J.D. Vance

J.D. Vance (born August 2, 1984, Middletown, Ohio, U.S.) rose to fame as the author of Hillbilly Elegy (2016), a best-selling memoir of his experiences growing up as a member of the white working class that was published as the United States was roiling with division over the upsurge in populist support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. A lawyer and venture capitalist, Vance parlayed the success of his memoir into a political career. He was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2022, representing the state of Ohio.

Early life and career

Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, a small Rust Belt city in southwestern Ohio. His parents—Don and Bev Bowman—came from Scots-Irish ancestry. He has an elder half sister, Lindsay, to whom Bev gave birth a few weeks after graduating from high school. When James was a young child, his parents divorced. His mother later changed his middle name to David, and he eventually took his mother’s maiden name, Vance, as his surname. His mother struggled for years with drug and alcohol use disorders, and Vance was raised mostly by his maternal grandparents, who had relocated to Middletown from the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky. His family was one of numerous families in Middletown with Appalachian roots.

After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. During his service in the Marines, he was deployed to Iraq to serve in the Iraq War. He later attended the Ohio State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009. He then studied at Yale Law School, earning a law degree in 2013. He subsequently worked for the multinational law firm Sidley Austin LLP and for investment firms in California and elsewhere.

Hillbilly Elegy

In 2016 Vance published Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, a memoir of his experiences growing up in Middletown and the summers he spent with family members in Jackson, Kentucky. In the book, Vance paints a bleak picture of life in those communities, describing an environment in which poverty was a “family tradition” for many people. He relates that substance use problems and domestic violence were commonplace and that hopes for a better economic future were in short supply. Alongside Vance’s harsh descriptions of his childhood, however, are striking memories of his grandmother, “Mamaw,” to whom he pays special tribute for providing the stability that he needed at home and for encouraging him to rise above difficult circumstances.

Hillbilly Elegy appeared during the 2016 election cycle. That year’s presidential contest pitted Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump, whose appeal to working-class whites living outside major cities proved to be a key factor in Trump’s victory. Many reviewers of Hillbilly Elegy praised Vance for providing insight into the lives of this group of Americans. Some contended that the poverty and discontent Vance described explained why working-class whites supported a political outsider like Trump. An interview with Vance by Rod Dreher of The American Conservative published soon after the book’s release was so popular that it crashed the magazine’s website. Referring to the rise of populist support for Trump, Dreher wrote, “You cannot understand what’s happening now without first reading J.D. Vance.” Other critics denounced the book, claiming that it perpetuated harmful stereotypes of poor people living in Appalachia. Some criticized Vance for assuming that his family’s realities applied to everyone else in his home region. A number of books about Appalachia that offered a direct rebuttal to Vance’s were published in the years after Hillbilly Elegy.

Vance’s memoir became a best-seller, and Vance quickly found himself in demand as a lecturer and political commentator. A movie adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard and starring Amy Adams as Bev Vance and Glenn Close as Mamaw, was released on Netflix in 2020. The film garnered some negative reviews, although Close was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.

U.S. senator

In 2016 Vance announced that he was moving back to Ohio from California and founding Our Ohio Renewal, a nonprofit organization that aimed to help disadvantaged children and address problems such as drug addiction and the opioid epidemic. Within a few years, however, the organization folded. Vance also started an investment firm based in Cincinnati. Often mentioned in the news as a potential political candidate, he reportedly considered a run for the U.S. Senate in 2018 but declined to enter the race, saying that the timing was not good for his young family. In early 2021, however, Republican Rob Portman, the junior U.S. senator from Ohio, announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022. Vance decided to enter the race to replace Portman.

During the 2016 election Vance had voiced strong criticism of Trump. In an interview that year with National Public Radio, for instance, Vance bluntly stated, “I can’t stomach Trump,” and expressed fears that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” He also said that he would likely vote for a third-party candidate in 2016. Soon after entering the U.S. Senate race in 2021, however, Vance publicly apologized for his past critical comments about Trump. Despite having lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump remained highly popular among Republican voters in Ohio. Vance made his support for Trump’s policies the centerpiece of his campaign and aligned himself with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. He also repeated Trump’s false claims that there had been widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Buoyed by an endorsement from Trump, Vance placed first in a crowded Republican primary in May 2022. In the November general election he defeated Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan. Vance was sworn in as senator of Ohio on January 3, 2023. In his first year in office, Vance frequently repeated MAGA talking points on social media and podcasts hosted by right-wing commentators, yet he also cosponsored bipartisan bills in Congress on issues such as accountability for CEOs of failed banks. He butted heads with several fellow Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney and GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell, particularly on the issue of U.S. aid to Ukraine to help the country’s war against invading Russian forces. Vance also drew ire for a letter he wrote in December to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which he suggested that the Justice Department should investigate journalist Robert Kagan of The Washington Post for an opinion column that Kagan had published in November in which he said that a second Trump presidency would inevitably turn the U.S. into a dictatorship.