Minutes into his first solo event as Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance had already divided his hometown audience here – over donuts.
While reconnecting with the locals in the crowd over shared memories and favored haunts, Vance posited taking his security detail to nearby Central Pastry Shop after his event.
Amid laughter, stans of a rival donut shop shouted at the stage: “Milton’s!”
The Ohio Republican, in damage control mode, offered to the dissenters, “I love Milton’s, too.” Crisis averted.
Vance has already faced far greater upheaval than pastry debates since joining the Republican ticket – more than perhaps any modern vice presidential nominee. The political landscape Vance stepped into 10 days ago is no longer recognizable after President Joe Biden abruptly ended his campaign. The fallout has left him without a Democratic counterpart after Vice President Kamala Harris quickly emerged as her party’s presumptive nominee. It could be more than a week before Harris selects her running mate.
“I was told I was going to get to debate Kamala Harris, and now President Trump’s going to get to debate her?” Vance joked Monday in the Middletown High School auditorium, surrounded by his wife and friendly faces from his childhood. “I’m kind of pissed off about that if I’m being honest with you.”
Even before he took the role, Vance entered the job unlike any of his predecessors. While playing minigolf with his kids and awaiting word about Trump’s pick, Vance learned the former president was bloodied during a Pennsylvania rally by a would-be assassin’s bullet. His selection two days later – kept secret until the former president’s dramatic reveal to kick off the GOP convention – bitterly divided Trump’s wide circle of allies and advisers, some of whom had publicly lobbied for other Republicans during the prolonged public audition.
Now Vance, chosen by Trump as an heir to his MAGA movement as much as a running mate, is navigating an assignment that seems to be changing on the fly. And he does so with the knowledge that his new boss pays close attention to how his allies and staff perform on television and in public appearances. Trump nearly picked Doug Burgum over Vance in some measure because he thought the North Dakota governor looked the part.
Asked Tuesday if he would have chosen someone different had he known that Harris would become his likely Democratic opponent, Trump said, “I’d do the same pick.”
“He’s doing really well,” Trump said of Vance. “He’s really caught on.”
An unknown quantity introducing himself to voters and donors
Trump tapped Vance in part to reinforce his party’s efforts to win over White working-class voters throughout the Rust Belt, a region Vance spent most of his life in and captured in the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” When he called Vance to offer him the vice presidential nod, Trump said he thought the first-term Ohio senator could help the GOP flip Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Vance leaned into his biography during his appearance Monday in Middletown, where someone held up a homemade “2028 Vance for President” sign. He shared stories of his maternal grandmother, “Mamaw,” and about growing up in a community turned upside down by unemployment and drug addiction.
It’s a background that Vance has often traced back to Appalachia and his “hillbilly” decedents, and one that Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear – seen as a potential Harris running mate – sought to undermine Monday.
“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like,” Beshear told MSNBC in response to a question about running on a ticket with Harris. “Because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here.”
Vance later responded with a jab at Beshear’s legacy as the son of a former governor.
“Nobody gave me the governorship, and nobody gave me a job because of who my father was. I’m proud of that,” he said.
Vance, a former venture capitalist who has already introduced Trump to his network of wealthy friends in the tech industry, is hitting the donor circuit as well, starting Wednesday with a fundraiser in Indiana. He has another half dozen planned in the coming week, according to two sources familiar with the schedule and first reported by The New York Times, and will appear at a joint fundraiser with Trump in Doral, Florida, on Thursday.
Vance will also be relied on to match the campaign schedule of a Democratic ticket led by a more energetic candidate than the 81-year-old Biden. He’s slated to hold five events in two days next week spanning two key battlegrounds, Nevada and Arizona.
But Vance remains a largely unknown quantity, and Democrats have moved quickly to attack the Republican over his past stances, especially his opposition to abortion in almost every instance.
On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee circulated a clip of Vance comparing abortion to slavery and asserted in a statement: “The Trump-Vance ticket is running on a cruel, dangerous, and wildly unpopular anti-choice agenda that the American people will reject this November.”
Vance, who previously supported a nationwide abortion ban, shrugged off his views as inconsequential given Trump’s latest stance opposing new federal restrictions on the procedure.
“I’m running as the vice presidential nominee, not the presidential nominee, and if I want my views on abortion to dominate the Republican Party, then I’d run for president. I didn’t, and I haven’t,” Vance said on a plane ride from Ohio to Virginia earlier this week. “Donald Trump ran for president, and I think that it’s important as a party we say the voters have decided here. Trump having won has decided what the platform is.”
Finding his way in Trump’s shadow
In Middletown, it was clear Vance was still finding his footing on the stump. A half hour late to his event, Vance and his wife, Usha, stepped onto the stage without entrance music and fumbled through some handshakes before he somewhat awkwardly approached the lectern and she left to find her seat.
At their first joint appearance in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday, there was little doubt who between Trump and Vance was the main act and who was the warmup. Vance delivered short remarks focused mostly on the former president and then reappeared 90 minutes later, priming the audience by introducing Trump, who still wasn’t ready to take the stage, much to the crowd’s disappointment.
When Trump finally emerged to his signature entrance of “God Bless the USA,” Vance clapped alone for a time as the former president absorbed the cheers. They stood briefly together side by side and quickly embraced before Trump stepped up to the lectern. Vance left the stage and didn’t reappear again that evening.
On television, though, Vance has quickly settled into his role as chief Trump surrogate.
When Fox News asked Vance and Trump in a joint interview if the pressure campaign against Biden was a “coup,” Trump somewhat balked. “Sort of,” he said. Vance, though, pounced.
“If Joe Biden can’t run for president, he can’t serve as president,” Vance said. “And if they want to take him down because he’s mentally incapable of serving, invoke the 25th Amendment. You don’t get to sort of do this in the most politically beneficial way for Democrats. If it’s an actual problem, they should take care of it the appropriate way.”
The unlikely pairing of Trump with a freshman senator half his age will be closely watched in the coming months for signs of discord, especially given the former president’s past treatment of his onetime running mate Mike Pence. Vance’s previous outspoken objections to Trump have already generated fodder for Democrats looking to paint the Ohio Republican as an ambitious shape shifter willing to say what it takes to get closer to power.
But Barbara Duerk, president of the Roanoke Valley Republican Women in Virginia, told CNN said she likes that he changed his mind.
“What I liked about Vance is that he was a ‘Never Trumpster,’ and he learned and saw, and that’s what I encourage all people to do, whether they be Democrats or Republicans,” said Duerk, a self-described former Democrat.
The age difference didn’t bother Mary May, another Roanoke voter, who connected with Vance’s stories about his mother’s addiction struggles.
“We need some young blood,” May said. “He’s for the people.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
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