After months of chasing and speculation, Donald Trump has finally revealed his Republican running mate. He waited until the last moment to make the announcement during his party's convention in Milwaukee. The former president and Republican presidential candidate selected Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate and running mate if he wins the November 5 election. Trump's choice came days after an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, he has toned down his rhetoric and called for unity — unity around the person of Donald Trump.
“After long deliberation and consideration, and after considering many other outstanding talents, I have decided that the person best qualified to serve as Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio,” Trump announced in a message on his social media account “Truth Social” looking back on the backgrounds of his running mates. For Vance, Trump chose a young man he trusts for his loyalty, but who also takes hardline, sometimes extreme, political positions. This choice doesn't quite fit with the moderation promised by the former president.
The announcement was made minutes before Vance's name was announced at the Republican National Convention, as delegates were casting their votes for Trump, who was officially declared the party's nominee. The former president tasked Vance with focusing on the Midwestern, Rust Belt states that he will represent due to his background. “JD has had a very successful business career in technology and finance, and now during this campaign he will focus on the people he fought so well for – American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and beyond,” Trump added.
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are three key states that Trump won in 2016 and Biden recaptured for the Democrats in 2020. Maintaining the so-called “blue wall” is Biden's only chance of reelection. If the incumbent president holds onto these states, he could concede the other three most competitive states: Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
An hour after Trump announced his pick on Monday, Vance appeared on the convention trading floor at the Fiserv Forum, exchanging hugs and signing autographs, and minutes later, to a cheer from delegates, he was officially selected as the vice presidential nominee.
James David Vance, better known as J.D. Vance, became famous for his memoirs. Hillbilly Elegywas published in 2016 and later made into a film by Netflix. He won the nomination as the Republican candidate for the Senate in 2022 with the decisive support of Trump politically, and billionaire Peter Thiel financially. Born in Middletown, Ohio, he is 39 years old. The son of divorced parents in a poor white family in the Appalachian region, he was raised by his grandparents (from whom he takes his last name). As a young man, he was a Marine and served as a combat correspondent in Iraq. After studying political science and philosophy at Ohio State University, he earned a law degree from Yale University, where he met his wife, lawyer Usha Chirukuri, with whom he has three children.
Vance began working at a law firm, then moved to San Francisco and moved to the technology industry as a venture capitalist. He was a director at Peter Thiel's firm, Mithril Capital. His best-selling memoir was seen as a key to understanding the anger of the white working class, who felt they were on the losing end of globalization and saw in Trump an opportunity for revenge. He continued his career as a venture capitalist with various companies as his interest in politics was piqued.
From critic to critic
Vance criticized Donald Trump during the 2016 election, became a member of the Never Trump movement, and even called Trump “American Hitler.” He later deleted his Twitter messages criticizing the former president and supported Trump in his 2020 reelection campaign, especially after Trump announced his candidacy for the Senate, where he expressed his unconditional support. He has maintained his loyalty even after becoming a senator, and is very close to Donald Trump Jr. Trump himself did not miss the opportunity to publicly humiliate Vance in 2022. “JD is on my ass and he wants my support so badly,” Trump said at a rally in Ohio during the 2022 midterm election campaign.
A climate change and election denier (he has defended the fiction that Trump won the 2020 election, which was stolen from him), critic of U.S. military aid to Ukraine and a staunch conservative, Vance was an evangelical Christian who converted to Catholicism in 2019.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on the former president, Vance became one of the toughest voices against Democrats, saying the shooting was “not an isolated incident.” “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric directly led to the assassination attempt on President Trump,” he tweeted.
Of the roughly 20 names on the ballot, the only ones garnering attention besides Vance were Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who were considered the unofficial finalists.
Joe Biden's campaign sharply criticized Vance's nomination: “Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate because he will do what Mike Pence did not do on January 6th: do everything in his power to support Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and whatever harm it may cause the American people,” they said in a statement. They added that Vance “is known as one of Washington's most far-right extremists.”
In 2016, amid a scandal over sexist remarks and questions about his honesty, Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence described himself as a “Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” and the former president even called him “too honest.” Pence ran again in the 2020 election, but clashed with the then-president for calling for the blocking of the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election.
Sometimes, a running mate is chosen to win certain states or to bolster a candidate's candidacy in a district where he is weak. That led many to speculate that Trump would choose a woman, an African-American, a Latino, or someone relatively young. Personal loyalty also factored in who had enough MAGA to meet Trump's requirements. That appears to have influenced the decision this time.
The role of the vice president
Either way, Trump believes he wins the election and that it doesn't really matter who's on his side. “Well, it's never had that big of an effect on an election,” he said a few months ago. That's probably even more true after his June 27 debate with Biden and last week's assassination attempt.
The Vice President's role also becomes less important once in office. The Vice President's main responsibility is to act in place of the President in the event of the resignation, incapacity, removal, or death of the sitting President. This has happened relatively frequently in U.S. history; nine Vice Presidents have held this role.
The Vice President also serves as the President of the Senate, casting the deciding vote in the event of a tie vote; Senator Kamala Harris had to exercise this frequently during the first half of the Biden administration. In practice, the Vice President does not usually preside over meetings, except in exceptional cases such as the State of the Union or when a tie vote needs to be cast. Other functions are at the discretion of the President. Some Vice Presidents are responsible for specific policy portfolios, while others simply act as senior advisors to the President.
Before the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, electors voted only for president, and the person with the second-highest number of votes became vice president, even if he was from the opposing party.
If Trump wins, the new occupant of the Naval Observatory, the home of the vice president since Walter Mondale under Jimmy Carter, would also be at the forefront of the race to succeed him. Five vice presidents have since been elected to the White House.
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