All About J.D. Vance’s Mamaw, Bonnie Blanton Vance (2024)

J.D. Vance's Mamaw had a big impact on his life.

Following a tumultuous childhood, including his father walking out on his family when he was a toddler and his mother dealing with drug addiction, J.D. was raised by his grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance, whom he referred to as his Papaw and Mamaw.

Through the years, Vance, who was just named Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate in the 2024 election, has spoken highly of his late grandmother, who died in 2005.

During an interview with Megyn Kelly in 2017, he noted that she was the greatest influence on his life, saying she "just got me."

His 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which was later adapted into a film starring Glenn Close, was greatly influenced by his Mamaw and his family’s upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.

Ahead, here’s everything to know about J.D. Vance’s Mamaw and what he has said about her through the years.

She’s originally from Kentucky

His maternal grandparents originally hailed from Jackson, Ky., located in the “heart of southeastern Kentucky’s coal region,” per Politico. In the late 1940s, the couple moved to Middletown, Ohio. At the time, Jim was 16 and Bonnie was 13 — and pregnant with their first child.

She raised J.D.

Throughout his early childhood, Vance’s mother Beverly struggled with substance abuse and addiction, which he alleged would make her act aggressively.

During an interview with Megyn Kelly, he recalled one harrowing car ride with his mother, during which she reportedly threatened to kill them both. Following the incident, his mother was arrested and Vance went to live with his grandmother.

J.D. took her last name after she took him in

Vance’s birth name is James Donald Bowman, though he later changed it to James David Hamel after his mother remarried. After his grandparents took him in, he began using their last name, becoming J.D. Vance, per The New York Times.

She was a Democrat

While Vance has made a name for himself in the Republican party, his grandparents were union Democrats. In his memoir, he explained how his grandparents and others like them thought about political parties, per Politico: “All politicians might be crooks, but if there were any exceptions, they were undoubtedly members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition."

In his memoir, he noted that his grandmother had an “affinity for Bill Clinton” while his grandfather only voted Republican once, for Ronald Reagan. In a previous interview, he noted that his grandparents were “classic blue-dog Democrats, union Democrats,” adding that “they loved their country” and “were socially conservative,” per The New York Times.

After he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, he gave a shoutout to his Mamaw in his victory speech, saying, “You’re not always going to agree with every vote that I take, and you’re not going to agree with every single amendment that I offer in the United States Senate, but I will never forget the woman who raised me.”

She was a Christian but ‘mistrusted a lot of the parts of institutional Christianity’

During an interview with NPR, Vance discussed his own faith as well as his grandmother’s approach to Christianity.

“Mamaw taught a very personal faith,” he said, “She really loved the Christian faith. She loved God, and that was an important part of her life. But she was disconnected from a traditional religious institution” and therefore didn’t go to church.

“Mamaw just mistrusted a lot of the parts of institutional Christianity as she saw it,” he explained. “She saw that people were primarily asking for money and weren't actually that interested in the faith. And the other side of it — and I think that this is related — is that Mamaw saw church as increasingly an upper-crust institution. There were a lot of churches in Middletown, Ohio, but there weren't a lot of churches in the very poor, white communities.”

He concluded, “In some ways, I think Mamaw's approach to church was a leading indicator of what we're seeing a lot these days, which is that lower-income folks don't feel as comfortable in church and don't have as much exposure to church."

She was ‘very good with a gun’

Speaking with Kelly, Vance recalled one of the first things his grandmother told him when he went to live with her. “She said, ‘Look you’re gonna come and stay with me and if anybody has a problem with it, they can talk to my gun,’” he recalled.

He added that she was “very good with a gun” and when she died, they found 19 loaded handguns throughout her home.

She was played by Glenn Close in Hillbilly Elegy

Vance published a memoir of his upbringing in 2016, called Hillbilly Elegy, which was adapted into a Netflix film in 2020. Gabriel Basso starred as Vance and his Mamaw was played by Glenn Close, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Though Mamaw died before the film's release, Close met with Vance and his family, including his mother Beverly, while filming the movie. “Everyone in my family has had this ‘Oh, s---’ moment every time they see Glenn Close’s Mamaw because she looks so much like her, she acts so much like her,” Vance told Netflix.

J.D. says she was the greatest influence on his life

Vance has noted that his Mamaw had a huge impact on his life, especially his adolescent years. Speaking with Kelly in 2017, he talked about their close bond: “She really just got me. She understood when I needed someone to ride me. She knew when I needed love and comfort. She knew when she just needed to be sympathetic. She was really smart.”