JD Vance, an unlikely friendship and why it ended

When his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was published in 2016, JD Vance sent an email apologizing to a close friend from his Yale Law School days. The friend identified as transgender, but Vance referred to them in the book as a lesbian.

“Hey Sofes, here’s an excerpt from my book,” Vance wrote to his friend, Sofia Nelson. “I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian.’”

“I recognize now that this may not accurately reflect how you think of yourself, and for that I am really sorry,” he wrote. “I hope you’re not offended, but if you are, I’m sorry! Love you, JD.”

Nelson wrote back the same day, calling Vance “buddy” and thanking him for “being sweet,” adding, “If you had written gender queer radical pragmatist, nobody would know what you mean.” Nelson asked for an autographed copy, then signed off with, “Love, Sofia.”

That exchange is from a series of emails between two friends, part of a close-knit group of 16 students who remained together throughout their first law school semester in the fall of 2010. As now-Sen. Vance seeks the vice presidency, Nelson has shared about 90 of their emails and text messages, primarily from 2014 through 2017, with The New York Times.

The emails, in which Vance criticizes former President Donald Trump both for “racism” and as a “morally reprehensible human being,” add to an existing body of evidence showing Vance’s ideological pivot from Never Trumper to Trump’s running mate.

And they reflect a young man quite different from the hard-right culture warrior of today who back then brought homemade baked goods to his friend after Nelson underwent transition-related surgery. The visit cemented their bond.

“The content of the conversation was,” Nelson said in an interview with the Times, “‘I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I support you.’ And that meant a lot to me at the time, because I think that was the foundation of our friendship.”

The political views of the two were sharply divergent, but their friendship would continue for a decade, strengthened by their shared Midwestern roots — Nelson grew up in western Michigan and Vance in Ohio — and cynical views of Ivy League elitism.

Nelson, a Tufts University graduate, had received a prestigious Truman scholarship for law school, indicating a desire to work in public service.

At times, they exchanged messages infrequently. At other times, they would have energetic back-and-forths several times a week. And their talks reflected the history playing out around them — protests against police violence in Ferguson, Missouri, the massacre of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, and the 2016 campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Their conversations were notable not only for Vance’s harsh comments about Trump, but also for the tenderness and thoughtful tone in the messages.

They provide what may be a textbook example of respectful discourse, revealing a cultural willingness by Vance to accept Nelson’s gender identity, which sharply differs from the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments evident at the Republican National Convention.

Nelson, now a public defender in Detroit, said they visited each other’s homes, talked on Zoom during the pandemic and exchanged long emails discussing a range of subjects, from the minutiae of daily life to weighty discussions of current events and public policy issues. Nelson attended Vance’s wedding in Kentucky in 2014. They pondered doing a podcast together — he suggested they call it “The Lunatic Fringe.”

But Nelson and Vance had a falling out in 2021, when Vance said publicly he supported an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors, leading to a bitter exchange that deeply hurt Nelson.

“He achieved great success and became very rich by being a Never Trumper who explained the white working class to the liberal elite,” Nelson said, referring to Vance’s successful 2016 book. “Now he’s amassing even more power by expressing the exact opposite.”

Now, Nelson, who opposes the Trump/Vance ticket, hopes the emails inform the opinion of voters about Vance.

Responding to a request for comment on the emails, Luke Schroeder, a spokesperson for the Vance campaign, issued a statement:

“It’s unfortunate this individual chose to leak decade-old private conversations between friends to The New York Times. Senator Vance values his friendships with individuals across the political spectrum. He has been open about the fact that some of his views from a decade ago began to change after becoming a dad and starting a family, and he has thoroughly explained why he changed his mind on President Trump. Despite their disagreements, Senator Vance cares for Sofia and wishes Sofia the very best.”

Charting His Own Path

In 2014, they were both near the beginning of their careers, about a year out of law school.

Vance shared that he was planning to buy a house in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Usha, whom he also met at Yale.

The Vances could afford a house in Washington’s highly priced market partly because Vance was starting a job in Big Law. “Blech,” he wrote then, indicating his distaste for a career he had already decided against. He would remain with the white-shoe firm Sidley Austin for less than two years.

In the same exchange, Vance also wrote about his wife’s interviews with justices of the Supreme Court, where she was seeking a clerkship. Vance worried that her seeming politically neutral, or lack of “ideological chops,” could harm her chances.

“Scalia and Kagan moved very quickly,” Vance wrote, referring to Antonin Scalia, the conservative justice who died in 2016, and Elena Kagan, one of the court’s current three liberal justices, “but she was just not going to work out for Scalia.”

Nelson wrote back, “His homophobic screeds are hard to believe in 2014.”

“He’s become a very shrill old man,” Vance responded. “I used to really like him, and I used to believe all of his stuff about judicial minimalism was sincere. Now I see it as a political charade.”

Usha Vance would end up clerking for Chief Justice John Roberts.

On Cops, Body Cams and Pride Day

Like their conversations, Vance could be surprising.

In October 2014, after the killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Nelson raised the idea of requiring that police officers wear body cameras.

“I hate the police,” Vance said in his response. “Given the number of negative experiences I’ve had in the past few years, I can’t imagine what a Black guy goes through.”

Around the same time, the written conversation turned to a much-discussed essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic making the case for reparations. Vance offered that whatever problems he had with reparations, generally, “I have at least been convinced of the virtue of compensating modern victims who’ve suffered redlining or denial of federal benefits.”

By the next summer, after a shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the two were again discussing race. Vance said he didn’t understand why people “can’t see the connection between this person murdering innocent people and the fact that the Confederate flag — by democratic will — still flies” at the South Carolina Statehouse. “I’m not sure how to wrap my head around it.” (The flag was removed from the Statehouse in Columbia a month later.)

“I think you’re my only liberal friend with whom I talk openly about politics on a deeper sense,” Vance wrote.

In June 2015, Vance also revealed to Nelson that Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign had offered him a job as senior domestic policy adviser, then reneged, after discovering a negative piece he had written about George W. Bush’s economic policies. (The New York Times reached out to several former advisers to Jeb Bush’s campaign, who could not confirm that there was a job offer.)

Vance wrote to Nelson that he was looking forward to getting together for a longer conversation with “some bourbon and puppy dogs by my side.”

In 2015, Vance moved to California for a new career in the tech industry, one he launched, he suggested, after the Bush episode.

“It’s possible to view this entire extended foray into the California tech scene as a wound-licking exercise after my brief encounter with American politics,” he wrote.

Living in the Bay Area in 2015, on June 28 he wished Nelson “Happy Pride,” adding, “I’m thinking of braving the crowds in S.F. just to people watch.”

After attending the Pride Day parade, he wrote, “It felt more like a frat party than I expected. But still nice to see a lot of happy people.”

Opposing Trump

By 2015, Trump’s rise had begun. Vance’s Yale friends, including Nelson, were not surprised that Vance, whom they regarded as a moderate Republican, was opposed to Trump’s candidacy.

Vance was rooting against Trump but also said he could not bring himself to vote for Clinton. He vowed to cast his ballot for a third-party candidate.

In December 2015, in emails analyzing the campaign, he wrote that Trump’s appeal was misunderstood.

“If you look at the polling, the issue where Trump gets the most support is on the economy,” Vance wrote. “If the response of the media, and the elites of both right and left, are to just say ‘look at those dumb racists supporting Trump,’ then they’re never going to learn the most important lesson of Trump’s candidacy.”

And he said that he himself saw something in Trump.

Vance wrote that he found it exhilarating that the media and Wall Street seemed powerless against Trump, also suggesting that he partly understood the Trump appeal.

“If he would just tone down the racism, I would literally be his biggest supporter,” he wrote.

The next day, on Dec. 9, 2015, the two would again talk race, Trump and Muslims.

Nelson wrote that a Muslim friend had said that women wearing hijabs no longer felt safe doing simple things like going to the grocery store.

Vance responded, referring to Trump as a demagogue.

“I’m obviously outraged at Trump’s rhetoric, and I worry most of all about how welcome Muslim citizens feel in their own country,” he wrote. “And there have always been demagogues willing to exploit the people who believe crazy shit. What seems different to me is that the Republican Party offers nothing that’s as attractive as the demagogue.”

By 2016, Vance was touring the country promoting “Hillbilly Elegy,” part memoir and part commentary on the alienation of the white working class, many of whom supported Trump’s election. “To Sofia, a good friend, a fellow Midwesterner, and, despite being a Godless liberal, a great person,” he would inscribe in Nelson’s copy.

In September 2016, he shared a piece on implicit bias that he wrote for The New York Times following Clinton’s ill-fated “basket of deplorables” comment, thanking Nelson in the email for helping inform his thinking in developing the essay.

“The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer. I really believe that,” he wrote.

Not only had Vance been critical of Trump for racism, but he also said, “I’ve been very critical of other Repubs for the LGBTQ issue, especially Rick Perry,” referring to the former Texas governor.

In another email a month later, he called Trump a “disaster,” using a vulgarity, and added, “He’s just a bad man.”

And then, to the amazement of many Americans, Trump won.

Nelson sent Vance a copy of an article in The Onion, a satirical news site, that suggested liberals were clueless about the country they lived in.

“This is funny. Thank you!” Vance wrote back.

“My zany prediction: in 20 years HRC and Paul Ryan will be part of the same party,” he continued, using an abbreviation for Clinton. “And you and I will be on the other side.”

In January 2017, he expressed more sober concern.

“I’m deeply pessimistic right now,” Vance wrote. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the civil rights movement and legislation in the 1960s, and I wonder if our society is healthy enough to accomplish anything of that scale (or even close to it).”

A Political Career Beckons, and a Friendship Unravels

By 2017, Vance was planning a move back to Ohio. According to Nelson, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, had reached out and encouraged him to run as a Republican for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s seat.

He kicked the tires of a race as an anti-Trump candidate against a formidable Democratic incumbent and took a pass.

It would be four years later that he would run, this time seeking Trump’s support, and win the open Ohio seat that would put him in position to be Trump’s running mate.

Nelson communicated with the Vances over Zoom early in the pandemic, after their move back to Ohio. Their email correspondence had died down, and Nelson had noted a shift in the tone of Vance’s social media postings. In April 2021, one particularly stood out.

On Twitter, Vance had come out in support of an Arkansas measure banning gender-transitioning care for minors. The bill was ultimately adopted over a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who had declared it an overreach, before it was overturned by a court ruling.

“Do you support the AR legislation criminalizing providing medical care to trans kids?” Nelson texted him in April 2021.

“I do. I recognize this is awkward but I’ll always be honest with you,” Vance responded. “I think the trans thing with kids is so unstudied that it amounts to a form of experimentation.”

Nelson wrote back that his position “deeply saddens me.”

“I know I can’t change your mind but the political voice you have become seems so far from the man I got to know in law school,” wrote Nelson, later explaining their position “as a trans person who accessed needed health care so I could live a full life.”

“I have a 1:30,” Vance wrote. “I will always love you, but I really do think the left’s cultural progressivism is making it harder for normal people to live their lives.”

It had been a friendship of the special type forged in young adulthood, before the accumulation of life responsibilities and fateful decisions already made. Now, it was over.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.