Who is JD Vance? Vice presidential candidate has multiple ties to Columbus
J.D. Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, as he details in his 2016 book "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," but that doesn't mean the vice presidential candidate doesn't have ties and love for the Columbus area.
In 2016, Vance told a Dispatch reporter: "I went to Ohio State and really love central Ohio."
Vance, a United States Senator for Ohio elected in 2022, lives in Cincinnati but has claimed Columbus as home. He graduated from Ohio State University and briefly lived in German Village — splitting time between a rental there and Washington D.C. — in 2017 and early 2018 after moving to Ohio from San Francisco.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump selected him as his running mate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, July 15, 2024.
The now 39-year-old told the Dispatch in July 2017 that he frequented local favorite Stauf's Coffee Roasters on South 3rd Street while living in German Village.
"I definitely feel at home in Columbus. I went to Ohio State," he said at the time. "I think it's a really awesome city, underrated in some ways."
Where did J.D. Vance attend and graduate college?
Vance attended Ohio State University and graduated in 2009. In 2017, he was a scholar in residence in Ohio State's Department of Political Science and spoke at his alma mater multiple times.
He spoke about his book and his nonprofit in 2016 and 2017, as well as about how he thought the problems facing Ohio could be solved.
His memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," made him a name in Ohio and elsewhere. It details his childhood, which included drug addiction, abuse and poverty while he grew up in Middletown, largely in the care of his grandmother, who he called Mamaw.
Vance spoke at a sold-out Columbus Metropolitan Club luncheon in 2017 as part of a panel on poverty and his book was honored in 2017 by the Ohioana Book Awards, hosted that year at the Ohio Statehouse.
Vance wrote about Columbus, Ohio State University in 'Hillbilly Elegy'
Chapter 11 of Vance's memoir begins as he arrives at Ohio State for orientation in September 2007.
In the book, he describes his excitement, his south campus house and beautiful weather.
"Columbus felt like an urban paradise," he wrote, comparing it to Middletown. "It was (and remains) one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, powered in large part by the bustling university that was now my home."
Vance once worked at the Ohio Statehouse
While studying at Ohio State, Vance took a job at the Ohio Statehouse. He was working for former late State Sen. Bob Schuler, a Republican who he describes in his book as "remarkably kind."
Vance wrote about how seeing the political process internally made him appreciate it.
"Mamaw had thought all politicians were crooks, but I learned that, no matter their politics, that was largely untrue at the Ohio Statehouse," Vance wrote.
He goes on to say he got a second job to pay his bills and detailed his life in college by saying: "I liked staying up late to work on assignments, waking up early after only three or four hours of sleep, and patting myself on the back for being able to do it."
Vance declined a handshake from former OSU President Gordon Gee
Vance, who served in the Marine Corps in Iraq, was motivated to finish college fast after hearing a fellow student talk of how he thought those who served first were less intelligent than people who went to college immediately.
He took summer classes and more than double the full-time course load some semesters to graduate summa cum laude with a double major in August 2009.
He writes that he didn't want to attend his graduation ceremony, but did at the insistence of his family.
"When Gordon Gee, then president of the Ohio State University, paused for an unusually long photograph with the girl who stood in front of me in line, I extended my hand to his assistant, nonverbally asking for the diploma," he wrote. "I may have been the only graduating student that day to not shake his hand."
In Chapter 12 of "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance talks of applying for law school and writes that Ohio State is "a big place."
Later, he writes "I loved Ohio State and its people for an incredible education and experience."
The next year, Vance went to Yale University for law school.
Vance founded a nonprofit in Ohio
A venture capitalist, Vance also started Our Ohio Renewal, a nonprofit with Jai Chabria, a public relations strategist and former top adviser to former Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The charity was founded a day after the 2016 presidential election, according to reporting by the Associated Press. It was intended to help solve the opioid crisis but was closed by Vance in 2021, shortly after he got the Ohio Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.
"I'm looking for opportunities to contribute and get some traction on the issues I talk about in the book and the issues I care about," he said in an interview with The Dispatch in November 2016.
Vance 'always wanted to move back' to Ohio and has invested in central Ohio
In 2021, Vance's Cincinnati-based venture capital fund, Narya Capital, invested in a West Jefferson start-up.
AmplifyBio, housed at Battelle's West Jefferson campus, opened that year as a $200 million gene therapy start-up.
Vance spoke of Ohio to The Dispatch in 2017, saying that he had "always wanted to move back, because it's home."
@DanaeKing
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: JD Vance is Trump's running mate. See his Columbus ties
