EffieJ.D. Vance took the stage at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night and introduced himself to an American public that frankly knows very little about him.
The 39-year-old also laid a clearer, stronger, and sometimes hesitant ideological foundation for the populist conservative movement that won Donald Trump the White House in 2016.
The Ohio senator, who was first elected to office two years ago, began by recounting Donald Trump’s brush with an assassin’s bullet on Saturday.
He then turned to his own personal story – his “hillbilly” childhood growing up in a family with limited income while his mother struggled with drug addiction.
He recounted his experience serving in the U.S. Marine Corps after 9/11, which helped him pay for college.
Some of his speeches were lighthearted. An Ohio State graduate, he engaged in good-natured ribbing with a delegation from Michigan, Ohio’s athletic rival.
He talked about his grandmother, whom he called “Mawmaw” — a nickname for the Appalachian community he came from, he noted. He praised her strength – recalling that her family found “19 loaded pistols” in her home after her death – and said she once warned she would drive down a drug-dealing youth she spent time with.
Then he turned to politics, and Mr. Vance’s speeches became more forceful.
U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyHe railed against what he called elites who were out of touch with reality. He accused Joe Biden of supporting free trade agreements and voting for the Iraq war (both of which were also supported by many Republicans).
“We need a leader who is not part of a big business but someone who is responsible for the workers,” he said.
The former venture capitalist criticized multinational corporations and described the growing wealth gap between “the few with power and comfort” and “the rest of us”.
That kind of rhetoric could find a home among the Democratic Party’s progressive left and make some business leaders in the party wary of their new vice presidential nominee.
Mr. Vance then turned to a topic that sets Trump’s brand of politics apart from the populist left.
He warned of the dangers of immigration, saying undocumented immigrants competed with working-class Americans for jobs and limited housing, exacerbating their plight.
He continues to defend American nationalism with all his strength. America is more than just a good idea, he said, it is “a group of people with a common history and a common future.”
“Simply put, this is a country,” he said.
Mr. Vance, whose wife is the daughter of Indian immigrants, is quick to point out that the United States welcomes “newcomers,” but with an important caveat.
“We allow them on our terms,” he said.
The newly elected vice presidential running mate ended up detailing his family cemetery on a mountainside in eastern Kentucky, where seven generations of his ancestors are buried.
This generational connection, he said, is a reflection of the homeland for which people fought and died, and it represents more than just an abstract idea.
“People don’t fight or die for abstractions,” he said. “But they will fight for their homeland.”
Time and again in his speech, Vance noted his connection to Appalachia — through ancestry and history — and how many people immigrated from the region to work in factories in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
These are key electoral battlegrounds that could determine the upcoming presidential election — and part of the reason Trump chose him as his running mate.
But Mr. Vance’s choice also reemphasizes the core tenets of Trump’s political movement — immigration, trade and energy policies.
When Donald Trump was president, his biggest victories involved corporate tax cuts and government deregulation. However, with Vance in the White House, that means the next time around — if ever — his policies may move in a more populist direction.
On Wednesday night, at least, Mr. Vance pointed to a way forward.
