Former President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance went from the Appalachians to Alexandria, Virginia, in a matter of years.
But does the junior senator from Ohio have the same persona here in Washington that he does in the Buckeye State?
WTOP asked D.C. Axios reporter Cuneyt Dil about the latest reporting on Vance’s life in the D.C. area and how a GOP White House could affect the District.
Listen to the full interview below or read the transcript. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Cuneyt Dil: You could say JD Vance is an Appalachian turned Alexandrian. Me and my colleagues at Axios D.C., we looked at JD Vance’s Washington persona. And, some things we know about him: He lives in the Del Rey neighborhood — you know, liberal neighborhood, of course in the Washington region.
And he’s traveled in Washington circles before.
He has worked at this venture capital firm cofounded by Steve Case, the AOL co-founder, called Revolution. In fact, he even overlapped there with Joe Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain. So we look at how JD Vance has sort of swam in this liberal world of Washington and what that would mean, perhaps if Trump does win a second term as President. Where will the MAGA crowd gravitate toward?
Mitchell Miller: One of the interesting things related to the MAGA crowd and the Republicans is they have their own vision for D.C. And it includes, in the views of people from D.C., or at least D.C. government officials, encroaching on the city’s Home Rule. The mayor recently returned the city budget to the council. It was unsigned.
What kind of sense are you getting in terms of D.C. and whether that is stoking some fears about what might happen under a new Trump administration?
Dil: Yeah, absolutely. You just have to listen to what Trump himself has said, which is he promises to “take over our horribly run capital city now.”
The mayor this week returned the city’s budget unsigned to the council, which is a rare move. And the fear here is that this is a tacit invitation to Congress, to possibly intervene.
Essentially, if the mayor is not endorsing the budget, when it goes to Congress, this could be a sign for Republicans there to say, ‘The mayor doesn’t support the budget. We’re gonna fix it.’ And when, if Republicans go to endeavor to fix the budget, that means they’re not going to let the city have a say in what they change.
So D.C. is preparing for a whole flood of intervention from House Republicans and the GOP if they win the presidency, and both chambers of Congress.
Dimitri Sotis: Cuneyt, these are very serious times. And I don’t mean to push us into lighter material, but I think people might be curious: Why is it that JD Vance and his family chose Del Rey? Is it, you know, the wonderful ice cream shop, the coffee shops? I mean, I know that’s why I stopped by there once in a while. Is that what he did too? And you know, there are a lot of different places in the metro area you can choose to live.
Dil: Well, sure, right. Like many people, I think he saw it, I’m sure, as a wonderful neighborhood. Now my colleague, Mimi Montgomery reports that there are few spottings of him out and about in Del Ray, but the neighbors interestingly “yarn bombed” — threw yarn all over his house — last year when reports said he bought it. So obviously some tension there between the liberal neighbors and himself. But look, I mean, it’s a great neighborhood. I’m sure he found the same thing when he was looking, shopping around the area.
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