CNN
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Just two years after winning his first run for political office, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is poised to become vice president — bringing a new generation to power and a potential glimpse into the future of the Republican Party after newly elected President Donald Trump’s second term ends.

Vance, 40, was the first millennial to win a major party presidential nomination and will become the third-youngest vice president in U.S. history.

He is also a former Trump critic whose political evolution, culminating in his becoming the president-elect’s running mate, shows how Trump has taken over the Republican Party and reshaped it in his own image.

Raised by his grandparents in southeastern Ohio as his mother battled drug addiction, Vance joined the Marine Corps after high school and later attended Ohio State University and Yale Law School – where he met his wife Usha Vance – and became a business. capitalist.

His 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” launched Vance to fame in a country seeking to understand the Rust Belt appeal of Trump, who first became president that same year. Vance was a fierce Trump critic at the time, when he emerged as a political commentator.

In private messages, Vance wondered before Trump’s first election if he was “America’s Hitler,” and in 2017 he said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” Publicly, he agreed that Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about ordinary people and called him “reprehensible.”

He later changed his tune and fully embraced Trump in 2020. After wooing Trump in person at Mar-a-Lago and through Fox News appearances, he won the former president’s endorsement in the late stages of a competitive Republican primary in Ohio’s 2022 Senate race. Vance won during his first term that race.

In a show of loyalty, Vance was one of several potential running mates and Republican lawmakers who stood by Trump at a New York courthouse earlier this year during his criminal hush-money trial.

He has also made clear that his views on the constitutional limits on a vice president’s role in certifying election results differ from those of former Vice President Mike Pence, who drew Trump’s ire in January 2021 when he chose not to interfere in the election process. approving electoral votes for Joe Biden.

In Congress, Vance was an outspoken opponent of foreign aid and opposed legislation to send more U.S. aid to Ukraine during the Russian war.

He has embraced conservative culture wars and supported legislation aimed at gender-affirming care for transgender minors and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But he has also taken populist positions, supporting tariffs, opposing corporate mergers and working with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Trump tried to keep up the drama in his search for a running mate, delaying his selection until after the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, and on the first day of the Republican National Convention.

The two had met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on the same day Trump was shot in the ear. Two days later, Trump called Vance to offer him a spot on the ticket. He announced his choice 20 minutes later on Truth Social.

Prior to Trump’s selection, the Ohio senator’s supporters, including Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, argued that Vance had the strongest relationship with Trump of a group of finalists that also included Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota. Gov. Doug Burgum, and that he would be the most loyal selection, multiple sources familiar with the discussions said.

They argued that Vance could appeal to working-class voters seen as essential to winning key battleground states in November, given his upbringing in a poor town in Ohio’s Rust Belt. They also pointed to his wife, Usha Vance — the child of Indian immigrants — as someone who could appeal to minority voters, the sources said.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine described Trump’s choice of Vance on the convention floor as “a great day for Ohio.”

“He echoes Trump’s appeal to working men and women,” DeWine said, adding that he thought it would be wise for Trump to pick someone younger. “Also someone who shares his desire to expand the base of the Republican Party.”

Vance’s selection prompted opponents to gather years of podcasts and other interviews in which he had participated. And one of them — a 2021 podcast in which he told Fox News that the Democratic Party was led by “childless cat ladies,” including Vice President Kamala Harris. – immediately caused controversy when it resurfaced.

Democrats pointed to Vance’s comments as evidence of a Republican Party hostile to women, in a campaign that saw a significant gender gap, in part due to Trump’s appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices who subsequently upended national protections for abortion rights. would overturn Roe v. Wade. 2022.

Vance explained for weeks that the comments were not intended to criticize people who do not have children — especially those who want to but are unable to do so — but rather as a criticism of the Democratic Party as “anti-family.”

Weeks later, he repeated false claims on social media about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio – and defended his decision to do so despite the lack of evidence to support these claims, arguing that he was trying to draw attention on the issue of immigration.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash in September.