Vance calls for unity in personal first speech
J D Vance promised to be “a vice president who never forgets where he came from” in an unusually personal pitch to Rust Belt voters at the Republican convention yesterday.
The Ohio senator’s speech was his first introduction to America on the national stage since being named Donald Trump’s running mate this week.
He spent much of it tracing his roots in the forgotten communities of Ohio and Kentucky, raised by a single mother “who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up” and a “tough as nails” grandmother.
“Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I’d be standing here tonight,” he told party faithful in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as he formally accepted the GOP vice presidential nomination.
“I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from,” he said.
Vance is still relatively unknown to many voters as a first-term US senator, and his biography-rich address was calculated to connect with the so-called “blue wall”, working class who powered Trump’s 2016 victory.
The Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will be critical to the former president’s hopes of reclaiming the White House in November.
Vance made clear he understood their grievances, and their disenchantment with Washington. “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 as he promoted Trump’s populist America-first agenda.
However, there was limited focus on red meat issues and far more attention spent on outlining his unlikely path from a depressed steel town to Yale Law school.
He spotlighted his mother to the audience, who was given a standing ovation by the crowd as he promised her a party in the White House to mark her “10 years clean and sober”.
There were chants of “J D’s mom”, but the audience remained quiet at other points, still acquainting themselves with the relatively unknown Vance. The first millennial to join the top of a major party ticket, his selection as the vice presidential candidate marks his effective anointment as heir to Trump’s populist agenda and his MAGA base.
The Trump campaign hopes the 39-yearold, who is half the former president’s age, will be able to bring fresh vigour to the GOP ticket and reach working class and suburban voters in the battleground states.
Making a virtue of his youth, he contrasted his rags-to-riches embodiment of the American dream with Joe Biden, whom he noted
“has been a politician in Washington as long as I’ve been alive”.
“For half a century he’s been a champion of every single policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer,” he said.
Vance also paid homage to Trump, 78, and his response to the attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
“Look at the photo of him defiant – fist in the air,” he said. “When Donald J Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field – all of America stood up with him.” The former president, watching on in the audience, smiled as he recounted the moment.
Vance, who was introduced by his wife Usha, echoed the calls for the Republican Party, and the country, to unite in the wake of the attempted assassination of Trump.
He said: “We have a big tent in this party on everything from national security to economic policy.” – Telegraph Group