What Working Class, Ivy League Vance Brings to Trump Ticket

While some GOP voters and leaders had favored a female, black, or Hispanic VP to project an image of diversity, others say Mr. Vance fits the bill in another way.

Mr. Vance “already does ‘check a box’ that people kind of overlook … socioeconomic diversity,” Marc Clauson, professor of history and law at Ohio’s Cedarville University, told The Epoch Times on July 16, a day after the former president announced his running mate.

Mr. Vance has lived in both worlds. He grew up poor in the Rust Belt, then graduated from Yale Law and became a venture capitalist, so he bridges the gap between those groups, the professor said.

That’s one reason why Mr. Clauson said he considers Mr. Vance formidable as a VP candidate.

Mr. Vance’s background is different from that of any of the “Republican elites today,” and “that’s something that common people could resonate with,” Mr. Clauson said. The freshman senator also displays a level of sophistication in being able to address the elites from both political parties, he added.

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Several convention attendees told The Epoch Times they believe that Mr. Vance could help forge greater unity, which has become a political watchword following an attempt to assassinate former President Trump at a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Some Republicans expressed a lukewarm reaction to the VP pick because they had hoped for one of the other finalists, but most were of an opinion similar to that of Angela Houston, 53, an alternate convention delegate from Iowa.

“I don’t know what President Trump knows, and I trust President Trump’s judgment and his VP selection, and so I’m fully supportive,” Ms. Houston told The Epoch Times.

California delegate Evelyn Jones said she, too, trusts former President Trump’s decision.

“I have been praying for President Trump to choose the best candidate to support him in this historic campaign,” Ms. Jones told The Epoch Times, adding that she is “excited” to support the Trump–Vance ticket.

She also said it was “extremely emotional” for her to see the former president and Mr. Vance enter the convention floor together as a team for the first time on July 15, the convention’s first day.

Still, some have said Mr. Vance’s political inexperience—he has been a senator for just 18 months—could be a liability. And some anti-Trump people see him as a “Trump clone” because his policy stances closely mirror those of the former president, Mr. Clauson said.

President Joe Biden’s campaign issued a statement criticizing Mr. Vance, saying he would “bend over backward to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda.”

Mr. Vance, 39, is half the former president’s age, so he also could appeal to younger voters.

Jeff Bloodworth, a professor of modern American political history, noted that Mr. Vance differs significantly from former Vice President Mike Pence, who was part of the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021.

“Politically, Vance is the opposite of Mike Pence. He has very little Washington experience and is anything but a Senate insider,” Mr. Bloodworth, who teaches at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, told The Epoch Times.

But merely lacking long-term political experience doesn’t equate to a lack of political success. Former President Trump had never held office before he successfully ran for president in 2016.

Rags-to-Riches Story

“Culturally, Vance makes plenty of political sense. A son of the Midwest’s white working class, he can speak authoritatively to the pains of those who have been left behind by globalization and de-industrialization,” Mr. Bloodworth said.

Before his foray into politics, Mr. Vance wrote a bestselling 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles the loss of the American Dream for many working-class families such as Mr. Vance’s. He grew up in Middletown, a Southwest Ohio city that has struggled along with the decline of the steel industry.

He climbed his way out of his disadvantaged upbringing. He served in the Marines and earned degrees from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. That’s where he met his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance.

As a couple, they therefore could “make an inroad with college-educated voters,” Mr. Bloodworth said.

Also, because she is a daughter of legal immigrants from India, the Vance family can easily respond to critics who claim that “Trump’s GOP is intolerant of immigrants and racial diversity,” Mr. Bloodworth said.

In terms of style, Mr. Vance “won’t be a particularly strong vice president with an independent portfolio,” according to Mr. Bloodworth.

“His job will be to reassure certain voters that Trump will stay in the mainstream,” he said.

“We’ve entered a strange new era of party politics,“ Mr. Clauson said. ”We don’t do things the way we used to.”