JD Vance’s path from Hillbilly Elegy to Trump’s working mate

When Donald Trump named J.D. Vance as his pick for vice president it completed an extraordinary journey from former Marine and bestselling author with a neat line in Never Trump rhetoric to the ultimate MAGA loyalist.

It could have been very different, were it not for his wife and her legal background.

Vance met Usha Chilukuri, the child of Indian immigrants, at Yale Law School in 2013. While his career took him into venture capital before embarking on the manuscript that would become ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ and a culture phenomenon, making sense of a forgotten America that mystified the country’s liberal elite, she was pursuing federal clerkships.

First she worked in Kentucky but then she moved to a coveted place at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, DC., where she clerked for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. 

Friends say it was Kavanaugh’s stormy Supreme Court confirmation in 2018 when he had to ride out multiple accusations of sexual assault that pushed Vance into politics.

‘For him it was political,’ said someone who knew Vance then. ‘The guy was a family friend.’

Vance has made the same point himself.

‘My wife worked for Kavanaugh, loved the guy—kind of a dork,’ he told the New York Times recently. ‘Never believed these stories. 

‘You start looking around and say, “If they can do this to him, can they just do this to any of us?” An incredible campaign of character assassination.’ 

Friends say they thought he was well set for a career as a writer and venture capitalist before then. The former Marine could write for high-minded newspapers on politics and people, appear on TV to talk Trump and the Mid West, while making a fortune with his financial firm all the while.

His book had painted an evocative portrait of a tough upbringing in a forgotten American. He was perfectly placed to explain why those rust belt towns had turned to Trump even as he warned that the man himself was like an opioid, an ‘easy escape from the pain.’

It could have made him a fixture of the chattering pundit classes, called on to explain the appeal and meteoric political rise of a loud-mouthed New York property developer that had baffled the establishment on the left and the right.

What changed, said a friend who knew the couple at Yale, was the way prestigious institutions railed against Kavanaugh during his confirmation and at Trump in office. 

A former student at Yale came forward to say that Kavanaugh had assaulted her when they were students in 1980s. A second allegation was soon reported. 

Kavanaugh denied the allegations and he was eventually confirmed, but not without bruising condemnation by Yale alumni and others.  

The hearings were dramatic. They included the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who said the future justice pinned her to a bed when they were teenagers followed by Kavanaugh’s tearful flashes of anger as he fought the accusations.

A friend who knew Vance and his future wife at law school said it was one of the factors that pushed him towards Trump and politics, after previously being highly critical. 

‘There were two things that I think were frustrating for JD’ he said. ‘One was seeing how Yale,  like kind of our Yale community—professors, alumni—went after Brett Kavanaugh and the rank partisanship that was shown in that.’

The other thing, he added, was the way the mainstream media, which raved about his book slated the movie when it came out in a way that felt like an attack on the America he had written about. 

Vance had always been a conservative but the partisanship, the story goes, led him to embrace Trump and his Republican movement.

His second big break came in 2020 when he was running for the Republican senate nomination in Ohio. During one of the primary debates he pushed back on the idea of NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine.

His military service, including a stint in Iraq, had left him skeptical of foreign interventions. And he was the only one of three Republicans on the debate stage to reject the no-fly zone idea.

At the time he was being buffeted by attack ads picking over his past anti-Trump comments, such as ‘… I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious.’

But that didn’t matter when the president’s eldest son spotted his comments. Donald Trump Jr had read Hillbilly Elegy and was tickled that it’s author was taking on interventionist neocon Republicans.

He tweeted in support and weeks later his father weighed in with an endorsement, effectively ending the primary race, and catapulting Vance to the Senate.

While strategists, donors and advisers have been lobbying Trump to pick their man or woman for running mate, it meant Vance had a voice right inside the family itself.

Last week, Don Jr. spelled out why he was supporting the Ohio senator: ‘You make a lot of acquaintances in politics, but J.D. is a great and loyal guy who has become a genuine friend.

‘His entire life story is the embodiment of the American dream, but he never forgets where he came from. 

‘He’s also one of the few people I’ve seen in Washington who not only is a true believer in my father’s agenda, but also has the courage and intelligence to fight back against the Democrats and leftwing media effectively in defense of our commonsense American values.’

He was also the runaway favorite of the MAGA base, benefiting from his frequent TV appearance to deliver punches for the former president.

When attendees of a Turning Point Action event in Detroit, drawn from the grassroots of the Trump movement, were asked who should join the ticket, their overwhelming choice was Vance. He was 30 points ahead of runner up Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

It means Vance could be on the brink of becoming the first Marine veteran to take up the role of vice president, and the first bearded