Usha Vance’s Republican National Convention speech this week, in which she introduced her husband J.D. Vance, marked a rare foray into conservative politics for the esteemed attorney.
Years ago, she was considered something of a liberal darling, the subject of glowing profiles from the likes of MSNBC following the success of J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. But as her husband’s political profile grew, and he went from a critic of Donald Trump to a MAGA ally, she found herself increasingly frozen out of the elite liberal circles in which she once mixed.
As a high-achieving female attorney at a progressive law firm and the daughter of immigrant parents, Usha Vance was widely assumed to be a liberal or a centrist by her peers, per a New York Times piece from 2022. Indeed, she’s been conspicuously quiet about her political beliefs throughout her career and was registered as a Democrat in 2014, though she has since changed her affiliation to the GOP and made two donations to Senate candidate Blake Masters, a favourite of the populist New Right and a friend of J.D. Vance.
Her husband’s recent political rise has alienated her from some of her colleagues. Ahead of the 2021 wedding of a high-profile law professor’s daughter — as Vance’s Senate campaign was gaining national attention — multiple guests asked not to be seated near the Vances.
Soon after, Usha starred in a 2022 campaign ad for Vance, praising him as a husband and father while avoiding overtly political topics. In response, her colleagues at the progressive law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson told the NYT they were “confused and disappointed” that she had supported him during his pro-Trump rebrand.
Like her husband, Usha attended Yale Law School. She went on to work as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, the court’s most moderate conservative. Supreme Court clerkships are among the most coveted jobs in the legal profession and can yield a $500,000 signing bonus upon moving to a major law firm, as she then did.
The hostility from fellow travellers in elite circles continued after Vance won his Senate seat. When the pair, along with their three young children, moved to the D.C. area in early 2023, they were quickly targeted by residents of their wealthy, progressive new neighbourhood. Neighbours “yarn bombed” the area around their home, wrapping trees and utility poles with hand-crocheted signs reading “RESPECT OUR RIGHTS”, along with various LGBT flags.
The vice-presidential announcement didn’t seem to improve the situation. Earlier this week, multiple neighbours made on-the-record comments to the the Washington Post expressing displeasure that the Vance family lives there, though many locals declined to speak to the outlet. A former colleague from Usha’s time at Yale wrote on social media this week that it was “painful” to see her on stage at the RNC.
The hostility directed at the Vance family in their personal lives mirrors their shunning from elite institutions. Hillbilly Elegy received a glowing response from liberal commentators when it was published in 2016, with Usha and J.D. sitting down for a friendly interview with MSNBC in 2017.
But Vance’s rise in Republican politics, and his friendliness with Trump in particular, prompted a fierce rebuke, including a newfound disdain for his memoir. Usha, for her part, has been the subject of multiple racist jokes from Left-leaning outlets, including a satirical article in The Onion this week about a fictional attempt to deport her.
The spouses of vice presidents typically receive far less attention than those of the president — most Americans are entirely unfamiliar with Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff — but Usha Vance could be an exception, given her high-calibre career and the attention sure to be directed at her husband as a controversial figure.
She has not publicly commented on the negativity to which she’s been subjected this week, and her own beliefs have remained elusive, including in her speech at the RNC. She stressed that her husband’s “goals in this new role are the same that he’s pursued for our family: to keep people safe, to create opportunities, to build a better life, and to solve problems with an open mind”.