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    • Usha Vance agrees with her husband on political views
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    Usha Vance agrees with her husband on political views

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    JD Vance’s criticism of professional women – as childless cat ladies or ‘miserable’ women who put careers before children – might suggest that his own wife would be a traditional housewife.

    Instead, Usha Vance is an exemplary, high-achieving child of Indian immigrants.

    Just ask Rose Muralikrishnan, her childhood music teacher, with whom she started taking classical South Indian singing lessons around the age of six.

    Muralikrishnan, a musician from California, is proud of the achievements of her ‘brilliant’ former student, who is now in the national political spotlight.

    “I thought, ‘That’s my little girl!’” Muralikrishnan says of her reaction when she saw Vance take the stage at the Republican National Convention in July to introduce her husband. “I immediately messaged her mother.”

    Usha Vance was one of the top students at Yale Law School (according to classmates) where she met her future husband JD, now the junior senator from Ohio and Donald Trump’s running mate. She held prestigious internships and worked as a corporate litigator for a white shoe firm until July.

    According to campaign officials, she is heavily involved in preparing for Tuesday night’s debate against Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, just as she had addressed his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

    Tuesday’s data: What are the rules for ‘CBS News Vice Presidential Debate’ between Vance and Walz? View the full list

    Born Usha Chilukuri to Hindu-Indian immigrants, the 38-year-old was born and raised in San Diego. The family had close ties to a close-knit group of Indian professionals, many of whom, including her parents, were university professors.

    Her mother, Lakshmi Chilukuri, is a provost at the University of San Diego and her father, an engineer, is a lecturer at San Diego State University. Her great-aunt is the oldest professor in India and, at the age of 96, still teaches physics at the university.

    But Usha Vance is also a bit of an enigma to those who have followed her evolution from a registered Democrat to assuming Trump was responsible for inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, to now possibly becoming the second lady.

    Her husband has gone through a similar evolution: from someone who loved fun more than politics, to a “never Trumper” and now his running mate.

    From conversations with the couple’s close friends and advisors and from J.D. Vance’s memoirs, it is clear that he has relied heavily on his wife, both professionally and personally, over the past fifteen years, and the couple has fallen on hard times. their thinking and ideologies have evolved.

    In his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance describes his wife as his “spiritual guide” who saved him during a fancy dinner by secretly advising him on the proper cutlery to use, and reminding him that “every perceived trifle is not a is cause for bloodshed. feud.”

    Law study and political evolution

    Charles Tyler, a classmate at Yale, said he wasn’t surprised the two hit it off. Although JD was more outgoing and Usha more inquisitive and eager to learn, both were attentive and warm-hearted.

    In his memoirs, J.D. Vance describes his future wife, whom he met when they were appointed partners for their first major writing assignment: “She seemed like some kind of genetic anomaly, a combination of all the positive qualities a human being should have: smart, hard-working, tall and beautiful.”

    Tyler said her thoughtfulness stood out.

    “If she (Usha) knew that a major life event had just happened to you, and you probably don’t have a lot of bandwidth, then she is the kind of person who will bring food, or volunteer to walk with you. dog,” he said.

    James Eimers, another classmate at the time, wrote in an email that despite a heavy academic load, Usha Vance had “a keen awareness of the events in her friends’ personal lives.”

    During their first round of employer interviews, Vance asked if he could borrow one of Eimers’s ties.

    “He ended up choosing a purple one – one of my favorites,” he wrote. “I remember him accidentally disappearing with that tie for several weeks, until Usha gently reminded him when she became aware that I needed it again.”

    The temporarily kidnapped tie became a running joke between them for the next three years at school, he wrote.

    During their law school days, J.D. Vance was “recognizably conservative,” but Usha Vance never expressed very strong views on political issues in his presence, Tyler said.

    Vance’s memoir takes his readers through his childhood in a working-class neighborhood in Middletown, Ohio, where he barely knew his father, his mother struggled mightily with addiction, and he was raised by his grandparents who had their own marital problems.

    “He had this sort of rotating cast of stepfathers, the kinds of things that are real barriers to people’s success in this world,” Tyler said. “I had no idea he would overcome all that.”

    After law school, Usha Vance, who was a registered Democrat until 2014, clerked for conservative judges, including Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John G. Roberts Jr., and Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was an appellate judge.

    ‘No daylight’ between them

    Jai Chabria, a family friend and political consultant, said Usha Vance has great instincts and the couple is “a team in every sense of the word.”

    He said she was a “great advisor” who was involved in his debate preparation and helped shape his answers.

    “When he goes out and gives a great speech, she gives him advice and gives him her opinion, and it’s taken seriously,” he said.

    When asked what she thinks about some of his more controversial statements and his past criticism of and now embrace of Trump, he said they “don’t do important things without consulting each other.”

    “There was a time when he actually didn’t believe that Donald Trump would make a good president,” he said, accusing the media of portraying the former president as influencing his thinking. “And then he realized that he was actually a great president, someone who actually got results and made people’s lives better.”

    Regarding his wife’s support for Trump, he said:

    “There is no daylight between the two of them on the politics of the day.”

    In an interview with Fox, Vance said that before her husband announced his candidacy for Senate in 2021, they had many serious conversations.

    “We have three children and giving them a stable, normal and happy life and upbringing is the most important thing for us,” she said.

    Asked about her response to her husband’s comment about the government being run by a “bunch of childless cat ladies,” she defended her husband in the Fox interview.

    She said she wishes people would spend less time going through “this three word sentence or That three-word sentence.”

    “Because what he was really saying is that it can be very difficult to be a parent in this country,” she said. “And sometimes our policies are designed to make it even more difficult.”

    Republican National Convention

    When she took the stage at the Republican National Convention, Usha Vance had a no-nonsense style, eschewing the glossy makeup and high-definition-friendly look. She wore a simple blue dress with gray locks poking through her shoulder-length hair.

    She described her husband as a “working-class man who had overcome childhood traumas” that she “could barely fathom.”

    “When JD met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm. He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.”

    She called their union a testament to “this great country.”

    “Although he is a meat-and-potatoes guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook Indian food from my mother,” she said.

    For Muralikrishnan, the music teacher, the moment was tense.

    “I couldn’t believe where she was standing,” she said, “right now she makes us all so proud.”

    Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal

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