It was hardly an obvious launching pad for a career in Republican politics, but this month, Reses, 33, quietly became one of the most influential conservatives in the United States when his boss, JD Vance, was selected as Donald Trump’s running mate.
Reses, Vance’s chief of staff since he entered the Senate 19 months ago, is notable for another reason: In a campaign season characterized by rising Christian nationalism among Republicans, Reses is Jewish.
Usha Vance, the potential second lady who is Hindu and Indian-American, has drawn attention from Republicans, journalists and analysts because of the ways her identities appear to be at odds with the increasingly nativist, Christian nationalist bent of the Republican Party.
But Reses, a New Jersey native whose grandfather escaped the Holocaust and who became a Republican during his first year at Princeton University — after interning for Hillary Clinton — has almost entirely escaped notice.
Reses’s steep ascendance in conservative politics has included a fellowship at the Claremont Institute; an influential role at the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm; and a stint in the office of Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri who calls himself a Christian nationalist, proposing that America’s political traditions are Christian in character and intent.
He is intensely private, leaving little digital record of his views, and both he and many people close to him declined to be interviewed.
But Reses’s limited public comments, coupled with insights from those who did speak and coverage of his early life in his hometown newspaper, help sketch out who he is and what he believes.
“It’s very important for us to understand all the details of anything that we pursue, but that kind of technical knowledge doesn’t matter unless it’s placed within a broader framework of ethical values,” he said in a video produced by Princeton’s alumni magazine when he graduated in 2013, responding to a question about his biggest lesson from his time in college.
He added, using watchwords of the conservative intellectual milieu into which he had recently been inducted, “I’ve really gotten a sense here of what it means to try to lead a good life and do right by others.”
When Reses was announced as Vance’s chief of staff, his mom, Karen Reses, shared an anecdote about her son’s approach to life.
“It was years ago and we were in New York one day in the Mayflower Doughnut Shop where there was a sign on the wall that read, ‘As you amble through life, brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole,’” she said in an interview with the Press of Atlantic City. “That is the attitude Jacob has always had, to look at the big picture and not get distracted.” READ MORE