Newly minted Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio won't just be replacing retiring Sen. Rob Portman in the 118th Congress. He'll be joining the cadre of right-leaning actors, singers, and reality TV personalities who traded on their celebrity to secure a spot on Capitol Hill.
Vance, who defeated Democratic challenger Rep. Tim Ryan in one of the wildest and priciest Senate races of the 2022 midterms, originally rose to fame as author of the controversial ode to Appalachia, "Hillbilly Elegy." His 2016 memoir became a Netflix movie in 2020, cementing the entertainer bona fides of the aspiring venture capitalist and nonprofit founder.
While plenty of lawmakers pen tell-all books and pseudo-presidential campaign manifestos throughout their political careers, Vance just happened to get his first page-turner out of the way before arriving in Washington.
But a trailblazer he is not.
Here are five other cultural figures, listed by when they joined Congress, who beat Vance to the punch of becoming Republican lawmakers.