JD Vance has introduced himself to the world after being chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate in November’s US election.
In his speech to the Republican National Convention (RNC), Mr Vance shared his story of growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio, his mother addicted to drugs and his father absent.
He later joined the US marines, graduated from Yale Law School, and went on to the highest levels of US politics — an embodiment of an American dream he said is now in short supply.
“Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I’d be standing here tonight,” he said.
Speaking to a packed arena at the RNC, he cast himself as a fighter for a forgotten working class, making a direct appeal to the Rust Belt voters who helped drive Mr Trump’s surprise 2016 victory and voicing their anger and frustration.
“In small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” he said.
“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this,” he said.
“I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”
The 39-year-old Ohio senator is a relative political unknown, having served in the Senate for less than two years.
He rapidly morphed in recent years from a bitter critic of the former president to an aggressive defender and is now positioned to become the future leader of the party and the torch-bearer of Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again political movement.
The first millennial to join the top of a major party ticket, Mr Vance enters the race as questions about the age of the men at the top — 78-year-old Donald Trump and 81-year-old President Joe Biden — have been high on the list of voters’ concerns.
He also joins Mr Trump after an assassination attempt against the former president — in which Mr Trump came perhaps millimetres from death or serious injury — underscoring the importance of a potential successor.
But Mr Trump’s decision to choose Mr Vance was not about picking a running mate or the next vice president, said Indiana House representative Jim Banks, who introduced the senator at a fundraiser earlier on Wednesday.
“Donald Trump picked a man in JD Vance that is the future of the country, the future of the Republican Party, the future of the America First movement,” he said.
