POLITICS
What is J.D. Vance’s net worth?
With the election getting ever closer, we take a look at the money behind the Ohio Senator and Republican vice presidential hopeful.
Ohio Senator James David Vance, more commonly referred to as J.D. Vance was named earlier this year as Donald Trump’s running mate, putting him in line to be the next Vice President of the United States.
The freshman Senator will not need to give up his seat to run, which means that if the Republican ticket does not win in November – the challenge seen as significantly greater since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden on the Democratic candidate – he will remain in Washington. Senator Vance was elected in 2022, making him one of the GOP caucus newest members to the chamber. Vance goes up against Tim Walz in the VP debate.
Fortune and ambition: J.D. Vance
Though initially opposed to Donald Trump and his politics, like many of his party – although not all – he changed his tune when he began considering his own run for national office in 2020. Since then, he has been an ardent supporter of the former president, and the Trump campaign sees him as a beneficial name to have alongside Trump this November.
Forbes puts Vance’s estimated net worth at $10 million, much of which has come through book royalities and investments. In terms of assets, Vance owns a home in Cincinnati, Ohio that according to his financial disclosure made before the 2022 election, is worth $1.4 million, and he and his wife took out a mortgage worth anywhere between $500,000 and $1 million in 2014 to pay for it. The investments held by Vance can be found in the financial disclosure linked above, though his portfolio has likely shifted since that document was released.
J.D. Vance’s path to Washington
After graduating from high school in 2003, he enlisted in the Marines and was deployed to Iraq. It was there that he began to feel disillusioned with politics, and that he had been sent to serve his country based on a lie.
I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to — that the promises of the foreign policy establishment were a complete joke.
Upon returning home, he got back to his studies, attending the University of Ohio where he majored in political science and philosophy. He then went on to earn his juris doctor from Yale University. Vance did not head straight to the courtroom after graduating from Yale and instead made his first move to Washington DC, working for Texas Senator John Cornyn before going on to clerk for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky David Bunning.
After gaining some experience as a clerk he was hired by the Chicago-based law firm, Sidley Austin. He would not last more than two years at the firm before being hired by billionaire Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist who put his money behind various Republican upstarts. In 2022, the year that Vance was elected to the Senate, Thiel had also backed Blake Masters, who lost to the Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. His work as a lawyer and within the tech industry earned Vance a generous income that has helped him build his wealth.
J.D. Vance as a writer
It’s notable that much of J.D. Vance’s net worth is said to have come from his work as an author. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, published in 2016, is his best selling book.
The book takes the reader to Vance’s hometown in rural Ohio as he looks to begin his career as a lawyer in settings that are unfamiliar to him based on his roots. Among conservatives the book has received high praise as a depiction of the “forgotten” parts of the country, but has been criticized sharply by those who see the memoir as an attempt to blame poor people for their situation, without paying attention to the structural barriers that entrap families in poverty across Appalachia.
When he decided to run for Senate, Vance released a financial disclosure which showed that in 2020 and 2021 he had earned over $800,000 in royalties.