By Kean Huy Alado
After an intense debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on Sept. 10, the public can look forward to a vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz – expected to take place Oct. 1, 2024, in New York City.
Trump chose Vance to be his running mate on July 15, 2024, and stated he was “the person best suited to assume the position of vice president of the United States.” However, before he was a vice-presidential candidate, Vance served as an Ohio state senator – a position he obtained in 2022 with an endorsement from Donald Trump.
Vance has not always been in support of Trump, though. During Trump’s first presidential election in 2016, Vance told Charlie Rose in an interview that, “I’m never a Trump guy,” and remained a stalwart Trump critic in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” writing comments such as, “I never liked him.” He also published an op-ed in the New York Times in April 2016 where he claimed that Trump is “unfit for our nation’s highest office,” and even compared Trump to Hitler.
However, since Vance’s run for Senate in 2021, he has shown deep regret for “being wrong about Trump,” even calling him a great president. In July of the same year, Vance also asked the public to refrain from judging him for his open disdain toward the former President.
Regarding abortion, Vance holds a pro-life stance, supporting nationwide restrictions such as a 15-week ban, which bans abortion after 15 weeks post-fertilization. Despite that, in May, he showed support for Trump’s view to allow states to produce their own policies to manage abortion.
On the topic of the Ukraine-Russia war, Vance stands “opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war,” according to an opinion piece published in April 2024 in the New York Times.
Vance’s priorities lie toward tariffs and trade policies with China; boosting domestic oil and gas production to promote the industrial sector of the economy; mitigating drug and opioid usage/abuse; and enforcing stricter immigration regulations.
Vance has been known to have various ties to the Heritage Foundation’s President, Kevin Roberts, whose organization generated the policies of the controversial Project 2025. Their ties range from Vance writing the foreword in Roberts’s upcoming book “A Promise to America”; Vance having the Heritage Foundation’s government relations director, Amalia Halikias, as a contact on their public Venmo account; and Roberts’s statement, “privately, we were really rooting for him,” after Vance was nominated to be vice president earlier this year.
In February 2024, Vance advocated for at least one policy that aims to replace federal civil servants with political appointees that would be, “responsive to the administration's agenda.”
Trump has attempted to distance himself from any association with Project 2025, expressing that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and he has “no idea who is behind it.”
However, at least 140 people, former Trump employees, have been associated with contributions made to the initiative.
Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate on August 6, 2024. Walz was serving as the governor of Minnesota at the time of his selection and asserted, “We’ve got 91 days. We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
Contrasting Vance, Walz declared in March 2024 that, “abortion is healthcare,” indicating support for abortion rights throughout the nation. He has signed multiple legislations that supported reproductive rights. One bill placed the right to abortion in Minnesota’s statutes.
This made Minnesota the first state legislature in 2023 to have protections put into law, preventing another overturn from removing the right to abort and access to other reproductive healthcare services after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Regarding the economy, Walz aims for pro-labor legislation.
In 2023, he signed a bill into law which established statewide sick and medical leave, banned non-compete agreements, and added worker safety requirements. This resulted in United Auto Workers, one of the largest union groups in the U.S., showing support for Kamala’s running mate.
Walz has received criticism in the past. He has been critiqued on his lagging response to deploy the Minnesota National Guard after the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
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