where does Vance come from?
That was his beloved grandparents’ surname and his mother’s maiden name - and it’s the name he’s made famous.

Why was Hillybilly Elegy such a popular book?
Vance’s memoir became a bit of an explainer on the rise of Donald Trump. In it, he argued that a lack of personal agency was responsible for economic suffering, drug abuse and other struggles in white working-class communities like his. He said those circumstances led to “a willingness to blame everyone but yourself”. That’s a feeling Trump tapped into in 2016 and again in 2020, and now in 2024. But in 2016, Vance was very critical of Trump for doing that…  

How so?
During the 2016 campaign, Vance said Trump was “cultural heroin” and a demagogue who was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” He described himself as “a Never Trump guy” - he even wrote to a friend that he worried Trump was “America’s Hitler”. But he came to see things differently when Trump was in office.

What changed his mind?
Vance says he came to support Trump’s policies because of the angry reaction from liberals - that is, people who are at the other end of the political spectrum from conservatives like Trump and his supporters. He said: “If you even acknowledged that there were reasonable things that Donald Trump was saying, there was this complete overreaction…” By 2020, he’d been swayed enough to vote for Trump in that election.

When did he decide to enter politics?
In 2021, he announced he would run for the Senate as a Trump-aligned Republican. His university friends noticed a change in him at this time - some even said he’d been radicalised. He was elected to the Senate in the 2022 mid-term elections - and critical to that was Trump’s endorsement, which he got by making inroads with Trump’s son Donald Jr. Since arriving in Congress, Vance has been a leading light in a group called the ‘New Right’. They’re a group of young Republicans who want the party to support more populist, nationalist and culturally conservative policies.

Is there a name for his brand of anti-woke thinking?
Yep. The experts call it national conservatism. It’s a political movement that’s sceptical of big business, pushing back on global trade if your nation isn’t winning from it, reducing immigration and protecting borders. Or in Trump’s language - Make America Great Again… 

They wear the red caps. So what does Vance stand for?
For starters, he’s not a fan of America stepping in to save Ukraine. A couple of years ago he said “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Under the guise of tackling what he calls cultural issues, Vance was behind a Senate bill criminalising gender-affirming care for transgender kids, a ban on federal mask mandates, and a crack-down on affirmative action policies at colleges and universities. And he doesn’t believe in abortion, including in cases of rape and incest… 

So, an ultra-conservative type…
Yep, and one more thing - he’s said that if he was the Vice President on 6 January 2021 when rioters stormed the Capitol demanding the election result (which was Joe Biden’s win) be overturned, he would not have certified the result like Mike Pence, the VP at the time, did. 

Sounds like Vance and Trump are quite aligned… 
It does, but election campaigns are stressful and this one has already been a wild ride between the criminal conviction of Trump and the Democratic President Joe Biden pulling out… Some sources who know Vance and Trump well say they could easily fall out because Vance is smart and Trump doesn’t like being threatened. Others say Vance has come this far, and he ain’t about to stuff it up.

Newsmakers on the people behind the headlines

In this episode of Newsmakers Kate Watson sits down with Kerri Elstub. She leads the team of people who produce the news that millions of people consume every day on nine.com.au - that covers sites like 9news.com.au, wwos.nine.com.au and 9honey.com.au. Not only is she incredibly influential in the world of news, but she’s relatable, energetic and positive, so this interview with her is a lot of fun. Dive into the newsletter, listen to the chat, or watch it on YouTube.

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