Photo-illustration by David Samuel Stern via The Atlantic
Yale Law School seeks applicants defined by “academic excellence, professional distinction, and exceptional accomplishments.” Yet, when The Politic asked a former acquaintance of Vice President JD Vance, using the pseudonym Jordan for safety reasons, if Vance particularly stood out in his class, his response was brief: “No.”
Yale Law School is known to produce elite politicians, dedicated public servants, and brilliant legal scholars, and Vance undoubtedly joins their ranks. But what type of student was he? Where did his ideals come from, and when did they begin to shift? A self-described champion of the working class who once criticized the elite profligacy, Vance rose from Middletown, Ohio, to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In serving alongside President Trump, he now occupies the exclusive spaces and elite attitudes he once condemned. As the 2028 elections approach, many wonder whether Vance will campaign as the outcast he once was or the insider he has now become.
Vance’s Early Life
Born James Donald Bowman, Vance is the son of Beverley Vance, a former nurse who struggled with an opioid turned heroin addiction, and Donald Bowman, who left when Vance was a toddler. According to Vance’s memoir, Beverly’s addiction created a disordered home. She often acted aggressively and was arrested when Vance was 12 years old. His mother remarried five times, leading to frequent name changes and a cycle of men entering and leaving Vance’s life. He was eventually taken into custody by his grandparents, who he refers to as “Meemaw” and “Papaw,” and adopted their surname, Vance. He describes them as “the best things that ever happened to me.”
Middletown is located about 40 minutes north of Cincinnati in southwestern Ohio, a region with strong Appalachian roots. Vance’s grandparents moved there from Jackson, Kentucky, deep within Appalachia, an area Vance deeply identifies with. “My grandparents uprooted themselves from the real Kentucky and relocated to Middletucky in search of a better life,” wrote Vance in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. “And in some ways, they found it.”
At 21, Vance joined the United States Marine Corps as a military journalist, serving for four years. “There was college, or nothing, or the Marines,” he wrote. “And I didn’t like either of the first two options.” He spent six months in Iraq, in a non-combat capacity. During his service, he wrote about U.S. interventionism, eventually concluding that the Iraq War was a mistake.
In one piece written before the publishing of his memoir, Vance criticized Trump, but also credited him for expressing an uncomfortable truth that most Republicans cannot. “That the war was a terrible mistake imposed on the country by an incompetent president.”
Following his time in the Marines, Vance used the G.I. Bill to attend The Ohio State University, graduating in 2009. He then attended Yale Law School, respected by students who identified across the political spectrum. He led a reading group, checked citations for the Yale Law Journal, and met his wife, Usha Chilukuri. While Vance was unashamedly conservative in law school, many of his former classmates note that his political orientation has changed over time.
His reading group focused on the social decline of White America, exploring the causes of income inequality and lack of social and economic mobility within their community. The syllabus for Vance’s book club included Allen Batteau’s About Men: Whites Without Money and The Invention of Appalachia. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Sofia Nelson LAW ‘13, a former close friend of Vance, expressed their disappointment in Vance’s political shift over time. During law school, they described Vance as “thoughtful,” “compassionate,” and empathetic toward LGBTQ+ and Black Americans. Writing about his time at Yale, Vance recalled a talk by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. He described it as “the most significant moment of [his] time” and credits Thiel as one of the primary reasons he chose a career in finance over law.
Vance was also inspired to convert to Catholicism following his growing interactions with Thiel, whom he admires for being one of a handful of Catholics in a Silicon Valley bubble of atheists. “My wife has said that the business of converting to Catholicism—studying and thinking about it—was “good for you,” Vance wrote. “And I came, eventually, to see that she was right, at least in some cosmic sense.” Following graduation, Vance worked as a litigator for Sidley Austin until 2015, when he decided to join Thiel’s co-founded venture capital firm, Mithril Capital.
Vance’s Career
In his memoir, Vance criticized the poor decisions of the community, characterizing his neighbors, family members, and friends as “chronic spendthrifts, dependent on government welfare payments and mostly failing to work hard and pull themselves up by their tattered bootstraps.” He denounced what he called a “learned helplessness” among Appalachians, labeling it as a culture of pessimism, laziness, and blame.
“I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better,” Vance wrote.
During his 2016 and 2017 book tour, Vance was a vocal critic of Donald Trump, calling himself a “Never Trump guy” in an interview with Charlie Rose. Moreover, he referred to Trump as “noxious,” “morally reprehensible” and an “idiot” in October of 2016. In a Facebook message exchange with his former classmate and roommate, Josh McLaurin, Vance suggested that Trump could either be a “cynical asshole” like former president Richard Nixon, or “America’s next Hitler.”
In 2017, Vance left Mithril Capital for Revolution, a D.C.-based investment firm that largely invests in startups around Silicon Valley and New York City. He started his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, in 2018 backed by billionaires including Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. In January of 2021, Vance officially announced his plan to run for the open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio that had been vacated by former Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), marking the beginning of his formal political ascent.
Vance’s Political Makeover
The following month, Thiel brought Vance to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The meeting reportedly got off to a rocky start: a pile of papers, including an essay written by Vance criticizing Trump in The Atlantic, lay on Trump’s desk. In the piece, Vance referred to Trump as a “cultural heroin”, accusing him of taking advantage of the struggles of working-class White Americans with oversimplified solutions that shifted blame away from themselves.
“I’m not sure when or how that realization arrives…when his supporters realize that even with a President Trump, their homes and families are still domestic war zones,” Vance wrote. “But it will come, and when it does, I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other. And then, perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of ‘Make America Great Again’ for real medicine.”
During the meeting, Trump reportedly told Vance, “You said some nasty stuff about me,” using an expletive. Vance apologized, later telling reporters that he had fallen for false media narratives.
Trump agreed, noting that given the themes of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance should have understood that both men were competing for the same constituency: non-college-educated working-class white voters, frustrated by immigration, endless wars, and diversity initiatives.The meeting between the two reportedly lasted over two hours, as they discussed the 2020 election and the Ohio Senate race. While Vance did not ask for Trump’s endorsement, Trump followed the race closely and, reportedly impressed by Vance’s performance, endorsed him just weeks before the election.
Vance defeated Democrat Tim Ryan and was sworn into the Senate on January 3, 2023. As a senator, he defended Trump’s actions, calling Trump’s hush-money trial and resulting 34 indictments “an absolute miscarriage of justice.” Another former acquaintance, using the pseudonym Cameron, described Vance’s personality while working in the Senate as “soft-spoken, analytical, and nerdy in private”.
Additionally, Cameron noted that Vance deeply valued antitrust law and remained skeptical of big banks and large corporations. Interestingly, while remaining socially conservative, Vance found common ground with Elizabeth Warren’s economic policy stance, specifically on reducing wealth inequality. During his time in the Senate, Vance also championed the same anti-interventionist and isolationist views that he gained during his time in Iraq, notably voting against aid for Ukraine.
The Vice Presidency
Vance is now arguably Trump’s most loyal advocate. While some view this as a fundamental role of a vice president, it raises the question about whether the office should serve as a platform for personal identity or a vehicle for absolute executive defense.
The Constitution defines the vice president’s role through two primary duties: presiding over the Senate and breaking tie votes, and assuming the presidency if the president dies or is temporarily incapacitated.
Joel Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and author of numerous books on the vice presidency, presidential succession, and constitutional law, further explained the informal relationship between the president and vice president. “Ultimately, a vice president’s power is derivative of their relationship with the president, which means loyalty and trust often matter more than formal authority,” he said. “While modern vice presidents are expected to be involved in governance, how much independence they exercise depends almost entirely on how the president views their usefulness and reliability.”
Goldstein also described how the modern role of the vice president has transformed over time, most notably during the Nixon era, as presidents began granting their deputies more access to the executive branch through meetings, foreign travel, and high-profile spokesperson roles. However, influence remains tethered to leadership style and personal trust.
“While there are now expectations that vice presidents will be involved in governance, their actual role is shaped less by formal authority than by personal dynamics,” he said. “In Vance’s case, his influence will largely turn on whether he is viewed primarily as a loyal defender of the president or as a governing partner within the administration.”
As vice president, Vance has balanced defending the administration’s aggressive anti-immigration campaign, “America First” economic policies, and interventionist foreign policy initiatives with numerous important public appearances. In February 2025, he had a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference. In April 2025, he met with Pope Francis the day before his death.
According to Goldstein, the delegation of such high-stakes tasks suggests that Trump deeply trusts Vance. He also discussed how Vance tries not to stray too far away from Trump: on the rare occasions their positions diverge, Goldstein remarked, it is typically because Trump says something unpredictable and Vance has to figure out how to reorient himself with the president.
2028: In the running or not?
Looking toward the 2028 presidential election, Vance appears to be the likely frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Jim McLaughlin, a longtime GOP pollster and strategist, explained that Vance’s political future will largely depend on his ability to carry forward Trump’s agenda and the outcome of upcoming elections.
“Vice President Vance has an opportunity to continue the Trump legacy in terms of policies and in terms of ideas, but that’s what the nomination process would be about,” McLaughlin told The Politic. “Because the midterms this November will be highly contested and hard fought, Republicans will be challenged to break history.”
McLaughlin acknowledged that midterm elections are usually unsuccessful for the party in power, as has been the case in the last 20 of 22 midterm elections. However, he remains hopeful for 2026; a Republican-held House and Senate would be a powerful legislative force for Vance’s 2028 prospects.
He also noted that Vance’s close alignment with Trump is a strategic asset, as Vance’s favorability is intertwined with that of President Trump’s. “President Trump, among Republicans, is very popular,” McLaughlin said, pointing to his firm’s December survey showing Trump with a 50% approval rating and 47% disapproval rating, which he said reflects a more accurate model of likely voters.
Goldstein also highlighted the inherent advantages of the vice presidency, including the use of Air Force Two, residence at the Naval Observatory, and the incumbency gained by association. He also mentioned Vance’s role as the chief fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, which gives him access to major donors.
Since 1933, 15 vice presidents have launched a presidential campaign; however, only five have gone on to win. McLaughlin described which voter groups he believes would likely form the core of Vance’s support, and which groups within the Republican electorate might present the biggest challenge for him.
“The core of his support will come from Trump voters, and that’s the overwhelming majority within the party, and he’s trying to keep that coalition together,” he said. “If he differs with policies in that base, where, if he were to take positions that split the base based on immigration or taxes or other issues, then he would make parts of that coalition available to other candidates.”
2028: The Challenge for Vance
While there are many advantages to running for president as a former vice president, it also presents many challenges. Goldstein explained how being viewed as “second in command” could potentially disadvantage Vance.
“As Vice President, Vance is seen as number two, and that presents a real challenge for a future presidential run,” said Goldstein. “Voters want to see someone who can lead, and it can be difficult for someone who has spent years acting as a subordinate to suddenly be perceived as the number one. The public has gotten used to seeing him in a supporting role, and overcoming that perception will be critical if he hopes to be taken seriously as a candidate in 2028.”
Goldstein further discussed other obstacles that could emerge from Vance’s campaign. “One of the biggest challenges Vance faces is that he inherits the baggage of the Trump administration. If the administration remains unpopular with certain voters, that unpopularity will follow him, and he’ll have to find a way to separate himself while still maintaining his political identity,” he said. “On top of that, he has limited experience in government, so it’s unclear how well he’ll perform on a national stage or how voters will respond to him as a leader in his own right.”
Maya Koeber-Marx, the Elections Coordinator for Yale College Democrats, and Riley Getchell, President of Yale College Democrats, explained how they believe Vance’s close alignment with President Trump will negatively affect his chances of winning in 2028. For Getchell, this will be especially pronounced in young voters. “I think they’ll look at the fact that he’s blindly gone along with everything Trump has said, and continued to add incendiary stuff on social media. [That] will definitely stick out in the mind of young voters,” she said.
Additionally, Koeber-Marx described how she believes that Vance will struggle to maintain his populist campaign in 2028. “Trump and what he stands for isn’t really about the working class, it’s about protecting billionaires,” she argued. “Vance falls in line with that rhetoric, and even though they try to appeal to working-class voters, many Democratic voters see through it. They view him as someone who ultimately prioritizes the wealthy over issues like healthcare or policies that actually help everyday people.”
It is no secret that Vance has changed. The “hillbilly” from Ohio has traded his working-class roots for a seat at the table of the global elite. Should a 2028 bid materialize, his platform will not just be an extension of his vice presidency, but on the full sweep of his transformation—from Middletown to Yale, from Silicon Valley to Washington. While reinvention is common in American politics, credibility is harder to sustain. In 2028, Vance’s adaptability may prove either his greatest asset or his greatest liability.