 The most determined person I knew with one overriding ambition to become a husband and a father and to build the kind of tight knit family that he had longed for as a child. Now the magic of JD Vance just in terms of him as a politician and as a person is his life story. JD Vance is a Republican. He's a Republican who at the age of 31 wrote a book that Hollywood made into a movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.