After all the speculation, it’s now official: JD Vance will be Donald Trump’s running mate in November. The subject has been the obsession of delegates here in Milwaukee on day one of the Republican National Convention. In typical Apprentice style, Trump has allowed speculation to build for weeks, as the media picked over various candidates, before picking his favourite as it reached a climax.
As one of two Senators from Ohio, Vance will be entrusted to carry the swing state’s crucial 17 electoral college votes in four months’ time. He will have been picked for his potential appeal to working-class voters in the critical battleground states of the wider Midwest. If Trump is elected, Vance, who turns 40 in August, would be one of the youngest vice presidents in history and one with just two years of elected experience.
It is the first time that a vice presidential candidate for a major political party has been named at a convention since Dan Quayle in 1989 and is another indication of Trump’s enhanced standing since his last pick in 2016. Back then, Trump was a political novice, who plumped for an establishment choice in Governor Mike Pence. Eight years on, his position is untouchable.
His pick for vice president – and a potential future successor – is a standard-bearer of the populist right. Elected to the Senate just two years ago, Vance has positioned himself as a leading figure on the ‘MAGA right’, lambasting aid to Ukraine and America’s overseas commitments. His pick is therefore being interpreted as a blow to the establishment, neoconservative wing of the GOP and further proof that Trump doesn’t want to hand the party back to them when he’s done. Announcing his choice, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account:
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…
If Trumpism is to outlast the man then it needs to mature as a philosophy and build sustainable Republican majorities in the future. Few might be better placed to help in that endeavour than Vance, whose memoir Hillbilly Elegy has become a set text on the Republican right. Intelligent, industrious and shrewd, he will relish taking the fight to Biden, whose campaign rhetoric he held responsible for the assassination attempt on Saturday.
An America First conservative, Vance has frequently called for Europe to spend more on defence. He is, however, well-known to at least one senior figure in the British government. David Lammy, the new foreign secretary, has worked to court the senator, praising his memoir and meeting him on several recent trips to the States. Lammy and Starmer will hope to have a route to Trump’s ear via his vice president, should the Republican duo capture the White House in November.
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