As President Biden’s reelection bid fizzled over the last month, the right-wing targeting of Vice President Harris picked up steam, starting with a return of old racist and sexist memes.

The weaker Biden appeared, the more intense the attacks became, with extremism monitors warning of a threatening undercurrent to rhetoric calling Harris a “demon” or a “DEI hire.”

Biden’s decision Sunday to exit the race and endorse the vice president turned that stream of hostility into a torrent. Within hours, far-right forums were awash in vitriol aimed at almost every aspect of Harris’s identity, mounting what analysts call a smear campaign led by the most intolerant — and menacing — elements of Donald Trump’s MAGA universe.

For example, former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, speaking to Britain’s right-wing GB News, described Harris as “this disaster whose only qualification is having a vagina and the right skin color.”

The backlash is a glimpse of what Harris could face if she wins, say extremism monitors, who fear a far-right resurgence like the one that followed the election of Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, only worse because of factors including social media and the nation’s deep polarization.

The pile-on also fits the pattern of studies showing that women candidates — and particularly women of color — experience online abuse and threats for seeking election at any level, from school board seats to the Oval Office. The intimidation campaigns elevate the risk of real-world attacks by the violent far right, analysts say, a concern that takes on urgency as thousands of Black and Brown women across the country pledge street-level organizing to get out the vote for Harris.

“She represents what it means to try to have a multiracial democracy, a feminist democracy — and that’s what they don’t want,” said Alexandria Onuoha, a researcher at Suffolk University in Boston who studies extremist targeting of Black women and girls. “It’s not just VP anymore. This is the big leagues now. It’s going to be even more aggressive.”

Harris’s backstory is a smorgasbord for extremists across ideologies: A mixed-race daughter of immigrants grows up to become California attorney general before making it to the United States Senate and, eventually, the White House.

Neo-Nazis go after her Indian and Jamaican ancestry and use antisemitic slurs against her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff. Anti-government types call Harris “a cop” because of her prosecutor days. QAnon-style conspiracy theorists portray her as part of a deep-state cabal; they spread fake photos of Harris with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Christian nationalists, meanwhile, cast her as Jezebel, the biblical symbol of womanly wickedness. Lance Wallnau, a prominent pro-Trump Christian nationalist, responded to Harris’s ascent with a video saying she represents “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary [Clinton] because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger.”

More mainstream conservatives, too, engage in the racist and sexist dog whistling. Some Republican lawmakers mispronounce “Kamala,” for example, or promote conspiratorial thinking about her rise. At MAGA rallies, T-shirts and bumper stickers deride Harris with slogans that imply that she traded sexual favors for political gain.

“This is what comes with the territory when you are a woman of color and in the arena,” said a Harris campaign worker who also was involved with her 2020 primary effort, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign matters. “It’s kind of a testament to the fact that Republicans have a race problem themselves — that’s pretty clear-cut.”

In the first two days of Harris’s campaign, online discussion of her among high-profile right-wing politicians and influencers grew to almost six times the typical volume, according to a Washington Post analysis. Sexual and racial themes dominated the chatter; dozens of influential figures on the right shared crude sexual remarks about Harris on social media. The spread of a debunked theory that Harris was ineligible for the presidency for citizenship reasons spiked after Biden endorsed her for the presidency.

“X and Telegram are essentially a free-for-all where we’re seeing a ton of conspiracy theories,” said Freddy Cruz, a researcher and program manager at Western States Center, an anti-extremism watchdog group. “It looks like there’s a new conspiracy theory every hour.”

The campaign against Harris borrows heavily from the earlier targeting of Obama, the country’s first Black president.

Once again, “birther” conspiracy theories are spreading quickly online, racking up millions of views for posts showing Harris’s purported birth certificate alongside a debunked argument that she’s ineligible to run because of her foreign-born parents. Harris is legally eligible and was born in Oakland, Calif.

Other commenters are stoking racial divisions by asserting that Harris isn’t really Black, suggesting that her Caribbean roots don’t represent Black Americans — a tactic that also was used against Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

“They are very aggressive at latching onto and continuing to repeat baseless accusations,” Cruz said. “In Obama’s case, it was about skin color and supposed religion. We’re seeing a lot of attacks on Vice President Harris that are conspiracy theories laced with racism and sexism.”

The online and verbal attacks, extremism researchers warn, can influence unrest on the ground. They note that the right-wing uproar over Obama’s election re-energized the anti-government militia movement, which had been largely quiet since the devastating 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by far-right extremist Timothy McVeigh.

“When Obama left office, we normally would’ve expected a little bit of a downturn because they usually relax some of their fervor when a Republican comes back into office,” said Amy Cooter, a researcher who specializes in militia groups at the Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism. “We didn’t see that because Trump legitimized the fears that they and other folks on the right have.”

Cooter said far-right armed groups stayed active, often organizing in plain sight on Facebook and other social platforms. The picture changed after a pro-Trump mob — with extremist groups in the lead — stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The double blow of social media platforms’ crackdown on militant accounts and a sweeping Justice Department investigation that has resulted in more than 1,000 convictions to date pushed many armed groups underground or to encrypted apps.

One exception is the White-power movement, a sector of the far right that has reasserted itself in an era when others have atomized or are keeping a lower profile, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a global conflict monitoring group. White supremacist groups are staging pop-up appearances in various parts of the country, often carrying swastika flags and handing out fliers with messages such as “Diversity means fewer white people.”

Recent sites include Nashville, where White-power demonstrators have spread propaganda throughout the month and disrupted a city council meeting. Photos showed men dressed in T-shirts that say “Pro-White” giving Nazi salutes. In Michigan, local news outlets reported, about a dozen masked White supremacists marched through downtown Howell this month; others were filmed on a nearby highway overpass shouting, “We love Hitler, we love Trump!”

Analysts say they can’t predict whether these groups will ramp up their activities in opposition to Harris, but that the idea of Trump competing against a woman of Black and South Asian heritage presents a common rallying point for disparate factions with different agendas and tactics.

“It’s simple: She’s a Black woman in power and they’re terrified,” said Onuoha, the Suffolk University researcher. “Their mindset is that any woman of color in power is out to take something away from them.”

Last month, the Christian nationalist pastor Clay Nash told worshipers in Boise, Idaho, about a dream in which he was looking out over the Democratic National Convention, which inexplicably was taking place aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln.

In the dream, Nash said, a Jezebel spirit “was shot right through the brain.” He boasted that a friend, knowing his skill as a long-range shooter, suggested Nash was the man for the job.

“How many of you know that being shot through the brain is a dead shot?” Nash asked, according to a video of the remarks. “I believe we’re about to render Jezebel null and void.”

Such visions or prophecies are central to Nash’s subset of Christian nationalism, the independent charismatics of the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, which scholars describe as a fast-growing, anti-democratic movement preaching that hard-right Christians should control all aspects of government and society.

A report last year from extremism monitors at the Southern Poverty Law Center called the NAR “a new and powerful Christian supremacy movement that is attempting to transform culture and politics in the U.S. and countries across the world into a grim authoritarianism.”

Some NAR leaders have pushed back on descriptions of their goals as violent, insisting that their focus on “spiritual warfare” is figurative, not literal — a stance, analysts say, that allows for plausible deniability should a radicalized follower attack.

Take the example of Nash fantasizing about the killing of Jezebel. The pastor never says in the sermon that the demonic spirit in his vision was a stand-in for Harris.

Among Christian nationalists, however, the vice president repeatedly has been branded as Jezebel, a racialized depiction “used as a stereotype or controlling image of Black womanhood, of Black female sexuality,” said Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a sociologist at Tulane University whose doctoral research focuses on Christian nationalism.

The Washington Post asked Nash for comment about the vision and whether, in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, he would still share a violent dream about a shooting death at a political event. The response was a single sentence in an email: “I did not say or preach this at any time.” The full video of the sermon remains on the Clay Nash Ministries YouTube channel.

A top concern, Gaspard-Hogewood said, is that extreme or unstable followers will now revisit visions like the one Nash expressed and interpret them as prophecies to be fulfilled — with Harris’s expected formal nomination at the Democratic National Convention only weeks away.

Gaspard-Hogewood said dehumanizing portrayals of Harris as an evil, power-hungry demon resonate with pro-Trump Christian voters who have embraced the spiritual warfare narrative.

“It’s both a caricature and a warning in framing her in this way,” she said.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has raised more than $200 million since President Biden endorsed her last Sunday and terminated his own presidential bid — with two-thirds of the vice president’s haul coming from first-time donors, according to Harris campaign officials.

The outpouring of cash and Democratic enthusiasm for Harris has reshaped the presidential race since President Biden abandoned his bid a week ago, forcing Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump out of the comfortable posture he had maintained over the past few months as polls showed an edge over Biden in key swing states. Trump had also begun eyeing opportunities to expand the electoral map — including in states like Minnesota, where he campaigned on Saturday night.

Harris campaign aides said they have recruited 170,000 new volunteers since last Sunday and are holding 2,300 events to mobilize grassroots supporters this weekend. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), who is under serious consideration to be Harris’s running mate, launched a canvassing event Saturday in Carlisle, Pa., while Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, another potential vice-presidential contender, rallied supporters in St. Paul, Minn, to stoke enthusiasm for the Harris effort.

Harris quickly cleared the field of any serious competition and secured pledges from enough Democratic delegates to clinch the nomination Monday night, according to the Associated Press’s delegate tracker. She notched a series of critical endorsements, including from Barack and Michelle Obama. And she is now in the midst of her intensive search for a running mate — a decision that she intends to make before Aug. 7, when the national party plans to have virtually nominated a ticket.

The vice president attended a fundraiser on Saturday in the Berkshires in Massachusetts that was expected to bring in $1.4 million for the campaign, according to one of the hosts. She told the crowd that Trump and his allies have resorted to some “wild lies” about her record: “Some of what he and his running mate are saying, it’s just plain weird,” Harris said to laughter at The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass. “That’s the box you put that in.”

A new national survey by the Wall Street Journal found 49 percent of registered voters said they supported Trump and 47 percent backed Harris, within the margin of error. New Fox News polls in battleground states found Trump and Harris statistically tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Harris led by six 6 points in Minnesota.

The time-honored American tradition of the vice-presidential audition period is here.

If you turned on your television this weekend — mainly cable news, of course — you would have a difficult time not seeing it: a parade of Democrats vying, fairly overtly, to join Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket. These would-be running mates are mainly White men, a demographic some believe Harris should choose from because she is the first Black woman likely to be nominated to a major party ticket.

The possible No. 2s include Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who joined CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday to talk about why he has labeled Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), “weird”; and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who guested on “Fox News Sunday” in his personal capacity, arguing that Trump is “older and stranger” than he used to be.

Walz and Buttigieg are partaking in the not-so-subtle campaign of running to be the running mate, an exercise that’s been honed by prospective vice-presidential candidates, with varying degrees of success, throughout modern political history. From operating covert draft operations to appearing on a nominee’s favorite morning show, those on the veep shortlist are tasked with selling themselves, their record and their ability to effectively message — all without looking too thirsty or desperate.

This year’s crop of possible running mates is not shy, and their cases are being made especially publicly because of the abbreviated picking season given the sudden emergence of Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket following President Biden’s announcement he would not seek reelection just a week ago. The vice-presidential contenders are blitzing the airwaves and campaign trail to showcase their credentials and try on the role of Harris’s No. 2.

Over the weekend, Walz, Buttigieg and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker appeared on Sunday television shows, while Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro hit the campaign trail to stump on behalf of Harris.

In his TV hit, Walz coyly declined to say whether he had received vetting materials after forcefully defending his record in a state where Trump and Vance attended a rally the day before.

“What a monster,” Walz said during his CNN appearance, responding facetiously to potential attacks on him as a big-government liberal. “Kids are eating and having a full belly so they can go learn and women are making their own health-care decisions. And we’re a top-five business state and we also rank in the top three of happiness.”

Over on Fox, Buttigieg made the case that voters shared his concerns about Trump’s age and mental acuity, a day after telling the New York Times that he didn’t think it was “appropriate” to say whether he would be a good vice president or wanted to be vice president.

Harris is considering roughly a dozen vice-presidential candidates. But three Democrats have risen to the top, The Washington Post has previously reported, including Shapiro, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D). Kelly and Cooper appear to have kept a low profile over the weekend, not making the Sunday show circuit.

The unprecedented timeline for settling on a No. 2 has turbocharged the search for Harris’s replacement as the party’s vice-presidential nominee, as she is well on her way to the Democratic presidential nod after locking up over two-thirds of the delegates needed to become the official nominee over the course of her week-long candidacy. Those involved with the process cautioned that the search is in its early stages — though Harris is expected to make a decision by Aug. 7, in line with the Democratic Party’s plans to nominate a ticket virtually.

Harris made her own headlines over the weekend when she announced Sunday morning that she had raised $2o0 million since entering the race, two-thirds of it from first-time donors.

Several of the contenders deployed a new line of attack against Trump and Vance, adopted by Harris in recent comments and campaign statements: Trump and Vance are “just plain weird,” an attack on the Republican ticket that Walz debuted.

“They’re just weird, I mean they really are,” Pritzker said on ABC News’ “This Week,” calling out Trump for being “afraid of windmills” and Vance for advocating for higher tax rates for childless adults.

Buttigieg, who also appeared on MSNBC on Sunday, argued that Vance’s “weird or insulting” characterization of the Democratic Party as “childless cat ladies” also leads to “weird policies,” referencing Vance’s 2021 proposal to bolster the political power of families by giving parents the ability to cast votes on behalf of their children.

Though not on the Sunday shows, Shapiro rallied for Harris in central Pennsylvania on Saturday before hundreds of voters. Ticking through the vice president’s record, Shapiro argued that she was well-positioned to lead the country and defeat Trump, and warned voters of what would happen if Trump returned to the White House.

“Y’all go crack open that Project 2025,” said Shapiro, referencing a 900-page blueprint for a second Trump term put together by former — and likely future — leaders of the Trump administration. “That is chock-full of some crazy ideas, some dangerous ideas, but ideas that he plans to carry forth if he is given the keys to the White House again.”

Beshear, the twice-elected Democratic governor of a deep-red state, delivered a keynote address at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty & Justice Celebration on Saturday night where he sang Harris’s praises before heading to Forsyth County, Ga., on Sunday morning to headline a campaign event for her. Beshear has also repeatedly attacked Vance for trying to profit off Kentuckians with his novel “Hillbilly Elegy” and for misrepresenting Appalachians.

“JD Vance is a phony, a fake,” Beshear said on CNN’s “The Source” last week. “The problem is JD Vance has no conviction, but I guess the problem is his running mate has 34.”

Some options from different demographic backgrounds have been mentioned as potential options to join Harris on the ticket, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Both have shut down claims that voters are not ready for two women on the ticket.

But the conventional political wisdom that has crystallized is that if Harris — the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India — wants to win, she’d be wise to pick a counterweight to broaden her appeal to voters: in other words, a white man from a swing state.

That wisdom has spawned a flood of memes since Harris emerged as the likely Democratic nominee. “Who will the VP be?” a user posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, atop a picture of a “white mystery” Airheads candy. “Kamala’s VP options”: another user posted to describe a picture of an array of white paint samples labeled “Trustworthy Whites: 40 of our best whites.”

If there is one criteria that Democrats have started to coalesce around, it’s that Harris could benefit from picking a candidate from one of the swing states that are likely to decide the election.

Last week, the Arizona Democratic Party endorsed Kelly for vice president, the Philadelphia Democratic Party endorsed Shapiro, and the North Carolina Democratic Party endorsed Cooper. Asked about the trend Sunday, Pritzker conceded that “winning those battleground states is most important” — but not definitive, he added.

“But I think we’ve seen over the last decades that who you pick as your vice president doesn’t determine whether you’re going to win a state or not,” he said. “What it does determine is whether you’ve got the message right across the board.”

Until the very end, some people close to Donald Trump tried to talk the former president out of picking Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate.

Aboard Trump’s plane en route to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) argued that Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would be better than the untested Vance because the Cuban American senator might attract more votes in battleground states. He tried to recruit others on Trump’s plane to support his position, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Another adviser argued in a phone call a couple of days earlier that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) or Rubio would be a better choice because of Vance’s previous comments opposing abortion, asking Trump how he would defend some of the senator’s positions that seemed further to the right than his.

An array of senators, donors, conservative media personalities and other supporters called Trump in the final 48 hours before the announcement, lobbying for Rubio or someone other than Vance because they said other candidates could attract additional voters to Trump’s coalition, according to five people familiar with the talks who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Trump listened as each person made their case, but they said the former president said his gut had been with Vance for many weeks, if not months — liking his Rust Belt upbringing, foreign and economic policy positions, pugnacious TV appearances and academic pedigree. Vance had influential backers, including Donald Trump Jr. and tech billionaires.

Trump later said choosing Vance was a difficult pick, likening it to “The Apprentice,” his former reality television show, in a meeting with Florida’s delegates in Milwaukee. But Trump said it was partially about securing the future of the Republican Party after he was gone. “He is going to be a superstar in the future,” Trump told the Florida delegates huddled inside the Baird Center, according to an attendee.

Whether that bet — one of the most consequential Trump will make this year — pays off remains unclear. In the nearly two weeks since, President Biden has dropped out of the race and Vice President Harris is now the likely Democratic nominee, energizing Democrats. Vance, meanwhile, had a rocky first full week on the campaign trail since departing the convention, attracting unwanted attention to the Republican ticket.

The Trump campaign has spent the past week trying to clean up after Vance’s controversial comments, including previous interviews in which he mocked “childless cat ladies” or took a position on abortion much stronger than Trump’s.

In addition, previous emails between Vance and a friend reported by the New York Times show Vance saying he hated the police because they mistreated people, calling Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and saying that “the more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer.” A Trump adviser called the emails “not ideal.”

Vance has come under attack from friendly quarters, as well, including the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, social media personality Dave Portnoy and conservative media star Ben Shapiro. Some question the vetting from Trump’s team and are asking if picking Vance could now backfire.

Some Republican strategists said they fear Vance could hurt the ticket with suburban women — a group where Trump saw significant erosion in his 2020 loss after his 2016 win. Among Trump allies, there has been “constant discussion about whether the president made a bad choice,” according to one longtime adviser. Text message chains have blown up with his “awkward public appearances,” the person said.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung defended Vance’s performance as Trump’s running mate. He said the criticism is “nothing more than musings from out-of-touch individuals who have no idea what’s going on. They are so out of the loop, they might as well be living in a different universe.”

Trump’s campaign aides say the former president remains confident in Vance. The two appeared together at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago Thursday evening and at a Minnesota rally Saturday. Vance flew to Oklahoma City on Friday, where he headlined a fundraiser with oil baron Harold Hamm that was said to have raised more than $2 million. He is expected to keep a busy travel schedule — both appearing in Midwestern states and raising money. The campaign has also been pleased with Vance’s sharp attacks against Harris in recent speeches.

“President Trump is thrilled with the choice he made with Senator Vance to be his running mate, and they are the perfect team to take back the White House,” Cheung said. “Meanwhile, Democrats are in complete disarray after their coup that forcibly removed Biden from the campaign, proving they are the real threats to democracy.”

Trump was aware, advisers said, that Vance had been critical of him in the past. People familiar with the vetting said that Trump’s team was aware of some, but not all, of his previous comments that have drawn attention — and expect more revelations to come. Top advisers to Trump watched many of his previous interviews, read his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and asked him questions, along with a more formal paperwork process, a Trump adviser said.

“A thorough and exhaustive vetting obviously took place and there was no doubt Senator Vance was absolutely qualified to be the next Vice President of the United States. In politics, people usually cower in fear and curl up in a ball when things get tough. Not Senator Vance and certainly not President Trump,” Cheung said.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, said the Trump-Vance campaign appears to have been “caught flat footed with past comments.”

“Every single day on a presidential campaign, you are getting a political colonoscopy,” Madden said. “But what’s compounded here in this case, we’re talking about a 39-year-old who is one-third of the way through his Senate term and that’s why you’re seeing the sort of bumpy start.”

The particularly rough start for Vance has come as a welcome surprise for the Harris campaign, according to a Harris aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations. Although they had expected Vance to face some questions over his past critiques of Trump, the Harris team had not expected some of the harsh internet buzz.

“We did not expect we would have cat lady news cycles,” the aide said. “This is organically happening without us pushing. … I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so weird.”

The Harris campaign has tried to highlight other past comments, such as Vance’s positions on abortion — an issue Trump has often sought to avoid and that polls show is a vulnerability for Republicans with the general electorate. People close to the Harris campaign say the selection of Vance makes the arguments easier.

KamalaHQ, the Harris campaign’s rapid-response X account, has repeatedly posted old Vance content. In one video clip from a 2021 talk about no-fault divorces, Vance says that divorces, even after domestic abuse, maybe “worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”

In an audio clip from a 2022 podcast, Vance advocates for a “federal response” to restrict women traveling across state lines for abortions. And in a 2016 video of Vance on the speaking circuit after his book release, he says Trump is “a really bad candidate and frankly I think he’s a really bad person.”

Vance has said those clips about policy positions were taken out of context and that his position on Trump has evolved since he saw Trump in action as president.

Vance has drawn significant mockery and derision for having said on Fox News in 2021 that women politicians like Harris who haven’t given birth are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” He added that they have “no direct stake” in America’s future.

Vance went on Megyn Kelly’s show and tried to clarify these previous comments. “I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against dogs. I’ve got one dog at home and I love him,” he said. “People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said, and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I’m sorry, it is true. It is true that we’ve become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti-child.”

Vance spokesman William Martin said it was “no surprise” that Democrats were attacking Vance and that Vance was planning instead to highlight the Biden administration’s record on inflation and immigration. “Those are the issues voters actually care about, no matter how much the leftwing media wishes otherwise,” Martin said.

Vance was pushed by Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, and a range of influential others, including tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and media personalities such as Tucker Carlson.

One of Trump’s goals in the pick was to have a candidate with Midwest roots who could “camp out” in states like Pennsylvania and talk to blue-collar voters. Trump is underperforming with White men and Vance could help shore up that base, advisers say.

Another goal was to tap into Vance’s significant donor network, including in Silicon Valley. And Trump liked Vance on television, advisers said.

“JD’s book is number one on Amazon right now. People are paying him to read his life story. The Harris campaign will have to pay TV networks and social media platforms to tell her life story,” said Justin Sayfie, a Florida lobbyist who has raised money for Trump.

David Urban, a longtime Trump ally in Pennsylvania, said he believed Vance’s personal story would resonate with blue-collar voters.

“If he goes and says to people at a town hall, or at a rally, how many people have been affected by drugs and alcohol? How many people in this crowd have worked two or three jobs and feel like they can’t get ahead? How many people in this crowd have joined the military to further yourself?” Urban said.

So far, Vance has received warm, if far smaller, welcomes than Trump.

One of the first bumps in the campaign trail came as early as Vance’s rally Monday in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio. The auditorium of the high school he attended filled with a few hundred people, including those he had known from childhood — among them his mother and beloved math teacher — chanting “J-D!”

When an audience member shouted at Vance about requiring identification to vote, the candidate, new to the national stage, got distracted. The diatribe that followed became the most watched moment from the whole event.

“It is the weirdest thing to me, Democrats say that it is racist to believe — well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today; I’m sure they’re going to call that racist, too,” he said.

Greg Hieser, 68, watched the event and said he still believed Trump and Vance would win — even if he had some misgivings about Vance’s speaking style.

“He’s still green about it,” Hieser said, “but he’ll get the hang of it.”