Tim Walz and JD Vance in the first vice president debate tonight

Looking to the future of a Republican Party dominated by Donald Trump and his legions of MAGA supporters, the 78-year-old former president in July named Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, now 40, to his running mate on the GOP's national ticket.

The former president decided to split the Republican Party ticket with one of his key supporters in the Senate and a former Trump critic who has transformed into a leading America First supporter.

Vance grew up in a working-class family in a small town in southwest Ohio. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served in the Iraq War.

Vance, a former venture capitalist and author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” before running for elected office, is from Ohio, a former battleground state that the former president carried handily in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

But the first-term lawmaker — elected to the Senate just two years ago — has made it his mission to boost Republican voters among working-class voters, particularly in the Rust Belt, who otherwise support Democratic Party voters would.

Trump said in appointing Vance that the senator would be “focused sharply on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond.”

During the selection process for the Republican vice presidential nominee, Vance had a key ally in Donald Trump Jr. The former president's eldest son and popular surrogate in the MAGA world is a close friend of Vance.