WATCH: How RNC delegates are reacting to JD Vance

MILWAUKEE – In less than a decade, JD Vance has had a meteoric rise from bestselling author to elected official to possible vice president. On Monday, former President Donald Trump named Vance, the first-term U.S. senator from Ohio, to be his running mate for the 2024 election.

But Vance’s rapid elevation to vice-presidential nominee-to-be means some delegates to the Republican National Convention are just getting to know him.

“I don’t know a whole lot about him yet,” Jaci Lopez, a delegate from Texas, told PBS News on Tuesday. “I’m sure that [Trump] is picking the best guy that he knows for his Cabinet and for his team to help make America great again.”

Lopez was not the only delegate who said they had more to learn about Vance. Some of the delegates who spoke with PBS News said they were hoping for a different running mate.

“I like him, but I was a little disappointed because we were really rooting for Sarah Huckabee Sanders from Arkansas,” Jana Starr, a delegate from Arkansas, said. “She’s our girl.”

Sanders, who has served as Arkansas governor since 2022, previously served as Trump’s White House press secretary.

Starr said she would have liked to see Trump pick “either a Black man or woman, or a woman, in the position just to kind of, I think, give us another perspective.”

Saga Conroy, a delegate from California, said that while she supported Trump’s choice of Vance, she questioned his loyalty to the former president.

“He didn’t support Trump from the very beginning,” Conroy said. “That concerns me a little bit.”

Vance was critical of Trump during the former president’s successful 2016 run for the White House and in the years that followed. In recent years, he’s become a Trump ally, particularly around his economic and trade policies.

For other delegates, the youthfulness of Vance is appealing. If Trump wins in November, Vance, 39, will be the first millennial to be elected vice president.

“It shows the Republican Party really wants youth in the party and taking the reins of power, because we can only grow when we let the next generation come in,” said Chris Gray, a delegate from Oregon.

For other delegates, including former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Vance has “blue-collar appeal.” Yet, it’s ultimately the top of the ticket that matters to voters.

“I think, in the end, it boils down to what do people think about Donald Trump [and] what do they think about Joe Biden,” Walker said. “I think he’s just going to be a good partner on the campaign trail, getting the message across that, you know, transcending party lines, that this ticket is going to fight for the American people.”