Before Republican JD Vance began targeting universities as the enemy of the conservative movement, the Donald Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio leveraged a network of higher education institutions across the country to promote his book — and he made money doing it.
In the two years after the 2016 release of “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir of growing up in Appalachia, Vance visited at least 18 universities to give graduation speeches, lectures or political talks. For those visits, Vance was paid more than $55,000, according to records provided to The Associated Press by the colleges.
