JD Vance’s Lavish Rider Demands on Book Tour Revealed

JD Vance seems to have expensive taste.

The Republican vice-presidential nominee requested first-class plane tickets, private cars, and fees up to $40,000 in exchange for speaking appearances at Midwestern public universities while touring for his book in 2017, Politico reported .

One university opted not to continue negotiations with Vance in part over the exorbitant speaker fee.

Politico obtained Vance’s requests, which were negotiated through his representatives via email, from a public records request.

The requests were made four years before Vance—who will appear alongside former President Donald Trump on ballots cast Nov. 5—won a seat in the U.S. Senate to represent Ohio, and they came as part of the tour for his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy , which sparked Vance’s entry into the public eye.

One school, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, inquired in February 2017 with Vance’s publisher about bringing the author to campus. A representative for HarperCollins told the university that in addition to Vance’s $25,000 speaker fee, it would have to pay for first-class flights, a hotel, meals, and a car.

In April, the publisher said that the fee had risen to $40,000, which the university attempted to negotiate down. Eventually, talks ended, though, according to the emails, because the fee and timing issues were “too much to overcome.”

The Associated Press reported that Vance made at least $70,000 from speaking engagements at 18 universities in the two years after Hillbilly Elegy was published in 2016.

William Martin, a Vance spokesperson, defended the compensation requests to Politico.

“It’s widely known that, like many best-selling authors, Senator Vance was compensated for speaking events after the success of Hillbilly Elegy,” Martin told the outlet. “High-profile Democrats like the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens have made tens of millions in speaking fees over the years. Politico should be embarrassed to be reporting on something so irrelevant to the issues American voters care about.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.