Vance wrote, in large part because “many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s,” a neighborhood grocery.
Southern whites were migrating to the Republican Party, Mr. His Mamaw railed at the so-called Section 8 federal subsidies that allowed a succession of poor families to move in next door. Vance’s campaign rhetoric a jarring departure may actually be misremembering the book. Readers of “Hillbilly Elegy” who find Mr. But there is something more complex going on. Vance’s Trumpian turn has left a wide variety of people wondering whether it arises from sincere conversion or cynical calculation. Vance was first rumored, dozens of Mandel allies even petitioned the ex-president to reconsider. The conservative Club for Growth, which backs the former Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel, has spent millions on campaign ads that replay every Trump-skeptical thing Mr. So too, in their own way, may his Republican primary rivals in Ohio, who have been professing their fidelity to Trumpism, only to see their leader confer his blessing on a Johnny-come-lately. Vance’s readers may feel let down and misled. Trump “the best president of my lifetime.” Vance once said a lot of nasty things about him, he is a “fearless MAGA fighter” and “a great Buckeye.” And here comes Mr. Trump has traveled to Ohio to tell a frenzied crowd that, even though Mr. And now, 10 days before the Republican primary on May 3, Mr. Trump, even in the parts of the country most taken with him.īut Mr. Vance’s cosmopolitan literary admirers must have been consoled to think that discerning citizens could see through Mr. Trump as “reprehensible” and an “idiot.” He didn’t vote for him. In spirited interviews, articles, tweets and text messages throughout the 2016 election season, Mr. While the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” retained a lot of the exotic patriotism of his kinfolk, even to the extent of choking up whenever he heard “Proud to Be an American,” he drew the line at their chosen candidate. He assailed Joe Biden as a “crazy fake president who will buy energy from Putin and the scumbags of Venezuela but won’t buy it from middle class Ohioans,” who live in a top fracking state. Vance’s gray suit may have looked a bit funereal, but his applause lines were decidedly unstodgy. Trump’s endorsement in a hotly contested race, and his language on that bright and breezy afternoon was suitably bold.Īmid a nodding crowd of men and women in Trump T-shirts and MAGA hats, Mr. Vance, a 37-year-old memoirist and venture capitalist who is running in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, is new to politics. “You cannot have a real country if a bunch of corrupt scumbags who take their marching orders from the Communist Chinese tell us what we’re allowed to say and how we’re allowed to say it.” Vance hollered at a rally for Donald Trump in Ohio last weekend. “We are going to break up the big tech companies, ladies and gentlemen.