He now has a beard, tours conservative television programs and still likes to talk about his origins and the Appalachian region: JD Vance, who became famous in 2016 with his book "Hillbilly Elegy", plans to go to Washington next year as a senator for Ohio . So far, there are ten other applicants against whom Vance would have to prevail in the Republican primary in early May. The thirty-six year old has one disadvantage: he criticized Donald Trump in 2016. Those who do this usually have a hard time in the primaries, because the former president collects millions of dollars in donations for his candidates.
Vance described the political ideas of the then presidential candidate Trump as despicable and absurd. He particularly emphasized Trump's harsh rhetoric against immigrants: Trump scares “people who are close to my heart”, especially immigrants and Muslims. In "Hillbilly Elegy" Vance described his childhood in a poor family in Ohio. He achieved social advancement, fought in the Iraq war, studied law at Yale. Like many observers at the time, Vance believed that the underprivileged whites who were featured in Hillbilly Elegy would tend to support Trump temporarily because he seemed to take their concerns seriously. Meanwhile, Vance also knows how unwavering the loyalty of many Republican voters to their idol is, and that this is also based on convictions in terms of content.
Correspondingly, the lawyer now speaks differently about Trump.
Vance is serious about his Senate seat dream, and he knows what to do.
He recently told Fox News, "I ask people not to judge me by what I said in 2016 because I am very open about saying these critical things and regretting them." Trump is a good president who made many good decisions for people and received a lot of criticism.
Trump used the mood that Vance described
In 2016, Vance was praised by many critics for appearing to give the people of the countryside in the impoverished Appalachian region a voice when he said, for example, that the free trade policies of the past decades led to a negative attitude towards immigrants - and not to racism. In a column at the time, Vance wrote: “In our cities factories are closing or moving overseas. We may have compassion for the Mexican immigrant trying to offer his family a better life, but many see these immigrants primarily as competition for fewer and fewer jobs. ”Trump took advantage of this mood.
Trump later turned his rhetoric into politics - family separations followed as a deterrent strategy on the southern border, restrictions on the right to asylum, the entry ban for people from certain Muslim countries and Trump's ultimately unsuccessful fight against the DACA program for children of immigrants without a visa.
As President, Trump also encouraged his supporters to openly racism, for example when he defended the right-wing violent criminals in Charlottesville in 2017.
During his presidency, the number of hate crimes rose 20 percent, according to the FBI, and most of them were committed by white racists.
Opinion polls showed that Trump's voters often approved of his positions with great enthusiasm.
Vance now has to convince these people too.
Trump and Vance are similar to each other
Politically, Vance is very similar to Trump. An election commercial portrays him as an outsider who is about to “stir up the system”. One of his demands is that corporations that move jobs abroad should be taxed higher. Behind the election campaign is a Political Action Committee called "Protect Ohio Values", which is funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance is currently in third place in polls - the most promising candidate for the Senate seat is Ohio's party chairman Jane Timken, who can also hope for Trump's official support.
But because Vance is prominent and is now so obviously behind Trump, there could be surprises in the next few months. Vance has retained fans in the mainstream media as well. Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen wrote, for example, that the author is really interested in the working class, and that he “scares” “the elites” on the right and left is a good thing. While leftists do not see a real representative of the working class in Vance, conservatives accuse him of his populism and protectionism - not a few would like to return to market radicalism and leave the Trump era behind. But they know what Vance also knows: that, in addition to racism, economic populism in particular was decisive for Trump's success on the grassroots.