JD Vance’s wife Usha Vance was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, now she’s full MAGA

JD Vance couldn’t find his wife. It was January 2023, and Vice President Kamala Harris had just been sworn in as Ohio’s junior senator in front of a group of family and friends. “You have to tell her I made this incredibly emotional set of remarks about her,” he joked.

As if on cue, Usha Vance, then an attorney at a white shoe company, entered the room, pushing one of the couple’s three children in a stroller. JD’s face lit up. He pointed in her direction, grasping at his wife’s sacrifices.

“The thing I will say about running for office, which many of you know very well, is that it has an incredible impact on the family,” the author-turned-MAGA-firebrand continued. “I’ll try not to get too emotional here, but just say that representing the people of Ohio in the United States Senate is a dream come true for me and I wouldn’t be here without Usha. So thank you, my dear, from the bottom of my heart.”

It’s a nasty wear and tear, but a year and a half later, Usha’s role in her husband’s meteoric rise is the subject of much intrigue as he fights to be second in the world’s most powerful position.

JD told a friend around 2016 that Usha planned to vote for Hillary Clinton over her current running mate — no surprise since Usha has registered as a Democrat in the past. The New York Times reported that her parents remain registered Democrats and that Usha’s mother, Lakshmi Chilukuri, once signed an open letter to then-President Trump asking him not to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords.

Usha has spent almost half of her adult life at elite universities, including two internships at Yale and a fellowship at Cambridge University. Munger, Tolles & Olson, the high-end law firm where he campaigned for nearly eight years, is known for its progressive workplace values ​​and left-leaning lawyers.

Now, with less than 80 days until America decides whether to hand over the keys to Number One Observatory Circle to the Vances, Usha is publicly on board with the MAGA agenda. “There’s no light there,” insisted Jai Chabria, a Vance family friend and one of JD’s early political advisers.

Someone who has known the couple for over a decade said they viewed the two as “a partnership”.

“I don’t think he would do it if she didn’t agree,” this person added.

The Vance-Chilukuri affair began at Yale Law School. Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrant teachers, is paired with JD, a Marine veteran with working-class roots, for a writing assignment. “He was so nervous because he thought, ‘She’s going to realize I’m not as smart as her and I’m not like me,’” a classmate recalled. Within months, they started dating—and quickly became a popular couple on campus.

Usha amassed an impressive resume even before entering law school in the fall of 2010. After her senior year of college, she earned a Yale-China Competitive Scholarship and followed it up with a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

“I never thought of her as someone who would run for office,” said a Yale Law classmate. “I thought of her more as someone who would be a partner in a law firm – certainly very successful with immense power – but more power behind the scenes. But in that way, they’re the perfect combination because he’s always loved the limelight.”

JD was an outspoken conservative, but Usha was more shy about her politics, according to classmates. A Yale Law School graduate said he was surprised to discover she had landed a job clerking for Chief Justice John Roberts not because of her qualifications but because of his politics. “It was not something that seemed to me to be an indication of her ideological leanings. It seemed more like just a demonstration of her ambition.”

JD’s trip to Mar-a-Lago involved a sort of pinball machine career. After graduation, he worked for white-shoe law firm Sidley Austin, invested in companies under billionaires Peter Thiel and Steve Case, wrote a New York Times best-selling memoir, appeared on cable news as a paid contributor, started his own venture fund, and of course ran for political office (financed, in part, by Thiel). He has never held office as long as he will be expected to serve as vice president in a potential Trump administration.

Meanwhile, Usha spent most of her professional career at Munger, Tolles & Olson. She was drawn to the firm in part for its family and gender policies, according to a person familiar with her career decision. Munger Tolles’ website also states that “diversity, equity and inclusion have always been—and continue to be—a cornerstone of our firm.”

The day after JD got the nod, Usha quit her prestigious position at Munger Tolles. There is no sign of her on the company’s website anymore – her entire hard-earned career there evaporated overnight. As of Friday, Munger Tolles had not responded to a request for comment The daily beast if he would have gotten her back if he wanted to come back.

Her influence on JD continued after Yale. While everyone agrees that Usha has little appetite for day-to-day politics, the 38-year-old has helped her husband’s political career behind the scenes, according to interviews with people who know her.

After the launch in 2016 a Hillbilly Elegythat catapulted JD onto the national stage, Usha shunned the limelight. However, she helped manage his postHillbilly fame, according to a person who knew them at the time.

“When she was still working full-time and he was doing the media rounds after the success of his book, she was organizing and keeping track of his calendar and I think she was doing a lot of that communication for him,” this person said.

Someone who knows the couple says it’s coming in a presidential moment it’s the next—and perhaps penultimate—step on the ladder of ambition for the Vances.

In a written statement provided to The Daily Beast from the campaign, Chabria said, “There are a lot of influencers who claim to know JD and Usha. These people are unfortunately only concerned with status and ambition, and that is the lens through which these sad people view the world.”

Usha helped craft JD’s RNC speech, which focused heavily on his family to appeal to blue-collar voters — his principles. Hillbilly Elegy speaking tour days.

“I know Usha spent a lot of time talking to him and making sure it was in his voice and it was what he wanted to say and how he wanted to be remembered,” Dan Driscoll, a close friend of the couple and campaign adviser to Vance, he said The daily beast. “As a thought partner, she absolutely sharpened his thoughts.”

(But don’t expect Usha to become a bigger presence on her husband’s campaign trail, Driscoll added, citing her distaste for campaigning.)

Expectations for JD’s speech were perhaps unfairly high, but it fell short of what most had hoped. As Trump’s campaign has lost steam in recent weeks, the vice-presidential pick has been no counterweight. Instead, his old comments about “childless cat ladies” and love of Diet Mountain Dew came to define JD’s public image. His overall unfavorable rating is nine points higher than his favorable, according to polling site 538.

Usha addressed the negative press during a recent appearance on The fox and friendstelling Ainsley Earhardt, “It can be hard. Sometimes I don’t see it all and sometimes I see it and I look at it and I think well this is not the JD I know.”

Driscoll said the Vance family viewed the negative press surrounding JD’s release as “biased” and “reinforced their resolve to tell the true story and let the world see the real, real JD.”

“My sense is that it has strengthened their relationship even more because they realize that together they will have to navigate these very complicated, unfair and highly unbalanced waters,” he added.

Usha’s stand-by-your-man stance is also shaped, in part, by another important figure in her life who has endured a non-stop political war: Brett Kavanaugh, for whom Usha also worked as a judge of circuit. Kavanaugh and his wife, Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, participated in a televised interview together ahead of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony on Capitol Hill in which the Stanford medical professor accused her of sexual assault. Usha said she sees the hearings — and the way Kavanaugh’s wife handled herself — as a star sign of how to weather the political maelstrom.

“I think that gave us a little bit of insight into what it could be like,” Usha told Earhardt in her Fox interview. “I look back on it and think about Ms. Kavanaugh and the way she carried herself and showed a lot of strength and is a model for how to proceed.”

Usha discussed her feelings about the scandal at the time, according to a friend. “Being at the center of a culture war, not of my creation, is not my favorite,” the friend recalled him saying.

Avoiding the culture wars of 2024 and reveling in a 0.1% lifestyle wouldn’t be a heavy lift for the couple. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Vances are worth between $4 million and $10.4 million; they own million dollar homes in Cincinnati (a pre-Civil War home on more than two acres) and Alexandria, Virginia. “They want a certain lifestyle for themselves,” said someone who knew the couple. “Both of their homes are in very affluent and progressive communities.”

A friend who spent a lot of time with the couple said that if Usha was really uncomfortable with the hard right turn, she would have given up by now. “She is close to her family. If he didn’t want to do that, it’s very easy to get out,” this person said. “It’s hard for me to imagine her being trapped.”