Usha Vance, the wife of firebrand Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, used her primetime speech at this week’s Republican National Convention not to play up her husband’s MAGA credentials—but to highlight how her own personal background differed from many of the people cheering on Trump and his movement.
Vance famously portrayed his own childhood growing up in the Midwest with a family originally from rural Kentucky in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Vance’s book was a bestseller that received rave reviews from liberal publications and was eventually adapted into a film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams and directed by Ron Howard.
When Usha was given the opportunity to introduce her husband on Wednesday evening, she highlighted other aspects of her and Vance’s story—some of which might seem odd compared to his cultivated identity as a working-class loyalist and hard-right MAGA Republican.
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Usha also highlighted the stark differences between her and her husband’s childhoods.
“My background is very different from J.D.’s.,” she began. “I grew up in San Diego in a middle-class community with two loving parents, both immigrants from India, and a wonderful sister.”
“That J.D. and I could meet at all let alone fall in love and marry is a testament to this great country,” the 38-year-old former corporate litigator said.
Usha Vance and her husband, J.D. Vance, share a kiss on stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Jeenah Moon/ReutersUsha and Vance met at Yale Law School—an institution she spoke of fondly despite the attacks Vance and a number of his Republican colleagues in Washington continue to lob at elite Ivy League universities.
In his own speech, Vance only briefly mentioned attending Yale.
Usha also gave a small window into their courtship, calling him “a tough Marine who had served in Iraq but whose idea of a good time was playing with puppies and watching the movie Babe.”
She spoke of his “curiosity and enthusiasm” when learning about her Indian heritage. “He wanted to know everything about me—where I came from, what my life has been like. Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet,” Usha said. She also claimed Vance learned how to cook Indian food for her mother.
Usha’s mother, Lakshmi Chilukuri, is a provost at the University of California-San Diego’s Sixth College. It is unclear if her parents were in attendance, and they were not seated with the family at the convention.
Both Vance and his wife declined to address her own political background, which remains somewhat of a mystery. During law school, Usha clerked for moderate Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and then-appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, but was also a registered Democrat until 2014.
Usha Vance and former President Donald Trump listen as J.D. Vance speaks.
Jeenah Moon/ReutersBoth Usha and her husband have long been associated with Yale Law School professor Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and longtime associate of Kavanaugh—who was later appointed to the Supreme Court in 2018.
She previously worked for ostensibly progressive law firms, including Munger, Tolles and Olson. At the firm, co-founded by Warren Buffett partner Charlie Munger, her clients included The Walt Disney Company—a frequent target of MAGA conservatives concerned with LGBTQ representation in media, the Guardian reported.
