What to know about JD Vance’s 'Mamaw,' Bonnie Blanton Vance

The late Bonnie Blanton Vance meant a lot to Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

Born in rural Kentucky, Bonnie was a source of stability for the senator. He grew up without his father around and watched his mother struggle with addiction, with Bonnie always there to offer a home, love, and security.

Known affectionately to JD — and readers of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” — as “Mamaw,” Bonnie is someone JD often speaks of in interviews and speeches.

Read on to learn all about the grandma of former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

Mamaw was a Democrat

Though JD Vance makes up one-half of the Republican ticket for the 2024 election, his beloved Mamaw was a staunch Democrat, as was her husband, James Vance, aka “Papaw.”

“Papaw was a Democrat because that party protected the working people,” the vice-presidential candidate wrote in his 2016 memoir. “This attitude carried over to Mamaw. All politicians might be crooks, but if there were any exceptions, they were undoubtedly members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.”

He also described Mamaw as having had an “affinity for Bill Clinton.”

She cursed, unapologetically

In a 2020 column JD’s cousin Bonnie Meibers wrote for the Dayton Daily News, she recalled their grandmother’s love of coarse and colorful language — and the family’s attempts to curb it.

“She was not your typical grandmother,” Meibers shared. “She had a foul mouth. Because of this, my little sister and I once tried to make Mamaw adhere to a curse jar. Twenty-five cents for every bad word. It sat on the windowsill in our kitchen. One afternoon while she was babysitting the two of us, she pulled out her checkbook and wrote a blank check.”

Mamaw then looked at her grandchildren and said, “Now I can say whatever the (expletive) I want. I’ll fill out the amount later.”

She was a gun(s) owner

On July 17, Sen. Vance spoke about his grandmother during a speech at the Republican National Convention, noting that at the time of her death, the 72-year-old had an ample supply of firearms.

“My Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005,” he said per PBS News. “And when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns. Now, the thing is, they were stashed all over her house. Under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer. We wondered what was going on, and it occurred to us that, towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around so well. And so, this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family.”

Glenn Close played Mamaw on screen

Adapted for the screen, “Hillbilly Elegy” was released in 2020. The Netflix film, directed by Ron Howard, cast Glenn Close in the role of Mamaw. It was a transformative performance that earned the star an Oscar nomination.

“If anything, Mamaw was much bigger than how I played her, but you don’t want to unbalance something,” Close told IndieWire in 2021. “She was a provocateur. She loved to shock people. She would say terrible things, and then laugh. She could be fearsome, too, seriously fearsome.”

In a teaser for Netflix, JD said that everyone in his family was in awe after seeing Close take on the matriarch, as she “looks so much like her” and “acts so much like her” in the film.

JD Vance was ‘terrified’ of Mamaw

Bonnie didn’t want to see her grandson follow in the footsteps of other family members by becoming addicted to drugs. So, in his tweens and early teens, when she saw him hanging out with “the wrong crowd,” she didn’t mince words.

“Well, the first time she realized that I was hanging out with the wrong kids, she actually told me in a very menacing voice, ‘Look, JD, I’ll give you a choice. You can either stop hanging out with these kids, or I’ll run them over with my car. And trust me, no one will ever find out,’” he recalled to NPR in 2016.

“And I don’t think she would’ve actually run over 12- or 13-year-old kids with her car. But I sure thought she would, and so I actually did stop hanging out with the kids she told me I couldn’t hang out with. A lot of kids don’t listen to that demand when their parents make it. But I was so terrified of Mamaw that I listened and listened good.”

But it wasn’t all tough love

Though Mamaw didn’t shy away from tough talk, that was far from all she offered her grandson.

“She really just got me,” JD explained to NBC News in a 2017 interview. “She understood when I needed somebody to ride me. She knew when I needed love and comfort. She knew when she needed to just be sympathetic. She was really smart.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com