To say it has been an eventful week on the campaign trail is a massive understatement.
It was just six days ago that President Joe Biden held a press conference to try to allay voters’ – and his party’s – fears about his age and mental acumen. Two days later, in Pennsylvania, a gunman came perilously close to taking the life of President Biden’s Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump. The former president suffered only minor injuries, but one member of the audience was killed, as was the shooter.
Then on Monday, Trump made a long-awaited announcement, choosing first-term Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate.
That’s a lot to unpack and questions about the assassination attempt and President Biden’s age are still swirling. This week, though, we will focus on Trump’s vice-presidential announcement. Who is J.D. Vance, where does he stand on financial services and financial technology issues, and — really — does the choice of a running mate even matter?
Let’s dive in.
Who Is J.D. Vance?
At 39 years old, Sen. J.D. Vance is exactly half Donald Trump’s age. Despite his relative youth, he is unquestionably accomplished. A Yale Law School graduate and former Marine, he is the author of a 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that describes his youth growing up in Ohio and Appalachia with a single mother who struggled with addiction.
The book explores poverty, how international trade has affected Rust Belt towns, and what Vance calls an American “culture in crisis.”
After law school, Vance was a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He married his Yale classmate, Usha Chilukuri, with whom he has three children. Chilukuri, an Indian American, clerked for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. She also clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
As The Associated Press explained, in 2016, Vance was a “never Trump” Republican. In fact, eight years ago he called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. Vance also argued that Trump relied on racist rhetoric, alleging he could be “America’s Hitler.”
Sen. Vance has since changed his tune. “Once elected [to the U.S. Senate], Vance became a fierce Trump ally on Capitol Hill, unceasingly defending Trump’s policies and behavior,” The Associated Press said.
What Are Sen. Vance’s Ideas For Economic, Financial Services, And Fintech Policy?
On economic policy in general, Sen. Vance is very much in the vein of the man with whom he is sharing a ticket. Despite having once been a venture capitalist, he is a populist with a clear and deep skepticism of big business. As Politico put it, Sen. Vance “has emerged in his brief time in office as the Senate GOP’s top Wall Street critic, using his perch on the [Senate] Banking Committee to chastise industry leaders and push legislation” to rein in the sector.
Specifically, Sen. Vance has supported “an array of legislation targeting the financial services industry,” Politico noted, including a co-sponsoring a proposal with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would claw back compensation for executives of failed banks. He has praised President Biden’s Federal Trade Commission Chair, Lina Khan, who “has led an aggressive antitrust crackdown.” (Most Republicans, of course, are no fans of Khan.) Sen. Vance is particularly interested in breaking up large technology companies. As The New York Times reported, “Vance has said Big Tech is too powerful and called for Google to be broken up.”
Sen. Vance also might be the reason Teamsters President Sean O’Brien was given top billing on opening night of the Republican National Committee. As The Times noted, the junior senator from Ohio has “argued that employers’ zeal for cheap labor has helped lead to a surge in unauthorized immigration” into the United States. He also has said U.S. consumers are “addicted” to cheap products from China.
Still, Sen. Vance does, generally, support the GOP’s efforts to try to ease regulations on the financial services industry, including opposing efforts to increase large bank capital requirements.
Another issue where Vance is aligned with his party is cryptocurrency. As Politico said in recent weeks, Sen. Vance “has been workshopping an industry-friendly crypto bill — and digital asset enthusiasts are cheering on his selection.” Indeed, Cody Carbone, chief policy officer at the Digital Chamber, told Politico, “Trump’s pick of Sen. Vance as his next VP is a tremendous boost for U.S. innovation and the digital asset industry. The choice highlights the campaign’s unwavering support for digital assets.”
But, ultimately, will Sen. Vance’s position on the issues even matter to voters?
Does Anyone Really Care About Running Mates?
“Rarely has there been solid evidence that even controversial vice presidential choices make a difference in an election’s outcome,” the McClatchy news service proclaimed earlier this week, before the Vance pick was announced. McClatchy offered 1988 as evidence. That year, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis chose Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, a veteran senator with a sterling reputation. Across the aisle, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle, of potato-spelling fame, was George H.W. Bush’s choice. Quayle was largely regarded as a political and intellectual lightweight, but his ticket won anyway.
In 2020, after then-candidate Joe Biden chose then-Sen. Kamala Harris to be his running mate, scholars at the University of Arizona said the decision would not matter much. “People tend to focus on the top of the ticket,” they concluded. The late Sen. John McCain did say he regretted choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, but not because he thought it lost him the race. Instead, he lamented that he wanted to choose Sen. Joe Lieberman, his friend and a former Democrat, instead.
Joel Goldstein, professor emeritus of law at St. Louis University and an expert on vice presidential politics, told New York magazine that there really is only one election where the choice of running mate clearly mattered: in 1960, when Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson helped to swing Texas in John F. Kennedy’s favor in a very close election.
In their 2020 book Do Running Mates Matter?, professors Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko analyzed three ways in which running mates potentially could matter. They dismissed the idea that a VP choice could directly affect which ticket a voter chose—that is, that the second name on the ballot mattered more than the first. Second, they examined whether running mates help win votes among key subsets of voters who share their gender, religion, ideology, or geographic identity. Again, the conclusion was largely no.
Finally, Devine and Kopko examined whether running mates can shape perceptions of the presidential candidate who selected them, which could influence vote choice. It is in that last category, the authors conclude, that running mates may influence presidential voting, especially when it comes to the vice-presidential nominee’s qualifications for holding office and taking over for a president if they are called to do so.
In other words: voters want the person at the top of the ballot to choose someone prepared to take over if the president no longer can serve. “Picking a running mate from a key voting bloc probably won’t make a difference,” the authors conclude. “But picking an experienced, well-qualified running mate will make the presidential candidate look better to voters — and win some votes.”
Those findings, of course, could make this year’s VP choices more important than they historically have been, given that both President Biden and former President Trump would be the oldest second-term presidents in U.S. history if elected this November.
Ready For The Job?
In fact, VP expert Goldstein told McClatchy that since President Biden and Trump are the oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history, it is “plausible that voters may weigh the vice-presidential choices somewhat more heavily this election.”
And, how do the two presumed VP nominees stack up on the question of experience?
Like Sen. Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris was a one-term senator when she was chosen to be the vice-presidential nominee. Unlike Sen. Vance, she knows what it is like to serve in the White House.
Do voters feel this experience gives Vice President Harris the gravitas she needs? No really.
A June 2024 Morning Consult/Politico poll found that Harris is unlikely to quell anxiety among voters about what would happen if President Biden became unable to serve.
“She’s done an admirable job … but at the same time, she’s falling into the same spot that many vice presidents fall into, which is that she doesn’t have a very public role outside of her lane,” said RL Miller, an outgoing member of the Democratic National Committee from California. “People don’t associate her with issues like foreign policy, which is so important these days. She isn’t being credited with the larger international and domestic work.”
We’ll have to wait a few more days to see if pollsters ask similar questions about Sen. Vance’s fitness to take over, but Politico did put his experience in perspective this morning.
“By historic standards, Vance has shockingly little. No experience balancing a state budget, overseeing disaster response, or wrestling with the legal and moral dimensions of the death penalty,” Politico said. “He hasn’t commanded a state National Guard or managed a federal agency or Cabinet office. He’s less than a third into his first six-year Senate term.”
Will it matter? History says no. But we’ll have to wait a few months to find out in this election.