Vance Set to Give Speech Tying Biography to Conservative Agenda

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.