MILWAUKEE — JD Vance, a first-term senator from Ohio, introduced himself to the country as Donald Trump’s pick for vice president at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, highlighting his upbringing in a fractured, working-class family to push back on Democrats’ economic and foreign policies. 

“I want to give my kids the things that I didn’t have when I was growing up, and that’s the accomplishment that I’m proudest of,” Vance said on stage to an enthusiastic Republican crowd. 

He described a “sacred duty … to preserve the American experiment, to choose a new path for our children and grandchildren,” arguing that Trump is “America’s last best hope.”

Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, in between Dayton and Cincinnati, and was largely raised by his maternal grandparents due to his mother’s struggles with addiction. It was a family shaped much differently than the ones his policies seem to encourage. In his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” he wrote about living in poverty and the impact that had on his worldview, with affectionate nods to his grandmother, known as “Mamaw.”  The book was later made into a movie. 

In the book, Vance suggested his fellow residents of Middletown needed to take greater responsibility for their economic situations. Since entering politics, Vance has instead reframed the people he grew up with as victims of bad trade deals and economic policies negotiated and implemented by political liberals. It was a recasting he doubled down on Wednesday night. 

Vance is a Yale Law School graduate, former venture capitalist and onetime Trump critic who has since embraced the former president’s substance and style, denying Trump’s valid loss in the 2020 election to Democratic President Joe Biden. Over the year and a half that Vance has been in Congress, his focus on parenting and defining the American family in accordance with his conservative values — and then using policy to protect that vision — has been central to his legislative work. 

Vance did not detail policy specifics Wednesday night, focusing instead on his family.  His wife, Usha Vance, whom he met at Yale, introduced him. He said he hoped his three young children were not watching, but at their hotel room and in bed. He announced that his mother was nearing 10 years of sobriety and suggested they could celebrate it in January at the White House. The crowd started chanting: “JD’s mom! JD’s mom!”

Some of the biggest applause lines of the night were about his grandmother, Mamaw. He described her threatening him to keep out of trouble and finding 19 loaded guns in her house after she died. He called her a “guardian angel” and “tough as nails.”

“Mamaw couldn’t get around so well, and so this real old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family,” Vance said. “That’s who we fight for.”

He added that politics is “about grandparents all across this country, who are living on Social Security and raising grandchildren they didn’t expect to raise.”

Many of Vance’s policy proposals have focused on supporting nuclear, heterosexual, intact families configured differently than his own growing up. In the Senate, Vance has introduced partisan bills to support stay-at-home parenting by prohibiting employers from clawing back health insurance premiums paid while employees are out on parental leave if they decide not to return; “protect children’s innocence” by banning gender-affirming care for minors; investigate race-based admissions considerations at colleges and universities; prohibit immigrants who are temporarily shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from receiving health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act; and empower the federal government to promote English as the country’s “official” language.

On Wednesday night, Vance leaned into the Republican Party’s vein of economic populism that Trump capitalized on during his rise, saying the country needs “a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man.” He referenced his parenthood and his wife’s career in law, but made no mention of America’s child care crisis. 

Convention-goers told The 19th ahead of his speech that they believed many voters would relate to his personal story. 

Penny Nance, the president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group working to get more women out to vote to support Trump, said she sees in Vance a candidate who will connect to women’s concerns about cost of living increases given his background. 

“I actually had the experience of as a kid going to the grocery store and having to put things back because I couldn’t afford to pay. Women all over this country know that at the end of the month, no matter what they’re told by their leaders, if they have less money in their checking account, they can’t pay their bills,” Nance said. “I love that JD Vance has experienced that, he knows.” 

Concerned Women for America is launching a 12-state battleground tour in a pink bus emblazoned with, “She Prays, She Votes.” On Wednesday, ahead of Vance’s speech, dozens of convention-goers signed their names onto the bus.

Tamara Stephan of Buffalo, New York, echoed similar thoughts, saying that Vance can relate to many Americans because he “has struggled with money. His family has struggled with money… He’s not just saying it as a talking point.” 

Vance on Wednesday made no mention of abortion, and even skipped the vague references to “protecting life” that were staples of past Republican conventions. He staunchly opposes abortion, though he has acknowledged that electoral politics might compel Republicans to explore exceptions to abortion bans. He has opposed exceptions for rape or incest. He campaigned against a ballot measure approved by Ohio voters last year that added abortion rights to the state constitution and voted against a Democratic bill to ensure access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). He has said “the childless left” should not be making decisions about the country’s future and lamented the misery of “childless cat ladies.” 

Vance has said on the social media site X that he believes universal child care is a “massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class” and called it “class war against normal people.” He has also suggested that couples should stay in unhappy marriages for their children’s benefit. 

Democrats, reproductive rights groups and LGBTQ+ organizations have seized on Vance’s record as being further to the right than that of Trump, who has been opaque about his beliefs and plans on key issues such as medication abortion and contraception for a second administration. Many of them believe that Trump’s decision to pick Vance will only highlight the contrast between the two parties on topics that affect women and LGBTQ+ people. 

Vance attacks diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, childless women and abortion access. By contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris is a woman of color who has made reproductive rights a central issue and is a stepmother to two. Harris and Vance are expected to go head-to-head in a vice presidential debate this summer. 

In the two days following Trump’s selection of Vance, a group of women leaders quickly came together to contrast his platform with that of Harris and defend the vice president against what they called an expected “barrage of lies and disinformation.” 

Organized by EMILYs List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights, and National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, the coalition includes women leading groups such as the Service Employees International Union, Planned Parenthood Action, the AAPI Victory Fund, Voto Latino and the American Federation of Teachers. 

EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler called Harris a “stark contrast” to Vance, who has a “far-right, anti-choice agenda.” 

“Republicans attack the vice president because they know what we know: she is a powerful messenger and asset to the ticket, while Vance is simply Project 2025 in candidate form,” she said in a statement. 

Project 2025 is a blueprint for the next administration offered by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has tried to distance himself from the far-right agenda, but has praised the group’s work on it. Many Project 2025 architects served in his first administration. Vance has earned a 93 percent lifetime score from Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, during his short tenure in elected politics. The average score for a Republican senator is 61 percent. 

Ruth Smith, 50, who traveled to the RNC from West Bloomfield, New York, said she’s planning to dive more deeply into Vance’s positions and past comments. Vance wasn’t at the top of her list — she doesn’t know too much about him — but trusts Trump’s decision.

“We thought maybe it would be Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Someone that’s a female, someone that may be a minority,” said Smith, who is a member of the New York State Republican Women’s Federation. “But I said, you know what? He knows what’s going to be the best for the country.”