When Donald Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate in July, he gambled on a biography and an electoral map. His victory makes the 40-year-old one of the youngest vice presidents in US history, the first of the millennial generation, and one of the least prepared for a traditionally thankless job.

His is a story of the exemplary rise of a child of a dysfunctional Appalachian family, with an absent father and drug-addicted mother, in search of a structured environment within which to blossom. This quest led him successively to the elite Marine Corps, the prestigious Yale Law School and then the business world with a mentor, Peter Thiel, who was one of the first Silicon Valley billionaires to embrace Trump.

The result was a bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, published before the November 2016 presidential election. The book, which later became a film, was promoted by the press as an attempt to explain Trump's unexpected victory, propelled by the people left behind by globalization depicted in the story, and by nostalgia for a bygone America.

The electoral map, meanwhile, was centered on the key states of the Rust Belt in the northeastern United States: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the "blue wall" on which Joe Biden's re-election hopes rested before he withdrew, on July 21, and which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris hoped to maintain. With his background and role as an Ohio senator, elected in 2022 at just 38 years of age, Vance had the profile required to address the blue-collar workers who voted twice for Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012, and then enlisted in the ranks of Make America Great Again.

It's an understatement to say that the running mate wasn't among the initial supporters of Trump, for whom he didn't vote in 2016, preferring a libertarian maverick. At the time, he described the billionaire as a "cultural heroin," capable only of bringing a brief sense of satisfaction to his voters. He even questioned the possibility of the Republican turning into an "American Hitler."

Then Vance came around and purged his social media accounts of the criticism he heaped on Trump, while growing a beard as if to make this mutation material. He then stubbornly sought his support for the Republican primary for a senatorial seat in Ohio, in 2022, stepping up strong statements to the press to attract his attention.

He was aided in his endeavors by Trump's eldest son, who was won over by a speech in which he expressed his disdain for the Ukrainian cause, going against traditional Republican positions. Thiel also used his influence to his advantage, as did Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, who was also beginning his maneuvers to get closer to the former president, with success.

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