JD Vance has had a difficult week, and some Republicans aren’t hiding their frustration.
Despite momentum after former President Donald Trump named him as his running mate, the Ohio senator started receiving unwanted attention after old clips resurfaced of him calling some Democrats “childless cat ladies” and suggesting parents should have more political power than non-parents.
Vance’s change of fortune also collided with the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has broken fundraising records and is on a glide path to receiving the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden bowed out of the race. Harris — who would be the first Black and South Asian woman president and is running a campaign with the unofficial slogan “we’re not going back” — has made the contrast with the Trump-Vance ticket even more stark.
It’s all starting to get some Republicans worried — and frustrated. Some, like Arizona Republican operative Chuck Coughlin, conceded that Vance has had a “tough week.”
“Nothing like a baptism by fire,” Coughlin said.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro bluntly questioned whether Trump should have picked Vance, saying on his show: “If you had a time machine, if you go back two weeks, would [Trump] have picked JD Vance again? I doubt it.”
Other Republicans also wondered aloud if the Trump campaign had truly anticipated the tidal wave of resurfaced comments, book writings and remarks that would come with picking a 39-year-old, recently elected senator who had grown up online and was firmly seated on the right of the Republican Party.
“Of the people that were mentioned as finalists, he had the most risk, because he had never been vetted nationally,” said Bill McCoshen, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin. “Doug Burgum ran for president, he had been vetted, mostly. Marco Rubio has run for president, he had been vetted. JD Vance hadn’t. So there was risk in the pick. And we’re going to see over the next 102 days how he stands up to the bright lights of a national campaign.”
One House Republican lawmaker suggested those vetting concerns weren’t just coming from the pundit class.
“Find me one publicly elected official in the Senate who is pushing JD Vance other than Mike Lee,” said the Republican lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “I’ll wait.”
Since Harris began her presidential campaign, Democrats have begun to go on offense against Vance, and polls suggest these attacks are beginning to take a hit. Vance averages a net favorability rating of negative 5 percent across all polls, lower than any vice presidential nominee in history, CNN analyst Harry Enten said this week — a lower figure than former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, perhaps the most infamous GOP running mate pick.
Vance’s favorability was underwater by 3 percentage points in two polls of a Harris-Trump race released this week by the New York Times/Siena College and NPR/PBS News/Marist College — the latter of which found that 28 percent of registered voters hold a favorable view of Vance, while 31 percent viewed him unfavorably. Forty-one percent were unsure or have not heard of him, the Marist poll found.
The lawmaker accused Donald Trump Jr. of pushing Vance as a means of securing a legacy for the former president. Instead, Republicans have mounting worries after a week of resurfaced clips of Vance calling Harris and other Democrats “childless cat ladies” and suggesting parents should have more political power than non-parents.
The Harris campaign, in response to Vance’s comments, issued a statement titled “Happy World IVF Day To Everyone Except JD Vance.” Even actress Jennifer Aniston, who does not have children, weighed in: “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
Critics also highlighted Vance’s authoring of the foreword to an upcoming book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation who has advocated for a “second American revolution” he hopes will remain “bloodless.” Roberts is the head of Project 2025 — a far-right policy blueprint from which Trump has fought to distance himself.
In a review of the book, Vance wrote: “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lie ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
“I’m a little surprised they didn’t vet him as thoroughly as they should have, or if they did, did they not know he was writing the foreword to Kevin Roberts’ book,” said a Republican strategist and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, granted anonymity to speak freely. “So, you’ve got Trump trashing this Project 2025, and Vance writing the foreword.”
And that’s not to mention the countless memes suggesting Vance had intimate relations with a couch in his youth following a disinformation post on social media, made worse by the fact that the Associated Press published an article with the headline “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch,” then retracting it because the story “didn’t go through our standard editing process,” according to AP spokesperson Nicole Meir.
Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder referred POLITICO to reports that Vance rallies this week had reached capacity and news reports on the seven-figure fundraising events he held.
Vance was picked during an entirely different phase of the presidential race — the Biden-Trump matchup of just a week ago — as a way to energize a base that was already strongly unified behind Trump rather than pick up any new constituencies, experts said.
“Vance was not a political pick,” said Joshua Novotney, a Republican political strategist in Pennsylvania. “He was not chosen to get a leg-up in some area, he was chosen as someone who Trump trusted and wanted to serve with.”
Contenders for the Democratic veepstakes have gone on the offensive against Vance, too. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear slammed the “Hillbilly Elegy” author as a “phony,” saying “he ain’t from here” and accusing him of writing his memoir to “profit off our people.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said “people like JD Vance know nothing about small town America,” adding: “none of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale.” And Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he’d met a lot of people like Vance at Harvard “who would say whatever they needed to to get ahead.”
Despite Vance’s arguably awful week, Trump has insisted he has no regrets picking the Ohio senator, telling Fox News on Thursday that he wouldn’t have picked differently had he known Harris would take the top of the ticket.
“He is essentially for the worker. He has seen the worker be horribly abused and taken advantage of and he is for the worker,” Trump said, describing the message of Vance’s book as one of the main reasons he picked the Ohio senator.
Yet strategists said the fringes of that “Hillbilly Elegy” message are making it even harder for Vance to benefit Trump on the electoral map.
“He’s Tucker Carlson’s boy right now, and that represents a certain segment of the base of the Republican Party,” Coughlin said. “I just don’t see how that projects to somebody who can grow the base, particularly if he’s stumbling over his own words.”
