Who are the U.S. vice presidential running mates for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump who will accompany them to the White House? Meet the candidates
- Who are the U.S. vice presidential running mates for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump who will accompany them to the White House? Meet the candidates
- Who is JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate?
- Vance is a graduate of an elite university and an entrepreneur, but his autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” explores his working-class roots. It made him a nationally known name when it was published in 2016.
- Trump endorsed Vance, who won a crowded primary and the general election. Vance, 39, is positioned to become a potential leader of the former president’s political movement, which has reshaped the Republican Party and broken political norms.
- Vance said in an interview on Fox News Channel on Monday that Trump was a great president and changed his mind.
- Who is Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s Democratic vice presidential candidate?
- In the lead-up to his selection as Harris’s running mate, Walz had first been an outspoken defender of Joe Biden after his disastrous debate performance as calls grew for the president to drop his reelection bid.
- As governor, Walz had to deal with a divided government and slim majorities in the state Legislature.
Alongside her running mate, Kamala Harris formally secured the Democratic Party’s nomination to face Donald Trump in the November election.
Who is JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate?
A relative political unknown, Vance has rapidly transformed in recent years from being a harsh critic of Trump to an aggressive defender.
Who is JD Vance? Vance is expected to focus on his biography as someone who grew up poor in Kentucky and Ohio, with a drug-addicted mother and an absent father, but who rose to the highest levels of U.S. politics.
It’s a story meant to connect with voters in the heartland of the United States and to shed light on how Vance’s upbringing shaped his positions on issues like immigration, inflation, and drugs.
Vance is a graduate of an elite university and an entrepreneur, but his autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” explores his working-class roots. It made him a nationally known name when it was published in 2016.
The book is now seen as a window into some of the cultural forces that propelled Trump to the White House that year, earning Vance a reputation as someone who could help explain the appeal of the New York businessman in the country’s heartland. “Hillbilly Elegy” also introduced Vance to the Trump family.
Donald Trump Jr. loved the book and knew Vance when he began his political career. The two have remained friends.
After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Vance returned to his native Ohio and established a charity against opioids. He also began giving lectures and was a favorite guest at Republican Party Lincoln Day dinners, where his personal story—including the hardships Vance endured due to his mother’s drug addiction—resonated.
Vance’s appearances were opportunities to promote his ideas for solving the country’s problems and helped lay the groundwork for entering politics in 2021, when he sought the Senate seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman, who retired.
Trump endorsed Vance, who won a crowded primary and the general election. Vance, 39, is positioned to become a potential leader of the former president’s political movement, which has reshaped the Republican Party and broken political norms.
The first millennial to join a major party ticket, he enters the race as questions about the age of the men at the top—78-year-old Trump and 81-year-old President Joe Biden—have been high on voters’ list of concerns.
JD and his wife Usha Vance live in Cincinnati and have three children: Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel.
What are Vance’s positions on key issues?
Vance was a so-called “never Trump” Republican in 2016. He called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. Vance, whose wife, attorney Usha Chilukuri Vance, is Indian-American, also criticized Trump’s rhetoric, saying he could be “America’s Hitler.”
But by the time Vance met Trump in 2021, he had reversed his opinion, citing Trump’s accomplishments as president. Both downplayed Vance’s past sharp criticisms.
Once elected, Vance became a fierce Trump ally in the Capitol, relentlessly defending Trump’s policies and behavior.
In his first interview after accepting Trump’s offer to join the ticket, Vance attempted to explain his metamorphosis.
Vance said in an interview on Fox News Channel on Monday that Trump was a great president and changed his mind.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, called Vance a leading voice for the conservative movement on key issues, including a shift away from interventionist foreign policy, free-market economics, and “American culture in general.”
Democrats call him an extremist, citing positions Vance has taken but sometimes amended. For example, during his Senate campaign, Vance indicated his support for a national 15-week abortion ban but softened that stance after Ohio voters overwhelmingly backed an abortion rights amendment in 2023.
On the 2020 election, he said he would not have immediately certified the results if he had been vice president and that Trump had “a very legitimate complaint.” He has set conditions for honoring the 2024 election results that echo Trump’s.
A litany of government and external investigations found no electoral fraud that could have changed the outcome of Trump’s 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.
In the Senate, Vance sometimes embraces bipartisanship. Vance and Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown co-sponsored a railroad safety bill after a train derailment in the town of East Palestine, Ohio.
He has sponsored legislation extending and increasing funding for the restoration of the Great Lakes and has supported bipartisan legislation benefiting workers and families.
Who is Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s Democratic vice presidential candidate?
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, chosen as Kamala Harris’s running mate, spent over two decades in the Army National Guard—deploying overseas after the 9/11 attacks—worked as an educator and coach, and surprisingly defeated a six-term Republican congressman in 2006.
Who is Walz, what has been his career, and why did Harris choose him?
Tim Walz, an educator and former military member who achieved the Democratic “trifecta” in Minnesota
Walz is currently in his second term as governor of Minnesota and chairs the Democratic Governors Association. Previously, he spent 12 years in Congress, representing a rural, conservative-leaning district that, both before and after his tenure, has been largely dominated by Republicans.
In the lead-up to his selection as Harris’s running mate, Walz had first been an outspoken defender of Joe Biden after his disastrous debate performance as calls grew for the president to drop his reelection bid.
When Biden withdrew, Walz endorsed Harris the next day and has since proven to be a reliable, energetic, and sharp defender of the Democratic candidate.
Before working in Congress, Tim Walz was a high school teacher and football coach and served in the Army National Guard.
During more than a decade in Congress, he compiled a fairly centrist voting record. In his first campaign, he opposed a ban on same-sex marriage and supported abortion rights. Once in Congress, he balanced that stance with comparatively more conservative positions on gun rights, which earned him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.
Since then, Walz has fallen out of favor with the gun lobby for his support of gun safety measures as governor.
Walz ran for governor in 2018, winning by a double-digit margin. He was reelected in 2022 with 52% of the vote.
As governor, Walz had to deal with a divided government and slim majorities in the state Legislature.
But in 2022, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (as the state’s Democratic Party is known) took control of both the House and Senate, giving Walz’s party a legislative “trifecta.”
This allowed Walz to enact a series of broad social welfare programs, such as free lunch for public school students, expanded access to Medicaid, stronger protections allowing workers to unionize, and the expansion of paid medical and family leave.
Through this trifecta, Minnesota Democrats also managed to codify abortion rights into law, increase protections for transgender rights, pass a marijuana legalization bill, and implement new gun safety laws.
Progressives praised the work as an example of everything Democrats can achieve.
Former President Barack Obama wrote in a tweet praising the latest legislative session that it was a “reminder that elections have consequences.”
Walz’s six years in charge of Minnesota have witnessed a remarkable series of political and social upheaval.
First came the COVID-19 pandemic, and then, amid it, the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, which sparked global anti-racism protests.
Walz managed to navigate all these challenges (along with the more typical complaints about wasteful spending) well enough that, by early 2023, he led that Democratic trifecta in state government.
Image: VP
