New Delhi: From calling former President Donald J. Trump an “idiot” to now becoming his vice-presidential candidate, James David Vance, who is married to an Indian American practising Hindu wife, is more than just an incumbent junior senator from Ohio.
He is also a bestselling author, a millennial with strong anti-abortion views, with a consistent vote record against Ukraine, a former venture capitalist and an election denier.
Vance is married to successful lawyer and practising Hindu Usha Chilukuri. Incidentally, she resigned from the firm she was working at — Munger, Tolles & Olson — after the Ohioan senator was picked as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate.
Vance, who once called Trump an “idiot” and “loathsome”, has since become one of the former President’s staunchest supporters in the Republican party. The former venture capitalist is a freshman senator, with only a little more than two years in the Senate.
“J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond…,” said Trump in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
The post highlighted the reasons for Vance’s selection — a gamble that as VP pick, he would aid in winning over the white blue-collar workers from battleground states.
The selection of the 39-year old senator also indicated a generational change for US politics and potentially an heir apparent to Trump’s own political movement, one which has moulded the once centre-right political party into his own image.
Who is J.D. Vance?
Vance was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio. His mother struggled with addiction, and his grandmother, whom he fondly referred to as “Mamaw”, was his “saving grace”, according to his personal website.
He finished high school in Middletown before signing up to the US Marines, where he served as a combat correspondent and was deployed to Iraq for six months. After a four-year stint in the US Marine Corps, Vance graduated from Ohio State University and then studied at Yale Law School. At Yale he met with Usha Chilukuri, who grew up in San Diego to Indian immigrant parents.
The two married in 2014. Usha clerked with Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh before he was appointed to the highest court in the US. Usha and Vance are parents to three children — Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
In an interview to Fox News a few weeks ago, Usha highlighted how her parents were religious Hindus. Vance credits Usha for helping him find his faith as a Catholic, even though he was never baptised as a child.
Before joining politics Vance was known for his memoir — Hillbilly Elegy: A memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis — a bestseller that The New York Times labelled one of the six books that would help understand Trump’s unlikely election victory in 2016.
“Now, along comes Mr. Vance, offering a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump,” said The Times in a review of the book.
He had a career in finance, working with venture capitalist Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, before setting up his own firm. According to media reports, Thiel helped bankroll Vance’s campaign to the US Senate in 2022.
The senator has also formed a close friendship with Trump’s son, the heir to his businesses, and the former president’s eldest child, according to media reports.
Anti-abortion China hawk
Since coming into the US Senate, Vance’s political positions have converged with Trump on a range of issues from abortion to the Russia-Ukraine war. According to media reports, Vance had originally argued for a ban on the medical procedure of abortion with no exceptions except if the mother’s life was in danger.
However by October 2022, his position shifted to arguing that the abortion policy was best left to the states to decide — a position that Trump also holds.
“I’d like it to be primarily a state issue. Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable,” said Vance in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer published on 11 October 2022.
Vance has been one of the toughest Republicans on immigration according to media reports. In an advertisement that the Ohioan senator claimed to have written himself in The New York Times, he said Biden’s immigration policies were “killing Ohioans”.
“Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans. With more illegal drugs and more democrat voters pouring into this country. This issue is personal. I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border,” said Vance, while directly looking at the camera.
He has supported Trump’s call for a border wall. In February this year, Vance voted to block a bipartisan border security deal along with most of the Republican party in the Senate.
On the Russia-Ukraine war, the freshman senator publicly stated he did not particularly “care” about what happened to Ukraine “one way or another”.
Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance in February: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” #ohsen #ohleg
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) April 15, 2022
In the Senate, he led the battle against Biden’s $60 billion package of support for Ukraine, which was eventually passed.
“I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war,” wrote Vance in an opinion piece for The New York Times in April 2024.
Just hours after being announced as Trump’s running mate, Vance on Fox News labelled China as the “biggest threat” to the US and said America is “distracted” from the real issue of China due to its support to Ukraine. His comments echo Trump’s tough stand on Beijing during his presidency, which included introducing close to $200 billion as tariffs on Chinese exports.
Similar to his political patron, Vance believed the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, raising the debunked claims of technology companies working with the deep state to censor the former president’s campaign.
“If I had been vice-president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done,” explained Vance in an interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC News earlier this year.
Vance also denied that climate change was a threat.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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