The Catholic convert brings a fighter persona and outsider’s view to politics.
Donald Trump’s first running mate, Mike Pence, appealed to conservative evangelical voters by offering what Trump lacked: political experience, a pro-life record, a steady demeanor, and outspoken Christian faith.
Two presidential elections later, Trump’s 2024 pick for vice president, J. D. Vance, appeals to conservatives by being like the former president: a fellow political newcomer, a populist, and a fighter unafraid of shaking up the system.
He’s “somebody who can carry on the core of what President Trump did in his first administration for a while to come,” said Aaron Baer, president of Center for Christian Virtue, based in Vance’s home state of Ohio.
Vance rose to national prominence through his 2016 bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which drew attention to the lives and faith of working-class rural Americans.
Since then, he’s converted from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism and from a Never Trump conservative to a faithful “Make America Great Again” Republican, successfully running for US Senate with Trump’s endorsement in 2022.
Political commentators are already talking about how a victory for the Republican ticket in November would put Vance in a strong position to contend for the nomination come 2028—under a national conservative or America First style of politics that comes as a departure from the old guard conservatism that someone like Pence represented.
“He appeals to the kind of younger, religious, political evangelical,” said author Hannah Anderson, who has written about rural life and ministry and reviewed Vance’s book for CT. “There’s a lot of questions …
