JD Vance lives in one of the most liberal areas of Northern Virginia

JD Vance, the Republican U.S. senator from Ohio and Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, lives in one of the most liberal areas of largely liberal Northern Virginia.

Vance and his family live in Del Ray, a neighborhood in Alexandria, a city where President Joe Biden won 80 percent of the vote in 2020. Alexandria is near Washington, D.C.

Vance, as author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, positioned himself as a voice for the poor people of Appalachia, but the book has been criticized as painting a stereotypical picture of these people and blaming them for their problems. His mother worked as a nurse but abused prescription drugs (she is now sober), and Vance was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. He became a Yale-educated lawyer and venture capitalist.

Del Ray is a particularly affluent enclave as well as a liberal one, The Washington Postnotes. Vance “railed against the liberal elites and then he picked the wealthy liberal neighborhood outside D.C. to bring up his kids,” neighbor Pierce Kreutzer, told the Post. “He’s more aligned, truly, with people like me than he is with your typical Trump voter.”

Actually, despite the stereotype of Trump supporters as the “forgotten” people of the white working class, exit polls have indicated that the wealthier a person is, the more likely they are to vote Republican.

At any rate, the residents of Del Ray are liberal in addition to being well off, but several of those interviewed by the Post were OK with having him as a neighbor. Vance paid $1.6 million for a home there in 2023, when he began his Senate term. The 2,500-square-foot house has five bedrooms, three and a half baths, and a guesthouse.

“It doesn’t bother me that he lives here. He’s got to live somewhere,” Kreutzer’s wife, Caroline Barna, told the paper. “His politics aren’t great. I don’t agree with him, but what are you going to do?” Another Del Rey resident, Marc Greenberg, said he doesn’t like Vance but thinks “he picked a place that’s a great place to live.”

Some were less welcoming. “I don’t like him being here,” said Pete Paccione. “I’m not a fan of him or his politics. With the heightened tension around politics, it makes me nervous. Everyone in the neighborhood is tense.”

Vance and his staff declined comment to the Post. Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson, a Democrat, said the city has been the home of many Washington politicians, although he doesn’t like to draw attention to that fact. More than a hundred members of Congress live in Alexandria, as do numerous federal government workers. Gerald Ford, at the time a congressman, lived in the city when President Richard Nixon appointed him vice president in 1973.