Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R-Arkansas) praised former President Trump’s decision to select Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), saying his lack of public office experience was a “good thing.”
“It’s a good thing … that people say J.D. Vance hasn’t been in office that long,” Huckabee said Saturday. In an interview With NewsNation’s Henna Doba.
“The longer people stay in political office, especially in Washington, they’re more susceptible to this dreaded Potomac disease than anywhere else,” he added.
Vance was first elected to the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections with President Trump’s support, meaning he will serve less than one term in Congress.
But Vance, an Ohio Republican, hasn’t always been an enthusiastic supporter of the former president: When Trump ran for president in 2016, Vance strongly opposed making him the front-runner, calling his candidacy “cultural heroin” in an op-ed for The Atlantic.
Eventually, the tides turned, and Vance steadily became one of the Republican presidential nominee’s most vocal supporters. At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, where Trump officially became the GOP nominee, the former president named the Ohio senator as his running mate, bringing to a close the crucial vice presidential race.
Vance built his political career on a difficult upbringing in a low-income community in southwest Ohio, and his best-selling autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailed the hardships he overcame there, including his mother’s struggle with drug addiction.
Huckabee praised Vance for sharing his background and said his addition to the Republican field was a good sign for the party.
“The Republican Party used to be the party of East Coast, West Coast, silk-stocking country club elitists. It’s not like that anymore,” Huckabee said. “It’s the party of the working class. I’m happy about that change.”
“J.D. Vance epitomizes that,” he added.
The former governor also noted that former President Barack Obama had a similar rise through the political ranks, spending little time as a senator before winning the presidential election in 2008.
“Barack Obama was hailed as the greatest man in political history,” Huckabee said.
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