GOP lawmakers see Vance cementing MAGA ticket as Trump’s VP

Congressional Republicans heaped quick praise on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) after former President Trump announced him to be his pick for vice president on Monday, seeing him as cementing the “MAGA” Republican ticket.

“The America First ticket just became stronger with Senator JD Vance joining President Trump as his running mate,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a top Trump ally, said in a statement. She labeled Vance a “true freedom fighter.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the House GOP chair who was also considered as a possible vice presidential pick, said that Trump “made a strong VP choice to win this November and govern to save America,” calling Vance “a strong America First leader and proven conservative.”

The 39-year-old first-term senator was only elected in 2022 after winning a crowded primary with the help of Trump’s endorsement. Ideologically, Vance’s brand of conservatism has a more populist bent.

A Marine veteran and Yale Law School graduate, Vance first gained fame for his book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” which detailed being raised surrounded by poverty and addiction and gained popularity as political observers sought to understand the rise of Trump in 2016.

“He possesses a profound understanding of the anxieties of working families and has both the lived experience and the policy expertise to help President Trump deliver a government worthy of the people it is supposed to serve,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement.

Republicans are also expressing excitement for bringing a younger generation to the Republican ticket.

“At this hour in America, we need a new generation of fighters, and there’s no better name to aid President Trump than JD Vance,” Sen. Roger Marshall said in a post on social platform X. “He will be fearless in dismantling the radical Left’s chokehold on the federal government that is plaguing our nation.”

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spoke to The Hill about Vance shortly before the announcement was made official.

“He’s got an America First agenda within there. A vigorousness, a youngness there,” McCarthy said.

“He tapped into something early on that America really didn’t see,” McCarthy said, referring to his past writings and comments about Rust Belt cities being hollowed out and “left behind.”

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) — chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House — called Vance a “champion for conservative values” and said he has “been integral to the bicameral work of the Republican Study Committee” in the upper chamber.