Originally by Carl Gibson at www.alternet.org
Prior to his 2022 campaign, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) heaped praise on a series of controversial essays by the far-right Heritage Foundation. Now that Vance is the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee, that endorsement is coming back to bite him.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that a series of 29 essays published by Heritage in 2017 around the central theme of the role of women in the modern family structure got Vance’s endorsement, when he was still primarily known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. He lauded the essays as “admirable” and wrote the introduction to the essays. The Times reported that the bestselling author even delivered the keynote speech at Heritage’s Washington, D.C. office to commemorate the publication of the essays.
One of the essays called single-mother families a “tragedy,” and another hoped for the day that obtaining an abortion would become “unthinkable.” Another piece characterized hunger as a “great motivation” for low-income Americans to get jobs. And several essays lambasted the mainstreaming of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), baselessly saying it was harmful to women.
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Vance’s involvement in the rollout of Heritage’s 2017 essay compilation is just the latest attachment the Ohio senator has to Project 2025. The VP hopeful has had to fend off associations with the vastly unpopular far-right policy playbook given that former President Donald Trump publicly distanced himself from it on multiple occasions.
However, this has proven difficult: Earlier this year it was revealed that Vance wrote the foreword to a forthcoming book by Heritage president Kevin Roberts. The book was originally scheduled to hit bookshelves this month, but its release has since been pushed back until after the election – likely due to its author hoping to minimize any potential damage to Trump’s candidacy.
The Hillbilly Elegy author’s spokesperson pushed back on the Times‘ reporting on Vance’s endorsement of the essays, noting that the Ohio senator didn’t personally write any of them. He also pointed out that the essays were published in the first year of Trump’s presidency, long before Vance was an elected official and under consideration to be the ex-president’s eventual running mate.
“Senator Vance has long made clear that he supports IVF and does not agree with every opinion in this seven-year-old report, which features a range of unique views from dozens of conservative thinkers,” Vance spokesman Luke Schroeder said. “It’s bizarre that The New York Times is writing an entire piece attacking Senator Vance for the views of other individuals.”
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Heritage also downplayed Vance’s past statements, telling the Times: “Senator Vance had no role in producing or approving the contents of the 2017 Index of Culture and Opportunity, outside of writing the introduction.”
The 2017 endorsement is far from the only tie Vance has to Heritage and Project 2025. In July, after Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025 or its authors, Vance asserted in an interview with Newsmax that “most Americans couldn’t care less” about the 920-page far-right playbook, but added that the group’s policy guide “has some good ideas in there.”
Despite Trump’s denials, Heritage has repeatedly boasted about its close ties to the ex-president. Numerous Heritage webpages and fundraising materials note that during Trump’s first year in office, he implemented approximately two-thirds of the group’s policy proposals, and that he kept Heritage alumni close in his administration.
Click here to read the Times’ report in its entirety (subscription required).
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