Senator J.D. Vance will draw a direct line from his traumatic upbringing in southwest Ohio to his standing as one of the most combative foot soldiers in Donald J. Trump’s conservative movement when he delivers his prime-time speech on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention.
The speech in Milwaukee will serve as both an introduction to party delegates and a blueprint for his campaign as the party’s vice-presidential nominee. He was still working on his remarks as of Wednesday afternoon, but he planned to use his life story to tell a larger ideological tale.
He is expected to make the case that his support for strict trade policies and economic populism is rooted in his experience as a child of Appalachia, raised by men and women pinched by a rapidly changing economy, according to two people familiar with the planning. Those life lessons, he will argue, helped justify his political conversion from a fierce Trump critic into one of the leading disciples of the former president’s MAGA movement.
Earlier on Wednesday at a fund-raiser in Milwaukee, Mr. Vance joked that he had told Mr. Trump that he was “very excited about this evening, and I don’t plan to screw it up. But if I do, it’s too late — you’ve made your bed. It’s official now.”
The Trump campaign is betting that Mr. Vance’s compelling biography will help win voters in the battleground states with the highest percentage of white working-class voters: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Mr. Trump lost all three in 2020.
“You will see J.D. Vance planted in Rust Belt states very heavily between now and Election Day,” said Tony Fabrizio, the Trump campaign’s top pollster.
Mr. Vance’s blue-collar appeal is a point of contention with Democrats, who view the Ohio senator as an opportunist and an extremist. They have argued that his backing of a national ban on abortion and his support for Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election hurt him with working families.
“Trump looked for someone he knew would be a rubber stamp for his extreme agenda,” Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday. “Make no mistake: J.D. Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country.”
Still, Mr. Vance’s addition to the Republican ticket has been applauded by at least one labor leader. In a speech to the party’s convention on Monday, Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union, said Mr. Vance was among a group of Republican lawmakers who “truly care about working people.”
“This group is expanding and putting fear into those who have monopolized our very broken system in America,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Mr. Vance, 39, made it through a troubled childhood and enlisted in the Marines. He graduated from Yale Law School, started a career in venture capital and wrote a best-selling book, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
His first elected office was the Senate seat he was sworn into just last year. Now he will address the Republican National Convention as the party’s vice-presidential nominee.
David Urban, a former Trump campaign adviser, said Mr. Vance should focus on his time in the military as a way to connect with supporters in the Midwest.
“To enlist in the Marines and make it through, that’s more impressive to me than graduating from Yale Law School,” Mr. Urban said. “But I expect his speech will be a mini-version of ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ and once Republicans get the chance to hear him, they’ll be even more excited than they are now.”
Mr. Vance’s youth — he’s the second-youngest member of the Senate — and his limited political résumé could undercut Mr. Trump’s attack on Ms. Harris as ill-prepared to step in for President Biden if necessary.
But Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser on the Trump campaign, said Mr. Vance’s age presented an opportunity for the campaign, particularly in a race featuring an 81-year-old incumbent and a 78-year-old challenger.
“He’s going to attract a younger set of voters,” Mr. LaCivita said. “I think he’s going to bring out a lot more of the working class, and it’s going to attract a wider coalition of voters to Trump than we had before.”
Mike Reed, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, said Mr. Vance was cut from a similar cloth as other conservative populists who served in the Senate, including Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
“The shift to a more MAGA, America First, populist approach has been happening for a while,” Mr. Reed said. “President Trump took it to a whole new level by showing the party and country you can win on that agenda and bringing in millions of new voters.”
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