Senator James David Vance of Ohio was once an acerbic Donald Trump critic, calling him an idiot, a potential Hitler and ‘cultural heroin’. Trump’s pick for his running mate for the US presidential election in November has metamorphosed into his most ardent defender. The connection seems to be born of personal affinity and not just cold political calculation. Soon after the attempt to assassinate Trump, Vance said the moral responsibility lay with President Joe Biden, since the central premise of his campaign is that Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. Vance, a first-time Senator, is 39. His candidacy for Vice-President is likely to provide a youthful counterpoint to both presidential candidates. The Trump camp will be hoping that it brings fresh energy to the Republican campaign. A close friend of Trump’s eldest son, Vance is being seen as his potential heir, the one most likely to carry his ideological legacy beyond a potential second term.

A Marine Corps veteran, an alumnus of Yale Law School, a successful venture capitalist — Vance is a man of many parts. He is a leading light of the New Right, a populist conservatism that rejects many traditional Republican views. For Trump, Vance’s background — he described a childhood consumed by poverty and abuse in his best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy — gives him a genuine connection to the White working-class voters, especially those in the Rust Belt battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Vance is also uniquely positioned to attract Silicon Valley donors.

Former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, Vance’s classmate at Yale, said this could be the single-most formidable political ticket of his lifetime. Another Yale graduate, Vance’s wife Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants, would agree.
(Tribune, India)