Vance gets $10M to explore Senate run
Peter Thiel, one of former President Donald Trump’s few Big Tech industry donors, has pumped $10 million into a super political action committee bankrolling a possible campaign for one of Ohio’s Senate seats in 2022 by J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and who once employed Vance at his hedge fund, was the first donor to Protect Ohio Values PAC, which was founded in Virginia last month, allowing Vance to explore a possible run for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman.
The Mercer family, also contributors to Trump, is expected to write a big check to the PAC shortly, said Bryan Lanza, a veteran Republican strategist working with the group.
“Trump, J.D. and Peter see these communities in a much different light than the Republican establishment,” said Lanza in an interview. “J.D. and Peter share the same vision.”
The donation, made
Friday, was first reported by the Cincinnati Inquirer.
Vance, whose 2016 memoir chronicled his rise from a hardscrabble Appalachian childhood to Yale Law School, has positioned himself as the voice of a frustrated white underclass energized by Trump’s defiance and disruptions. His book was turned into a 2020 movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
Vance, 36, briefly considered a challenge to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, in 2018 after the Republican favorite, Josh Mandel, dropped out. Brown defeated his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, by 7 percentage points that year, in a state Trump won handily in 2016 and 2020.
The field in 2022 is expected to be crowded, well financed and highly competitive.
Mandel, the former state treasurer, is expected to run, as is former Ohio Republican Party chairwoman Jane Timken, another big Trump donor.
Potential Democratic candidates include Rep. Tim Ryan — a fiery orator whose pitch, like that of Vance, is rooted in a populist appeal to the working class; Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s former health director; and Emilia Sykes, the state House minority leader.
The German-born Thiel and Vance have been friends for years, and they talk often about politics and their views on the country’s problems, a person close to Vance said.
Shortly after graduating from Yale, Vance began working for Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management. When he began his own Cincinnati-based firm focused on projects in the Midwest, Narya Capital, he raised about $93 million from Thiel, tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt of Google and ExactTarget co-founder Scott Dorsey.