The Buckeye crew cannot contain itself. As it happens, the Ohio delegation on the vast floor of the arena is close to the main stage and they are standing on chairs, waving banners and singing, jubilant at the elevation of JD Vance, one of their own, who has just been announced as the choice to run alongside Donald Trump as vice-president.
Vance was confirmed by Trump’s choice in mid-afternoon, ending months of speculation. From an upbringing in the neglected reaches of the Rust Belt to a potential four-year term in the Naval Observatory, the official residence of vice-presidents, is an extraordinary journey and a singularly American leap into the national imagination.
“He’s not just a fellow Ohioan,” says Tim Ryan, a state delegate. Like the other delegates, he is wearing a necklace adorned with the buckeye chestnut, an Ohioan symbol.
“JD is a fellow marine corps too. I was an infantry marine and to have a marine as VP -that’s amazing. I’m not sure of the last marine who took that office. So, he’s already very patriotic to the country. Truly, our country is founded on the notion of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It’s not just Republican. We are all immigrants. And if we are not the greatest country on the face of the planet, then why is it the number one country everyone wants to come to?”
[ Trump greeted by protests as Republican faithful gather in MilwaukeeOpens in new window ]
[ If the Democrats are to have any chance now, they will have to be braveOpens in new window ]
When Vance emerges beneath a canopy on to the floor of the arena, alongside his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, an attorney, the crowd moves forward to greet him. It’s Ohio’s moment.
One of the contradictions of the United States is that for such a vast place, its communities and circles can be tight. Lots of the wellwishers seem to know Vance, who is grinning helplessly.
Notably sharp and articulate, this is still an overwhelming moment for someone who remains a political novice. Vance (39) chronicled a childhood defined by poverty and his mother’s spiralling addictions, his time in the marine corps where he served in Iraq and his reinvention through education (Ohio State, Yale), in Hillbilly Elegy (2016), a powerful if overpraised memoir which swept through the states with the unstoppable speed of an opioid in its own right.
The narrative was a powerful, emotive explanation of the heartland embrace of Trumpism and was noticeably caustic in its depiction of the then emergent Republican figurehead and also the impoverished communities from which he emerged. In an Atlantic magazine opinion piece in 2016, Vance wrote a piece which depicted Trumpism as a temporary high, a political version of an escapist narcotic.
“The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action – from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realise it.”
“I just can’t stomach Trump. I think that he is noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
— - JD Vance in 2016
He went further, referring to Trump as “loathsome” and “an idiot” and saying in a television interview in the summer of 2016: “I just can’t stomach Trump. I think that he is noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
Vance is entitled to claim that 2016 was eight long years ago. His explanation for his radical switch into becoming a fervent believer is that he was duped by the liberal media vilification of Trump and found himself impressed by his presidency. By the time Trump left office, Vance was a convert and has emerged from obscurity in less than a decade to become a potential vice-president who is stridently anti-abortion rights, voted against the recent aid package to Ukraine and is still wedded to improving the lot of his community in his industrial heartland.
“Even removing our home state bias, I think this is an excellent pick for our president strategically,” says another Ohio delegate.
“A guy like JD has broad appeal in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and if you win one of those this thing is pretty much over. He grew up in my home county, Butler, Ohio. I know what that area is like, and it is like a lot of places in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania. So, I think his experience will carry into his new job. Look, a lot of those places are starting to come back. But growing up you saw boarded-up buildings everywhere. You saw remnants of industry that was once there. And we are trying our best to get some things back in there, but the legacy remains and there’s a broad swathe of the country still living through that.”
Standing nearby, Amanda Suffecool, the Republican chairwoman for Portage County, says she has been following Vance’s shortening odds for some time. “It gives us a level of importance in DC that Ohio hasn’t had in a while,” she says, explaining that as a regional director for a group called Women For Gun Rights, she is optimistic that Vance will use his constitutional bent to redress what that groups sees as a steady infringements on gun rights.
“This is a very well educated and professional group who are fighting for retaining gun rights because self defence is a human right. It allows you to level the playing field and not be victimised. We need criminal reform. What has happened in the United States is that we have gotten softer on crime and harder on guns.”
The shooting in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, at which one spectator was killed and during which a bullet grazed Donald Trump’s right ear, will come to be defined as the inflection point of this election. Suffecool nods at the equation that if gun ownership is eliminated, then such atrocities can no longer happen.
“I understand and it is an easy utopia to say: we are going to eliminate all guns. But look at the knife crime in England. Crime is the problem. What happened with president Trump: we have polarised all our citizens and there have been calls for him to be in the sights. And those take people who are not necessarily as stable as one would hope and give them ideas.”
Her hope, and that of millions across the Republican sweep of the Rust Belt, is that the anointment of Vance, a son of America’s post-industrial heartland, will give them a voice again. They make for an unlikely pairing: Trump, the symbol of American billionaire excess and acquisitive wealth and Vance, who came from less than nothing.
And just before 9pm last night, rumours that Donald Trump would enter the building hardened into reality. Bearing a white gauze plaster over the gunshot wound to his ear, Trump absorbed a rapturous greeting from those gathered at the convention. It was a messianic return from what was a near-miraculous evasion of death and waiting for him alongside family members and GOP grandees was his new vice-presidential pick.
Trump and Vance, then. The pair smiled and laughed as the crowd chanted and cheered. Not many people get to call out Donald Trump for an idiot and enjoy his good graces afterwards. But there it was. The epic ideological journey of JD Vance was complete, even as an entirely new world of political possibility was laid out before his eyes.
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