An old saying tells us “no one votes for the vice president in a presidential election, just for the president.” The quick ascension of Californian Kamala Harris to her party’s presidential nomination last summer, though, demonstrates how vital the choice can be, a decision usually made solely by prospective presidential nominees.
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So it was this year with Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio’s Republican U.S. Sen. JD (for James David) Vance. It’s pretty clear that Walz calling Republican President-elect Donald Trump and his choice of Vance “weird” first propelled him into Harris’ consciousness.
Previously, he was almost completely obscure on a national level. Walz performed well as a prospect, though, and other possibilities had more potential drawbacks. So he suddenly became nationally prominent, at least for a while. Things were apparently far more complex in Trump’s selection of Vance, best known previously for his 2016 autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
For a few years after his book became a bestseller, Vance worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, an experience that developed into a large factor in his selection as Trump’s running mate. His access to billionaires in the San Francisco suburbs may have attracted Trump to him as much as anything else.
Vance did, after all, write on Facebook in 2016 that “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a—–e like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” The quote did not become public until 2022, when he ran for the U.S. Senate.
Vance also declared Trump to be “reprehensible” and “an idiot.” Now he says those fairly recent views of his current boss are obsolete. For Vance, Trump has become the cat’s pajamas now that he’s made Vance nationally prominent. It gives Vance the appearance of an opportunist.
There was apparently plenty of opportunism in Trump’s own choice, which included complete exoneration of Vance’s previous views of him. Before, Vance just didn’t understand, but now he does, Trump told those who asked. This may be a new form of what Chinese communists call “re-education.”
Trump’s choice may turn out to be a pretty good illustration of another old saying, “If you want to understand a story, follow the money” because plenty of Silicon Valley money followed the choice of Vance. At least $100 million followed in donations to the Trump campaign and maybe $200 million, both direct and indirect.
Peter Thiel, for example, a major venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder, was no Trump enthusiast until after the new president-elect chose Vance, a Thiel protege. Thiel and pals like fellow venture capitalist Marc Andreesen kicked in tens of millions and raised even more from others, the precise amount yet to be fully reported.
Vance has also worked with Bay Area technology billionaire David Sacks. Sacks sat beside Trump last summer at a $300,000-per-person fundraising dinner on San Francisco’s Nob Hill, where Trump informally polled the room on his choice for veep. Some of those present also helped persuade billionaire Tesla and X owner Elon Musk to become a Trump activist; he eventually kicked in more than $75 million.
At the same time, sources say, many venture capitalists view Vance as a potential barrier to revival of a tax plan proposed by Harris and President Joe Biden that aimed to impose a 25% levy on unrealized capital gains valued at more than $100 million. This plan could cost some venture capitalists billions.
The high-tech Republican-leaning billionaires also are reported to view Vance as their shield against tough regulation of artificial intelligence. They (and their Democratic cohorts) also successfully lobbied Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto a state bill that would have imposed the world’s first regulations on A.I.
Some also think Vance may help them fend off heavy taxation of cryptocurrency profits. All of this means there has rarely been a more obvious case in which following the money helps explain a major political decision.
The plain reality is that if Vance had not spent some years in Northern California, he almost certainly would never have graced this year’s Republican ticket. It’s a much more complex story than what happened among Democrats, even if Walz was even more obscure than Vance before last summer.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.