Should Sen. JD Vance get the nod from former President Trump to be his 2024 running mate and the ticket wins the White House in November, the Ohio Republican’s Senate seat will be in the hands of a decidedly non-MAGA GOP governor.
Trump is expected to make an announcement on his selection by mid-July, and Vance is widely believed to be on his short list. If Vance trades in his Senate seat for the vice presidency, Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, will choose who gets to finish his term. Vance hopes it happens.
“I care a lot about national defense, I care a lot about whether the troops have what they need to fight,” Vance said on Fox News last week in a conversation related to him potentially serving as vice president. “I care a lot about, frankly, whether when we ask our kids to go to war, we ought to make sure it’s for the right reasons. And so you definitely think about those things, maybe a little bit differently, as a U.S. Marine.”
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Sen. JD Vance during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on June 22, 2023. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Vance could also be a powerful weapon against the Biden campaign, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ former communications director Ashley Etienne calling him the “greatest threat” in a vice presidential debate.
“I think JD Vance would pose the greatest threat [to] Kamala Harris, in some respects. I mean he’s an incredible debater,” Etienne told CNN earlier this month. “I think he has this quality that makes him seem palpable to that one to two percent that actually might vote or that is undecided, that will actually pay attention to the debates because most people don’t pay attention to the debates.”
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Gov. Mike DeWine speaks during a news conference, Dec. 29, 2023, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP…
