He’s one of the favorites to become Donald Trump’s running mate, but J.D. Vance seems to be losing a bit of steam all of a sudden.
What’s going on with J.D. Vance? When we checked in on the Veepstakes race last week, both Bovada (find out more with our Bovada Review) and BetOnline (find out more with our BetOnline Review) had Vance priced at +500 to join Donald Trump on the Republican presidential ticket. Now, as we go to press, Vance is between +600 and +500 at political betting sites.
This is a bit of a surprise. Vance had plenty of momentum in the vice presidential race, having moved up aggressively from +3500 over the past month. He’s about to join Trump on stage this Wednesday in Cincinnati for a high-profile fundraiser. Something must be bubbling up behind the scenes.
Maybe a little journalism will help us sort this out. Let’s dig deep, peel back the layers and see what the real story is with Mr. Vance and his rise to power.
Who Is J.D. Vance?
Vance is the junior senator from Ohio, and a native of the greater Cincinnati region – Middletown, to be specific. After serving in the Iraq War with the Marines doing public affairs work, Vance got his BA summa cum laude at the University of Ohio, and his JD (Juris Doctor, or Doctor of Law) at Yale. He turns 40 this August.
You wouldn’t know it from that description, but Vance grew up poor in Middletown. Steel mills were closing across the Midwest and drugs became a problem; Vance was raised mostly by his maternal grandparents, and for a while went by the name of James Hamel, taking his stepfather’s surname. You can read all about it in Vance’s 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
What you won’t find in that book is any direct mention of Donald Trump. In fact, Vance was very much in the “Never Trump” camp at the time. However, his book does provide some explanation for Trump’s increasing popularity among the working class, specifically those of European descent.
Why Did Vance Embrace Trump?
It may have been because of his wife. While studying at Yale, Vance met Usha Chilukuri, the woman he would marry in 2014. Chilukuri became a clerk for Brett M. Kavanaugh (also a Yalie), who was then an appeals court judge; when Trump nominated Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court in 2018, Vance changed his tune – especially when the Democratic Party lashed out at Kavanaugh during the Senate Judiciary Committee public hearings.
Before all that happened, Vance was very much a Never Trumper. He even referred to Trump as “cultural heroin,” and said he was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” But in 2022, thanks in large part to Trump’s endorsement, Vance won the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, then defeated Tim Ryan 53% to 47% to keep that Senate seat for the GOP.
Is Vance a Trumpist?
Sort of. Whatever distaste Vance may have had for Trump in the past, there isn’t that much separating the two; Vance was raised conservative, and worked as a venture capitalist for Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a firm believer in the “national conservative” movement.
This is where Vance and Trump intersect. National conservatism is all about cultural identity and “family values” – think Viktor Orbán in Hungary, or the AfD party in Germany. As a product of the Appalachians, it wasn’t much of a stretch for Vance to go to the same place he previously warned everyone about.
Having said that, Vance might be cooking up something even more radical than Trump’s MAGA Republican stew. It’s called the New Right, and while it isn’t exactly new, it’s definitely to the right of Trump on the political spectrum.
What Is the New Right?
As a blanket term, the New Right refers to a certain global strain of right-wing populism that emerged in the 1960s and really picked up after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, in the United States itself, the “First New Right” started in 1955 with William F. Buckley’s National Review, and the “Second New Right” after Barry Goldwater’s failed bid for the presidency in 1964.
This second iteration includes all the familiar characters from the Republican storybook: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and so on. Now it’s Vance (and Thiel) leading the next generation, and it’s even more populist than before.
Maybe we should be calling it the Third New Right – although that does sound a lot like “Third Reich,” doesn’t it? It might even be a bit too ambitious for Trump’s liking, which could explain why Vance has fallen down a step on the politics odds board. Bet accordingly.
