JD Vance’s hardline positions and comments have stoked mounting unease among Republicans about Donald Trump’s choice of presidential running mate.
Democrats have pounced on Vance’s past statements to paint him as “weird” while Republican strategists warn that the Trump-Vance campaign has to rapidly redefine the Ohio Senator in the eyes of voters.
A clip from 2021, in which Vance warned the US was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”, citing Vice-President Kamala Harris as an example, provoked a national backlash. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has two stepchildren.
Vance defended the comment on Friday. “Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said”, he told The Megyn Kelly Show. He added that he was criticising Democrats for being “anti-family and anti-child”.
In other clips, Vance has proposed childless Americans pay higher rates of tax and that those with families should be able to vote on behalf of their children.
Republican strategist Doug Heye cited “buyer’s concern” within the party after “the myriad of weird issues in the past week”.
Early polling suggests Vance is struggling to connect with voters. A CNN poll this week found that while Vance’s favourable rating has jumped to 28 per cent in July from 11 per cent in June, unfavourable opinions of him have climbed by almost as much. An NPR/PBS/Marist survey also showed that more than a third of registered voters were unsure of his favourability or had not heard of him.
The “abnormal issues” Vance talks about highlight “an eagerness to go into weird places that will be very easy to allow Democrats to define him”, Heye said. “Democrats have an opening with” the “radical, anti-abortion weird stuff that he’s been spewing”.
Harris’s campaign has been quick to capitalise on this attention, depicting Vance as “a creep” with “out-of-touch” ideas.
It posted audio to X from 2022 in which Vance called for a “federal response” to stop a scenario in which “every day, George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus [Ohio], to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California”. Millions listened to it.
“Of course the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity. That’s kind of creepy,” Vance added. In the clip, Vance also envisaged the overturning of Roe vs Wade before the Supreme Court struck it down.
One Republican strategist said the Trump campaign “got caught flat footed” by the attacks on Vance.
“The longer you wait, the harder it is to get back on offence,” the strategist added. “What was their plan to defend their VP and then promote a much more disciplined message that placed the Democrats in a negative frame?”
The rumblings about Vance were preceded by “a convention speech that was underwhelming”, Heye said.
The Republican donor class is not convinced by Vance either. Trump’s choice of running mater was “all about overconfidence”, wrote Clifford Asness, the co-founder of hedge fund AQR Capital Management, on X on Friday.
“After the Biden debate and the assassination attempt they thought it was locked up and so” Trump could “pick the clearly worst choice [certainly for electability and (in my honest opinion) for policy] because he was the best bootlicker”.
The former president boosted his own brand of populism in selecting Vance, opting for a young politician with the potential to eventually lead the Maga movement as opposed to a candidate who could appeal more easily to the party’s traditional, centrist voters.
Many viewed Vance as a solid pick because he could reinforce a message geared towards working class voters in the rustbelt battleground states with the story of his impoverished roots.
“I think the goal there was to drive a wedge between Joe Biden and those voters” and they “are sort of problematic for Kamala Harris to get back, because the Scranton Joe appeal is much stronger than the Kamala-from-San-Francisco appeal”, said Kevin Madden, senior partner at Penta Group, a consultancy.
“Are there some people who are sort of raising eyebrows and asking questions [about Vance]? Sure. Is there time to fix it? Yes. But that’s quickly coming upon us.”
Vance was the right choice “if Trump is comfortable with the pick”, said John Feehery, partner at EFT Advocacy, a lobbying firm.
Trump was asked on Fox News on Thursday if he was still behind Vance. “He’s fantastic,” Trump replied.
Bryan Lanza, a strategist aligned with the Republican nominee, said that he had not heard from anyone in Trump’s circle that the ex-president regretted his choice.
Lanza sought to throw the accusations back on Harris, saying: “We get to see just how weird Kamala Harris was with her cackles”, stories and analogies.
“We can be damn sure that more stuff is going to come out” about the senator, but it was possible for the Trump campaign to weather it, Feehery added.
“The other thing is that no one cares about the vice-president,” he said. “I don’t think anyone votes on who the vice-president is.”
The Vance campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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