When WCPO news anchor Tanya O’Rourke interviewed author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance in 2017, he was fresh off the decision not to run for Senate the year before. People had wanted him to, he said. He didn't. His family, investment firm and nonprofit kept him too busy.

He'd found room in his schedule by Thursday night, when Vance returned to his birthplace of Middletown to announce a bid for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Rob Portman. It'll be a competitive race — other Republicans hoping to score the same job include longtime Ohio GOP chair Jane Timken and former Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel, one of Twitter's most vocal Trump fans.

O’Rourke sat down with Vance again to find out what changed his mind. Why now?

“I recognize that if you actually want to get anything done, you got to go in there and blow some things up,” he said. “I also think I have a desire to actually get things done. You know, I’m a political outsider. I’ve never run for political office before.”

He was initially critical of former President Donald Trump in 2016 but has since changed his mind about that, too.

“I think he delivered on his promises to make the country a better place,” Vance said. “So, I think I saw this guy, he was an outsider. I didn’t really believe he was serious. And then I saw the guy in action. And I thought he was a successful president. That’s why I supported him enthusiastically in 2020. I didn't hide from that fact, either that I was critical of them in 2016, or that I was a big supporter in 2020. So I changed because he did a good job.”

The two met a few months ago to discuss the race.

“He’s not gonna endorse anybody in this race early on,” Vance said of his meeting with Trump. “I think he wants to let the candidates fight it out.”

Vance is running on a platform of bringing jobs to Ohio and taking on big tech, even though he’s received $10 million from a super PAC formed by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

Pieper, Robert

Vance also said he supports a universal voter ID.

“First of all, we do want, I think, universal voter ID because it's just common sense election integrity," he said. "A majority of people, Democratic, Republican, all racial groups support common sense voter ID, so I think we should have it."

"And absolutely, if people can't afford to get an ID, you don't want that to prevent them from being able to vote. You want to make it easier for people to vote, but you want to make it easier for them to vote in a fair and safe way. You want basically legal votes to count, illegal votes not to count, and making voter ID the law, that way it actually I think facilitates and supports that goal."

In addition to Timken and Mandel, Vance will face two Cleveland businessmen, Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno, in next year's GOP primary.

JD Vance expected to enter Ohio's U.S. Senate race

Updated: 10:10 AM EDT Jul 1, 2021

The venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” appears poised to join the crowded Republican race for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman.JD Vance, whose book was widely seen in 2016 as helping explain Republican Donald Trump's appeal to struggling white, working-class voters, plans a “special announcement” and rally at the steel fabricator Middletown Tube Works in his Ohio hometown on Thursday.If he enters the race, Vance would face former state GOP chair Jane Timken, former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, and two Cleveland businesspeople, Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno, in next year's GOP primary. Portman, a Republican, decided earlier this year not to seek a third term, citing dismay at partisan gridlock.While Vance, 38, hasn't run for elective office before, a political action committee formed this year to encourage his candidacy got an eyebrow-raising $10 million contribution from PayPal founder Peter Thiel. Vance had worked for the billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur in California.Vance returned to his home state to live after Trump was elected in 2016, which was the first of two times the former president carried Ohio by 8 percentage points. Vance's book, made into a movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close that earned the latter a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, tells of his hardscrabble, colorful upbringing in the struggling Ohio steel mill city of Middletown and his familial roots in Appalachian Kentucky. He went on to serve in the Marines, including in Iraq, and to success at Ohio State University and Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 2013, and in the technology industry in Silicon Valley.Vance said when he came back to Ohio in 2016 that he hoped to contribute to anti-addiction efforts. He and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, settled in Cincinnati, where he helped found a venture capital firm.Among Vance's close associates is Jai Chabria, a longtime strategist for former Republican Gov. John Kasich, a 2016 Trump presidential rival and detractor of the former president. Vance and Usha, who met at Yale Law, have two children.