Even Sen. JD Vance’s allies realize the relative political newcomer has taken a huge leap that was bound to run into some early stumbles.

The Ohio Republican is the most politically inexperienced GOP vice-presidential nominee in almost 90 years. He’s run in just one election for any political office.

“You know, he’s gotten shot out of a cannon. It’s like going from zero to 60 in terms of intensity, publicity, scrutiny, all that stuff,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), an early supporter of Vance in his 2022 Senate campaign.

“Enduring the demonization of the national media is never easy,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who embraced the antiestablishment posture a decade before Vance arrived in the Senate. “I will say this, if the New York Times were praising JD Vance, I would view that as a much, much bigger problem.”

Some of his Senate Republican colleagues think that’s understating the firestorm in which Vance now finds himself.

With Vance thrust onto the national stage less than a month ago, they’ve been forced to defend resurfaced comments from his pre-Senate days. There’s the 2021 clip of him on Fox News’s lashing out at “childless cat ladies” and then a far-right podcast in which he called for a higher tax rate on adults without children. Some of Donald Trump’s allies counseled that Vance wasn’t an ideal choice because he doesn’t expand the GOP coalition.

On Wednesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) lashed out at her colleague’s remarks. “It was offensive to me as a woman. Women make their own determinations as to whether or not they’re going to have children,” she told reporters.

On Tuesday, when asked about her thoughts on Vance’s comments, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) reminded reporters she hasn’t endorsed Trump or Vance. Nor has Murkowski.

At 39, Vance is the second youngest of the 100 senators. His selection as Trump’s running mate has prompted deeper looks at his years spent as a best-selling author who served as provocateur on his many cable TV appearances.

In his early 30s, during his anti-Trump era, Vance compared Trump to “cultural heroin” and found the GOP presidential contender to be “noxious.” By the time he launched his first campaign three years ago, Vance kept up his firebrand routine in his bid to convince the ex-president of his newfound MAGA embrace.

That’s when he uttered comments about women and children. Rather than retracting them, Vance doubled down in an interview last week on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, saying his comments were “true” while arguing he has “nothing against cats.”

Those types of comments help in a low-turnout GOP primary, but Senate Republicans are not surprised they have caused a stir and led to a quick backlash against Vance (according to an ABC/Ipsos poll released last weekend, Vance’s unfavorable ratings spiked eight points to 39 percent in a week). They say that Vance is quickly learning that the national spotlight is far more intense than the Senate one.

“What you learn very quickly here, and you can only learn through time, is that even if your comments were meant in jest or they were hyperbolic — they weren’t really intended [to be offensive] — in this league, you don’t get a bye week. Everything, everything, you say gets parsed,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), from the party’s traditional conservative wing.

“That can only come from having experienced a lot of sunrises and sunsets on the road,” Tillis added, “and that would be the one thing that JD can’t possibly have. Because he’s only been in the public eye as an elected official for two years.”

“When you are going from cable TV to podcasts, it’s part of surfing out there,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who privately campaigned to get Trump to choose another nominee.

Now that President Biden, 81, has withdrawn from the race, Republicans have braced for more scrutiny over the gravitas of their vice-presidential pick given that Trump, 78, faces similar questions about his age and capabilities to serve a four-year term.

Since World War II only one other major party nominee has chosen a running mate with such little experience.

By August 1972, Sargent Shriver had served as the first Peace Corps director and as ambassador to France, and had led a White House anti-poverty program, but had never run for political office when Democrats turned to him. His nomination only came out of dramatic necessity, however, when the original choice — then-Sen. Thomas Eagleton, with 12 years of statewide elective office under his belt in Missouri — withdrew following revelations about his mental health.

Otherwise both parties have tended to use the vice-presidential pick as a balancing act, either for regional or ideological balance or for reassurance of the No. 2 being ready step into the job, according to Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate’s historian emeritus.

Think then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) in 2008, with 36 years of experience, getting tapped by Barack Obama after less than four years in the Senate. Or Richard Cheney (R-Wyo.), with 12 years in Congress and four as defense secretary, getting the nod from a young Texas governor, George W. Bush, in 2000.

“They’ve all had enough experience to claim to be ready to become president if necessary, which is really the only justification for the job,” Ritchie said.

Each party has at times nominated an elder statesman at the top of the ticket, prompting a younger vice-presidential pick, but even those No. 2 selections had more experience than Vance.

In 1988 George H.W. Bush, then the sitting vice president, chose then-Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.) as his running mate, leading to tough scrutiny of Quayle’s credentials. Yet Quayle had served almost eight years in the Senate and four years in the House. In 2020 Joe Biden, 77 at the time, chose Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) after less than four years in the Senate — but she also had served six years as state attorney general and eight years as district attorney.

In 2008 John McCain (R-Ariz.), then 72, chose the 44-year-old Sarah Palin and sparked weeks of controversy. Palin had served as Alaska governor for 19 months and served as mayor and city council member for years before that.

Vance’s close allies acknowledge that he provides no political balance for Trump heading into November and view his selection as entirely about being a junior governing partner in the White House.

“There’s risk with anybody. I mean, there’s always risk,” Hawley said. “I think Trump wants somebody who he can count on 100 percent. And who he knows is going to be with him 100 percent of the time. And I think JD will be. And I think that’s why he chose him.”

Cruz said that Vance, through his childhood in Ohio and Kentucky, understands the governing appeal for Republicans no longer resides in country clubs and corporate boardrooms.

“I believe the Republican Party has become a blue-collar party. And I think JD gets that in his gut, and that’s important. I think the ferocity of the left-wing media going after him, demonstrates that JD is touching a nerve,” Cruz said.

Still, Vance has not demonstrated many political skills thus far in his career, aside from becoming close friends with Donald Trump Jr. and some far-right conservative billionaires.

His 2022 Senate campaign was stumbling along until Vance won a late endorsement from former president Trump, and even then he eked out a plurality win with less than 33 percent in a crowded field.

It was a banner year for Ohio Republicans, with Gov. Mike DeWine (R) ringing up a 25-percentage-point blowout. DeWine helped four other Republicans running for statewide offices to easy wins by margins of 17 to 20 points.

Vance’s campaign, however, was a dud.

Slow to mobilize or raise money, Vance won by just six percentage points. His Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, outspent Vance by a more than 4-to-1 margin in advertising, according to a Democratic estimate.

Outside Republican groups rushed $34 million into the race, publicly admitting it was “an unexpected expense” and money they could have spent in races they narrowly lost, like Nevada.

Graham acknowledged the rumors that he preferred other potential nominees such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for Trump’s pick.

“We tend to want people we know, that we have a close relationship with. I know Marco very well and so I have an affinity for that,” he said.

Graham agreed with Hawley that, as a governing partner to Trump, “the ‘America First’ agenda would be in good hands with JD.”

First, he has a key bar to clear.

“The vice president just needs to be seen as somebody competent and capable,” Graham said.

Has Vance demonstrated competence yet?

“The debate will be his chance to prove to people he’s competent and capable,” Graham said. “And I think he’ll have a good debate because he’s really, really smart.”

Senate Republicans believe Vance’s intelligence — Ivy League education, best-selling author, provocative thinker — is not in question.

“JD is a smart guy. He’s just needs to be a quick study on it,” Tillis said.

Trump fell into an indirect slight of Vance when he was asked Wednesday whether his running mate was ready on “day one” to serve in the White House.

“Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion,” Trump said at the National Association of Black Journalists conference.

He said voters would not consider Vance when casting their ballots.

“You’re not voting that way,” he said. “You’re voting for me.”

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE – President Biden was in a wood-paneled conference room with civil rights leaders and elected officials, flying high over the country en route to Texas. About an hour into the flight, he glanced at the television playing in the background, where guests on MSNBC were speculating over who Vice President Harris would pick as her running mate.

“Kamala and I talked,” Biden remarked. “I said she could pick me.”

He waited a beat, then said he was joking, prompting laughter.

That moment last Monday was a telling one after a politically tumultuous few weeks. The president was aboard a plane that symbolized the almost unimaginable power at his fingertips, yet he was watching news coverage blanketed not by him but by his second-in-command, and the questions about who would become her own number two.

To some of those in the plane, who described the encounter afterward, the episode also illustrated a more basic reality — that Biden appears largely reconciled to his tortured decision to bow out of the race, and is now comfortable enough with it to crack jokes.

“I didn’t sense any regret at all,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader who was sitting directly to Biden’s right on the flight. “He’s made his decision. He’s at peace with it. I sensed a man at peace with where he is and trying to move forward.”

Over the past few days, Biden has begun to recalibrate his presidency. His public schedule has become lighter, in what those close to him describe as a conscious attempt to allow Harris to seize the spotlight. He has been soliciting advice over how to spend the last six months of a 48-year career as a federal officeholder, and he has come to see Harris’s potential election as a cornerstone of his legacy.

The anger and bitterness from the lead-up to his decision to withdraw — when he felt cornered by members of his own party — seem to have given way to an attitude that is more accepting of the current moment. Biden is occasionally wistful, and he has engaged in lighter and even playful moments after a weeks-long period of intense stress, for example peeking through American flags and around columns near the Rose Garden to make faces at aides who had gathered to applaud him after his Oval Office address last week.

“He is reflecting. He’s in a reflective mood,” said Marc Morial, the head of the National Urban League, who was with Biden all day Monday. “It’s very natural and very human to be in such a reflective mood after such a long and unique career. Try to think of who has had a career of such length and breadth — I have trouble thinking of anyone else, because he got elected so young.”

Biden was elected to the New Castle County Council in Delaware in 1970 and catapulted to the U.S. Senate two years later, making him one of the youngest people ever to serve in that body. His career will end in about six months, when a new president takes office on Jan. 20, instead of the four additional years he thought he would have to burnish his legacy and add to his accomplishments.

In one sign that he is not in a score-settling mood, when Air Force One landed in Austin on Monday, the third person who greeted Biden on the tarmac was Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who weeks earlier had been the first congressional Democrat to call on him to end his reelection bid.

The interaction was not combative, and Doggett said that he thanked the president for stepping down.

“Thank you for suggesting it,” Biden replied to him, according to CBS News, in a tone far more conciliatory than the one most of his aides have used to describe the actions of the Texas congressman.

Biden has recently fallen into telling stories from his past. During a 25-minute speech at the LBJ Presidential Library on Monday, he spoke in lofty and sweeping terms about the civil rights movement, Supreme Court reforms and historic presidencies.

Ahead of the speech, Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) had joked with Biden that it was only 2,000 words long, a little short in his estimation. “That might please some people,” Clyburn recalled telling the president. “But is that all you’re going to say?”

It turned out it wasn’t. Upon completing the remarks he had come to give, Biden made an off-script digression — after he had said, “Let me close with this” — about the earliest days of his political career. A group of Democrats asked him to run for state Senate, he said, but he demurred — ultimately agreeing to run for New Castle County Council instead, since it held its meetings across the street from his law office.

“We picked a district that we couldn’t possibly win — no Democrat had ever won,” the president said. “But my problem was, I had my sister doing my campaign. And we won.”

Some two years later, he said, he was in a motel room at the Delaware Democratic convention. “I had my towel around me and the shaving cream on my face, and I heard, ‘Bam, bam, bam,’ on my door,” Biden recounted. “There was the former governor, a former Supreme Court justice — I swear to God — the state chairman, and the former congressman.”

They entered the room and urged Biden — who, after an unsuccessful scramble for clothing, was still in his towel — to run for U.S. Senate. “Next thing you know, I was running,” he said.

Biden narrowly won that race, launching a 36-year Senate career. But he largely skipped over that to focus on more recent accomplishments. “I was the vice president to the first African American president in American history. Now I’m president to our first woman vice president,” he said. “I’ve made clear how I feel about Kamala. And she has been an incredible partner to me.”

Biden has come to see Harris’s election as critical to his legacy, associates say: He could go down in history as providing a crucial springboard for the first woman president.

About an hour before he announced that he was dropping out of the race, Biden called Clyburn, one of his most important political allies, to read him the letter he planned to release. Clyburn said he told him it was a good statement, but that his legacy would be affected by what he said about Harris.

Clyburn told Biden it was vital that he have a role in ensuring that the first Black woman in history secure the nomination of a major party, then helping her win in November. Biden assured him there would be a second statement, one that backed Harris.

Now Harris is the likely nominee and attracting much of the attention that used to flow toward Biden, but Clyburn said Biden is okay with that. “I really think he’s comfortable with the decision,” Clyburn said. “His place, his legacy, is pretty much cemented. And if Kamala were to win this election, I think he will occupy a place in the annals of history unlike any president before him.”

The setting for Biden’s trip this week, his first major event since announcing he was ending his reelection bid, was significant. The president was flying to a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Voting Right Act at the LBJ Presidential Library, an event reflecting the way Biden likes to think of himself — as a president who championed racial equity and pushed through an expansive social agenda.

About 40 minutes into the flight, Biden sat down with the elected officials and civil rights leaders who had joined him for the flight, around a table covered with disposable coffee cups and bottles of water, and asked for input on how he should spend the next six months.

Some of his guests raised the need to do more on affordable housing, while others brought up the rights of undocumented immigrants and criminal justice reform. Still others urged Biden to push the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, though they acknowledged the steep political hurdles.

“He was particularly focused on where to go from here,” Clyburn said. “Martin Luther King’s last book was ‘Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community?’ That’s pretty much where we are today. Are we going to have chaos going forward or community going forward? That’s what’s on the president’s mind more than anything else.”

Biden looked around the room, participants say, and told them to put their plans into writing, including exactly what they wanted him to do and how he might do it.

He also told them how proud he was of the work they had all done. He nodded at Clyburn, who had encouraged Biden to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. He looked to Sharpton to reflect on some of the police reforms he had tried to institute. He took on the demeanor of a coach in a locker room, urging them to go out and help win the election for Harris.

“I think he’s looking at these six months as determined to prove his legacy by winning this election and being able to finish things he started,” Sharpton said. “I definitely think he’s now seeing himself in historic terms rather than tomorrow’s newspaper or this evening’s TV show.”

Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s aides have said they aim to beat Vice President Harris in November by portraying her as a San Francisco liberal who is responsible for illegal border crossings and inflation.

Yet in the past 48 hours, Trump has repeatedly deviated from that messaging to more familiar territory: personal attacks.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” he declared at an event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday. “Is she Indian or is she Black?”

Harris will be “like a play toy” that world leaders will “walk all over,” he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, in a clip that aired Tuesday night. “I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.” And he claimed in a radio interview that Harris, whose husband is Jewish, “doesn’t like Jewish people.”

Trump’s statements are emblematic of the broader challenge the GOP faces: Many of his aides and his Republican allies want to focus on Harris’s record. They have watched Democratic enthusiasm about the vice president’s campaign and believe that some of her personal qualities could help, not hurt her, with independent voters.

But Trump himself keeps changing the subject.

This week, the Trump campaign launched a $12 million ad buy that featured video of Harris dancing, as the narrator declared: “This is America’s border czar and she has failed us,” a reference to President Biden’s decision to ask Harris to lead a multipronged effort to reduce mass migration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump, ran an ad accusing Harris of covering up “Joe’s obvious mental decline.” Another ad described her as a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.”

“At the end of the day, it’s really about demonstrating through her own words how dangerous, how weak and failed she really is, and it’s not hard to do when you have her doing the talking,” said Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser. “Why tell the American public what she’s for when she does such a good job herself?”

LaCivita added: “With Joe Biden, it was the walking … with Kamala Harris, it’s the talking.”

But despite the ad blitz, Trump’s words, rather than Harris’s, dominated the news this week. Trump’s false accusation that Harris downplayed her Black heritage forced Republicans to respond throughout the day Wednesday. Harris attended Howard University, a prominent historically Black institution and joined a historically Black sorority.

“I was born Black and I’ll die Black and I am proud of it,” she said in 2019. “And I am not going to make any excuses for it for anybody because they don’t understand.”

Even as several Senate Republicans declined to weigh in on Trump’s remarks, he doubled down on them. At his rally in Harrisburg, Pa., a screen showed the headline of a Business Insider story that said: “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian American U.S. senator.”

He also posted a video on his social media site, Truth Social, featuring Harris speaking to Indian American comedian Mindy Kaling, in which Kaling refers to Harris’s Indian heritage. Trump claimed: “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!”

Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump has also called Harris “dumb as a rock,” questioned her legal credentials and mocked her laugh.

People close to Trump doubt that the personal attacks will be an effective strategy. Alleging the election was stolen, defending Jan. 6 rioters and getting into fights with Harris about race or personality “are not winning issues for us,” one person close to Trump said. Comments that seem derogatory about women also don’t help, and neither does attacking her personally, this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to criticize the former president’s messaging so far.

Instead, the campaign wants Trump to make data arguments on food prices, gas prices, illegal border crossings and tout his foreign policy record, and not talk about her race or gender, the person added,

Trump has publicly lamented the change at the top of the ticket, calling it a “coup” at a recent event. In private, he’s complained about Harris’s rise in the polls, according to another person familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations. Trump has also been frustrated that Harris has received positive media coverage, while his vice-presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has come under criticism, this person said.

Even though Trump campaign officials and allies publicly maintain that the fundamentals of the contest haven’t changed, some Republicans, including Vance, acknowledge privately that the race has shifted quickly.

Vance told donors during a Saturday fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minn., that the change at the top of the Democratic ticket was a “little bit of a political sucker punch” and that Harris “does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger.”

Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump and Harris have moved into a virtual tie in a two-way vote choice, with Trump at 47 percent support and Harris at 46 percent, according to a Washington Post polling average.

Harris’s favorability rating increased to 43 percent last week, up from 35 percent the previous week, according to an ABC-Ipsos poll conducted last week. Trump’s favorability rating decreased slightly to 36 percent from 40 percent the previous week.

The Trump campaign’s messaging is “scattershot,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“They weren’t able to brand Biden in 2020 and they haven’t been able to brand Kamala Harris in 2024,” he said. “The arguments that they do make are very ideological in nature, which has never worked for Trump.”

Conant added that Trump does best when he portrays himself as the outsider and said the campaign hasn’t done enough to portray Harris as an establishment pick.

“Instead, they’re saying she’s too progressive which is not an argument that’s proven very effective in modern politics,” he said.

Prominent Republicans in Washington say they have not been given messaging from Trump’s team on how to attack Harris. One top aide to a GOP senator said they were trying to follow the campaign’s lead, but it was difficult to follow sometimes.

One Republican close to the Trump campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, described the campaign ad about the border as a positive development.

“The challenge is to stay on message,” the Republican said.

Scott Clement and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.

Voters in Tennessee head to the polls on Thursday to cast their ballots in the state’s primary, which includes a competitive Republican primary challenge against a sitting member of Congress.

There are two major races to watch on Thursday in Tennessee: the 5th Congressional District Republican primary and the Senate Democratic primary.

5th Congressional District Republican primary

Rep. Andrew Ogles (R) faces a primary challenge from Courtney Johnston, a Nashville Metro council member who has so far raised more money than the freshman congressman.

Ogles, endorsed by former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), was one of the holdouts to approving Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker in early 2023. However, Ogles later voted against McCarthy’s ouster that fall.

In Congress he’s frequently criticized the Biden administration, filing articles of impeachment against President Biden and Vice President Harris last year. After Harris became a front-runner to replace Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this month, Ogles filed new articles of impeachment against her.

His brief tenure in the House has brought scrutiny on several fronts.

After a deadly Covenant School shooting in 2023, Ogles — who represents the district where the Christian school is located — said in a statement that he was heartbroken. At the time, gun-control advocates and Democrats circulated a 2021 Christmas photo of his family posing with firearms. Ogles has also been accused of making several misrepresentations about his background, admitting last year that he misstated the degree he received. Earlier this year, he was also the subject of an ethics complaint over his personal and campaign finances.

Johnston, whose political positions are largely aligned with Ogles’s, has the endorsements of former senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and former governor Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.).

The winner will face Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in November.

Senate primaries

Four Democrats are competing in Thursday’s Democratic primary for Senate: Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, environmental activist Marquita Bradshaw (who lost the 2020 Senate race in Tennessee against Sen. Bill Hagerty (R) by a wide margin), educator Civil Miller-Watkins and Lola Denise Brown, chair of the membership committee of the NAACP in Nashville.

Johnson, outraised her Democratic competitors and was one of the “Tennessee Three” — a group of state lawmakers who faced backlash in the statehouse when they joined protesters demanding gun-control legislation at the state Capitol in 2023 following the shooting at the Covenant School. At the time, Johnson was the only lawmaker out of the three to narrowly survive an expulsion vote by the state legislature.

Incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) has one GOP primary challenger, Tres Wittum — a former state Senate policy analyst, though the senator is widely favored to win on Thursday. The Senate seat remains solidly Republican according to the Cook Political Report’s Senate race rankings.