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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump this week chose U.S. Sen. J.D Vance, R-Ohio, as his vice-presidential running mate. The senator yesterday gave a speech that introduced himself to a large American audience, but I was privileged to get a preview of it back in December. That was when I was invited by Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon to do a sit-down interview with the Ohioan during a fundraising dinner.

It was interesting to hear his compelling story, and the following are some of my interview takeaways from that day so readers can become more familiar with the articulate 39-year-old lawmaker.

Vance was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, which he told me was once a flourishing middle-class manufacturing town where people could live on a single income. But it wasn’t long, he continued, when jobs were disappearing, and his family suffered financially like most everyone else there.

There was a lot of drama in his family, and he told me that his grandmother “Mawmaw” basically raised him and “was his saving grace.” He told me she was a patriotic “blue dog Democrat” who owned 19 handguns, was a staunch Christian and gave him “tough love.”

Vance was a better person because of her, he told me. She died in 2005 just after Vance voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.– and he went on to serve his country in the Iraq war.

After that, he graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School.

Then, in 2016, he wrote a best-seller titled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family & Culture in Crisis which later was turned into a movie. It’s about the values of his family, the socioeconomic problems of his hometown and a perspective on the poor working class. A main takeaway from that December interview, and then yesterday when he accepted the nomination, is that he managed to escape a grim future to pursue the American dream. He told me his experiences as he grew into his 20s and 30s shaped his political philosophy. And it led him in 2022 to run for and win the Ohio U.S. Senate seat (with Trump’s endorsement).

Since his election, and my interview, there has been much discussion among Republican circles over the infusion of working-class populist themes — especially since Trump was elected president– into traditional Republican ideology. It has helped create a national coalition. During my interview, he defined this so-called “populism” for the audience. He touted the future of this ‘marriage” of GOP neo-populists with traditional Ronald Reagan conservatives.

Interestingly, Vance was skeptical of the Trump presidential candidacy in 2016. He criticized Trump back then. But he confesses that he “believed the liberal mainstream media’s lies” about Trump. But as he told me, as well as GOP national convention delegates yesterday, he got to know the New York City business tycoon and then embraced the “Make America Great Again” and “American First” philosophy. He also got to work closely with the nation’s 45th president as a senator. Now he’s known as one of the staunchest of “MAGA” Republicans. And now he’s the GOP’s 2024 vice presidential candidate.