JD Vance, from ‘hillbilly’ to VP candidate: How an Ohio kid from a broken home rose to be a Republican star

JD Vance has been named Donald Trump’s vice presidental nominee as the former president looks to take back the White House — and it's been a long journey from a small town in Ohio for the 39-year-old Republican star.

It is an extraordinary ascent for a 39-year-old former US Marine and child of a violent, broken home, best known for his searing 2016 memoir about the despair of America's rust belt.

Hillbilly Elegy – which sought to explain Trump's rise by dissecting and sharply criticizing the culture that he'd grow up in – made Vance an instant media darling, hailed by many confused left-wingers as a «Trump whisperer.» While he was once anti-trump, Vance will now be joining Trump on the ticket and will be the presumed front-runner for the Republican nominee in 2028.

James David Vance was born in 1984 in Middletown, Ohio, a small city between Cincinnati and Dayton with a population (at the time) of around 45,000.

Coincidentally, his biological father was also called Donald – and was of Scots-Irish ancestry – but his parents split when he was just a toddler and he was adopted by his mother's new husband.

It was a rough upbringing. In his book, Vance describes his mother as highly unstable, sometimes violent, and persistently addicted to prescription narcotics. His grandfather –Papaw, as he called – was frequently drunk, while his grandmother – Mamaw – was a «violent non-drunk» prone to unpleasant stunts such as dousing him in gasoline or serving him garbage on a plate.

In time, though, the pair stabilized their lives and became Vance's legal guardians. As Vance describes it, they taught him that despite the violence in his childhood, and despite the discrimination he'd face coming from «hillbilly» stock, he'd need to