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A lot has changed for Sen. JD Vance after being chosen last week as Donald Trump’s running mate.
Within days he had his own campaign plane and a Secret Service code name.
The longtime Ohio and Kentucky football fan is now known to his protective officers as ‘Bobcat’, after the teams of the same name, DailyMail.com can learn.
Trump’s vice presidential pick may have ended up at Ohio State, but Ohio State’s football team is known as the Bobcats.
And his Appalachian family is originally from Jackson, Kentucky, home of the Breathitt County Bobcats. That was where young James David spent most of his summers and other vacations.
The code name is a way of encompassing his two homes and the major influences in his life, according to an old friend.
There was a time when code names were essential for security, but now that sensitive communications are encrypted, they are used primarily for brevity and clarity.
Candidates can choose from a list, meaning they can choose code names that mean something personal to them.
Mike Pence, for example, made the most of his Indiana roots and was a “Hoosier” during his four years as vice president.
Vance, 39, who was installed as Trump’s running mate at the party convention last week, has taken similar inspiration.
He is a lifelong football fan and writes movingly in his memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ about the bond he formed with his addicted and unreliable mother through players and tactics.
‘Mom checked out books on football strategy from the public library and we built little models of the field out of construction paper and loose change: pennies for defense, nickels and dimes for offense,’ he writes.
After serving in the Marine Corps, he enrolled at Ohio State University to study political science and philosophy.
His Buckeye credentials are one of the factors that propelled him onto Trump’s shortlist for vice president.
Vance is an Ohioan through and through and attended Ohio State University.
Bobcat and Mogul pictured together at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday
The Ohio Bobcats are an NCAA Division 1 football team in the Mid-American Conference.
Vance could be the key to winning in so-called blue wall states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, even if his Ohio roots sometimes spark good-natured banter in the Wolverine State.
After all, Michigan is home to Ohio State’s biggest rivals: the University of Michigan.
“My name is JD Vance, from the great state of Ohio,” he announced as he accepted the vice presidential nomination in Milwaukee last week.
His words drew loud cheers from the Ohio delegation, who began chanting “OH-IO.” Vance joined in before realizing there was an election to win.
“Guys, we’ve got to chill out with the Ohio love,” he said with a smile. “We’ve got to beat Michigan, too.”
This happened again later in the speech when he mentioned his time at Ohio State.
The Michigan delegation broke out into their own good-humored chants: “Let’s Go Blue.”