Many Republicans welcomed Usha Vance, the Indian-American wife of vice presidential candidate JD Vance, as a symbol of generational change and growing diversity in the party’s ranks.
Usha, 38, a corporate lawyer who was once a registered Democrat, is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a practicing Hindu.
Danny Willis, 25, president of Delaware Young Republicanssaid, “With this ticket, with the demonstration of diversity in what would be the second gentleman and second lady of the United States, I am extremely proud to be a Hispanic man and a Republican.”
Usha has a very different story to tell from the last Republican second lady, Karen Pencea white, devout Christian grandmother from Indiana who was an elementary school teacher and a watercolorist.
She is the daughter of Krish and Lakshmi Chilukuri, who hail from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and later settled in California. Krish is an engineer and university professor; Lakshmi, biologist and college dean. They are part of a close-knit community of Indian-American scholars in suburban San Diego.
Usha recalled in a recent interview with Fox News: “I grew up in a religious home, my parents are Hindu, and I think that was one of the things that made them such good parents, that made them really good people.”
Even as a child, Usha seemed strange to doubts. In a 2022 profile in the New York Times, Vikram Rao, a family friend who works in Silicon Valley, was quoted as saying: “At age five or six, she took on a leadership role. She decided which board games we would play and what the rules would be. She was never mean or cruel, but she was the boss.”
The same Times article noted that between 2007 and 2010, “Usha posted 65 ‘read’ books to her Goodreads account, including novels by Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as nonfiction by Nina Burleigh and Nicholas Kristof . So her account was inactive for six years.”
Usha met JD Vance at Yale Law School, where together they organized a discussion group on “social decline in white America” – a topic he would return to in his best-selling memoir Hillbilly elegy.
The book chronicles his upbringing in a poor Appalachian family and the beginning of his relationship with Usha, played in a 2020 Netflix film adaptation by Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto.
The couple didn’t seem like an obvious match, but in Hillbilly Elegy, JD praises Usha as a “Yale spiritual guide” who helped him negotiate campus life. “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask and always encouraged me to pursue opportunities I didn’t even know existed,” he wrote.
For her part, Usha once told NBC News, “We were friends, and I liked that he was very diligent. He would show up at 9am for appointments I would make so we could start working on the brief together.”
Among the duo’s Law colleagues at Yale was the businessman Vivek Ramaswamywho ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination this year.
Usha served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology and attended classes that offered free legal advice on Supreme Court and press freedom issues.
She also earned a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Her final project focused on “methods used to protect printing rights in 17th-century England,” according to her biography on the university website.
JD and Usha were married in an interfaith ceremony in Kentucky in 2014. That same year, she clerked on the influential D.C. Circuit for Brett Kavanaugh, who would be nominated by Donald Trump and confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.
Usha was also a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts during the 2017-2018 term. During that term, Roberts wrote a 5-4 ruling supporting Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries.
In the office of 200 lawyers Munger, Tolles and Olson, Vance, associate, focusing on civil litigation and appeals. The company – which calls itself “radically progressive” – counts Berkshire Hathaway, Bank of America and PG&E among its clients. Usha’s own clients included a division of the Walt Disney Company and the Regents of the University of California.
Usha was a registered Democrat who voted in that party’s 2014 primary, public records show, but voted in the 2022 Republican primary when her husband was running for Ohio Senate.
Last month, the couple was interviewed by Fox News at their home in Cincinnati, Ohio, about the possibility of JD becoming Donald Trump’s running mate. Usha said, “I don’t know if anyone will be prepared for that kind of scrutiny. I think we found the first campaign he embarked on to be a shock. It was so different from anything we had ever done before. But it was an adventure.
“And so I guess the way I put it, I’m not eager to change anything in our lives right now. But I really believe in JD and I really love him. And then we’ll see what happens with our lives.”
On Monday, when JD entered the Republican National Convention hall and members of the Ohio delegation shouted his name, Usha was by his side. She has proven to be an anchor in these moments.
Related: From Anti-Trump to Vice Presidential Candidate: JD Vance in His Own Words
“Usha definitely brings me back down to earth a little bit, and if I get a little arrogant or too proud, I just remind myself that she’s a lot more accomplished than I am,” JD told Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having, like, a kind of powerful female voice on his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do this, do that’ — it’s just important.”
Usha said in a statement on Monday night that she is resigning from the company to support her family – they have two sons, Ewan, six, Vivek, four, and a daughter, Mirabel, two. A spokesperson for Munger said Usha was an “excellent lawyer and colleague.”
Republicans at the convention praised the Vances, but some were unwilling to weigh in on what they see as identity politics. Virginia Zemel, 66, of Downers Grove, Illinois, said: “You don’t look at a person’s skin color and ethnicity. It’s the character of the person and what they stand for.
“America started as a melting pot and we included everyone. The leadership of President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and her wonderful family, and now JD Vance as Vice President and his wife and family will be a message to bring back the strength of our country.”
But some political analysts believe that, less than four months before Election Day, Usha’s arrival could be a boon for an all-white Republican ticket.
John Zogby, researcher and author, said: “Second lady candidates hardly appear in the mix. However, the influence of Indian Americans is increasing in the United States. They are heavily Democratic – or at least have been – in their voting patterns, so if there is an opportunity to reduce that and even get a small percentage, that could be vital, especially in those swing states that everyone talks about.”
He added: “It’s good optics, she’s a smart lady and anything that could sway some voters could be huge in an election like this.”
