With the Republican National Convention starting today, GOP presidential nominee (and former president) Donald Trump announced on Monday afternoon that Sen. James David “JD” Vance (R-Ohio) will be his candidate for vice president. Vance — most famous as the author of the best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” — is a populist, who since entering the Senate in 2023 has been a strong proponent of immigration restrictions to protect the wages of American workers, both U.S. citizens and lawfully admitted immigrants.
“After Lengthy Deliberation and Thought”. Trump announced the selection this afternoon on Truth Social:
The “lengthy deliberation and thought part” may have been perfunctory, but it should be noted that Trump values loyalty above all else and Vance is a relative newcomer to the candidate’s cause.
As Reuters noted shortly after that announcement appeared, Vance had been “harshly critical of Trump, both publicly and privately, in 2016 and during the opening stages of [Trump’s] 2017-2021 term”.
He’s now a key ally of the former president, and according to the article:
In media interviews, Vance has said there was no “Eureka” moment that changed his views on Trump. Rather, he gradually realized that his opposition to the former president was rooted in style rather than substance.
For instance, he agreed with Trump’s contentions that free trade had hollowed out middle America by crushing domestic manufacturing and that the nation’s leaders were too quick to get involved in foreign wars.
Read “Hillbilly Elegy” — which details the struggles of his working-class family in the Rust-Belt town of Middletown, Ohio and of his mother’s family in Appalachian Kentucky — and you will see that the socio-economic upheaval caused by globalization shaped his world views (though he is pretty honest about personal accountability, as well). “Hollowed out” is an apt description.
From Middletown to the 2023 Ohio Elections for U.S. Senate. After graduating high school in Middletown, Vance joined the Marines, serving from 2003 to 2007. He earned his undergraduate degree from the Ohio State University in 2009 before attending Yale Law School (J.D. 2013), eventually working as a venture capitalist in San Francisco and becoming an author.
In May 2022, Vance beat out six other candidates to win the Republican nomination to replace two-term Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). In that fall’s election, Vance defeated Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan for the seat by just over six points, compared to the 20-point margin of victory for Portman in 2016.
Wall Construction, Opposition to Amnesty, and a Call for Assimilation. Immigration and border issues featured prominently on Vance’s Senate campaign website.
As a candidate, he opposed amnesty (to ensure Ohio “communities are safe places to live and work and raise a family”), and promised to complete construction of the Southwest border wall and double the number of Border Patrol agents.
He also called for reforms to the legal immigration system, arguing: “In no other developed country do we allow migration primarily based on family relations rather than skills. Millions of people want to come here, and we should only allow them if they contribute something meaningful to our country.”
Vance explained his take on assimilation of immigrants:
Importantly, our ability to assimilate immigrants successfully—something our country should be proud of—is contingent on American leadership that loves this country. Forty years ago, new American immigrants came to a country where bipartisan leaders delivered a simple message: this great country is now your own, and you have a duty to help build it. Today, those same leaders deliver a different message: this is an evil and racist country, and you owe nothing to it. Because of this, our capacity to assimilate the next generation of immigrants is limited. . . . [Emphasis added.]
Compare Vance’s take on the issue with the following points Barbara Jordan — civil-rights icon and then-chairman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform — made in her New York Times op-ed, “The Americanization Ideal”, in September 1995:
Immigration imposes mutual obligations. Those who choose to come here must embrace the common core of American civic culture. We must assist them in learning our common language: American English. We must renew civic education in the teaching of American history for all Americans. We must vigorously enforce the laws against hate crimes and discrimination. We must remind ourselves, as we illustrate for newcomers, what makes us America. [Emphasis added.]
Vance may not have been following Jordan word for word, but those two assessments share a lot in common.
Vance offered his own solution to the challenges of assimilation, as well: “changing who we let in” — logically through a greater emphasis on merits-based immigration — “and reducing the total numbers”.
Assimilation is likely the biggest challenge that has gone unaddressed as illegal immigration has surged under the Biden administration, and it’s to Vance’s credit that he at least recognizes the problem.
Vance has also highlighted — in no uncertain terms — the impacts of the border crisis on the opioid epidemic (yet another topic emphasized on his Senate campaign website) in one of his major TV ads. As he stated therein: “This issue is personal. I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border. No child should grow up an orphan.”
As Vance explained it to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in June:
Most TV ads are written by consultants; this was written by me. I picked up on the campaign trail that there was a strong undercurrent of people who cared about immigration, who didn’t like being called racist for it, and so I decided to do a direct-to-camera ad: “Are you racist? Do you hate Mexicans?” And then I go into: “No, we’re not. This is why we care about the border; this is why I care about the border.”
In the Senate. Vance has four senatorial committee assignments, serving on the Joint Economic Committee, and the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Aging (a special committee).
None of the four committees has a major immigration footprint, but Vance has nonetheless managed to stake out leading position on the issue.
Just last week, for example, Vance grilled Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the impacts of the current immigration crisis on the tightening of the U.S. housing market, “the hindering of American wage growth”, and persistent inflation.
At that hearing, Vance also highlighted the impacts that an influx of 20,000 Haitian arrivals over the past four years have had on housing, education, and healthcare in the southwestern Ohio city of Springfield (pre-influx population: 60,000).
Among other immigration-related bills, Sen. Vance has sponsored or co-sponsored S. 4529, which would mandate the use by all employers of E-Verify, an Internet-based system that enables businesses to determine whether employees are authorized to work; S. 3933, the “Laken Riley Act”, which would mandate DHS detention of certain criminal aliens; S. 3915, which would prevent sanctuary cities from receiving community development block grants; S. 3668, which would allow states to erect protective fencing within 25 miles of the U.S. border; S. 3659, which would include a citizenship question on the decennial census and modify the apportionment of House seats so they are divided up based on the number U.S. citizens, not just residents, in each state; S. 3516, which would impose a fee on certain remittances to fund border security; and S.3187, the “Southern Border Transparency Act of 2023”, which would require DHS to produce certain data.
The immigration-reduction group Numbers USA gives him a grade of “A”.
Primetime Speaking Slot. A CNN poll from the end of June reveals more than half of U.S. adults surveyed, 56 percent have never heard of Vance, whereas 11 percent have a favorable opinion of the VP candidate, 18 percent have an unfavorable opinion, and 15 percent have no opinion at all.
Vance will have an opportunity at the Republican convention to introduce himself to the majority of the electorate who are unfamiliar with him, when he’s scheduled to have a primetime speaking slot on Wednesday night. Expect immigration and the border to feature prominently in his remarks, because he has highlighted them during his brief political career.
