Since Donald Trump named the somewhat mysterious JD Vance as his running mate in the 2024 White House race, media speculation about his background has been rife. Some outlets “fact-checked” the Senator’s background, including his self-described identity as a “working-class boy.” Critics noted that description as somewhat inaccurate and claimed Vance grew up in an area of the Ohio suburbs that would best be described as “middle class.” He played golf, some noted, and went to Yale Law School, from where he graduated to become a venture capitalist.
Vance claims an Appalachian background, and some fact-checkers say that the claim is not entirely accurate but does contain some truth. For instance, he did grow up in Middletown, Ohio, which commentators say is not strictly Appalachia but not a million miles from it. He also spent his summers as a child in Jackson, Kentucky, located in the Appalachian mountains.
Data shows that Vance’s hometown, Middletown, does have a higher poverty rate than most of Ohio, with just over 19% living under the poverty threshold compared to a state-wide average of 13.4%.
According to fact-checkers, Senator Vance’s father left the home when he was six years old, and his mother did not respond well. She reportedly descended into drug addiction and related mental health problems, prompting officials to move the young JD Vance to the care of his grandparents.
When he entered the US Senate in 2022, Mr. Vance thanked “the woman who raised me” and said he would never forget what the registered Democrat did for him as a child.
In 2019, at age 35, JD Vance was baptized into the Catholic faith. In his best-selling memoirs, Vance describes his grandmother as a believer in Christ but not a supporter of organized religion. The Vice Presidential hopeful was not Christened as a child and did not attend church until his teens when his father re-entered his life and took him to Pentecostal churches. In later life, “a few informal conversations with a couple of Dominican friars” caused him to assess Catholicism and eventually persuaded him to take the plunge.