The couple met while attending Yale Law School. Republicans hope Ms. Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, will become the second lady.
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Usha Vance, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio’s wife, spoke on the third day of the Republican National Convention.
Usha Vance, the wife of Senator J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, introduced herself to the nation on Wednesday night during a prime-time speech at the party’s national convention.
She leaned into the story about her husband’s impoverished upbringing and the laws of opposites attracting, highlighting their different backgrounds.
“When J.D. met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm,” Ms. Vance said. “He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.”
The couple met at Yale Law School, where Ms. Vance helped Mr. Vance organize his ideas about social decline in rural white America, the basis of his breakout memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” They were married in 2014 in Kentucky and have three children. She is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Ms. Vance, 38, has shied away from the spotlight during her husband’s quick political ascent, which began during the midterm elections in 2022 when he was elected to the Senate in an open race.
Ms. Vance preceded her husband onstage. During his speech, the last of the night, he formally accepted the party’s nomination to be Donald J. Trump’s running mate.
She cast Mr. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, as a working-class person who had overcome childhood traumas that she could barely fathom.
“It’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American dream, a boy from Middletown, Ohio,” Ms. Vance said, explaining that she came from a very different background and grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of San Diego. As of 2014, she was a registered Democrat, though she is a registered Republican now.
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transcript
I met J.D. in law school when he was fresh out of Ohio State, which he attended with the support of the G.I. Bill. We were friends first because, I mean, who wouldn’t want to be friends with J.D.? He was then, as now, the most interesting person I knew. A working-class guy who had overcome childhood traumas that I could barely fathom to end up at Yale Law School. A tough Marine who had served in Iraq, but whose idea of a good time was playing with puppies and watching the movie “Babe.” The most determined person I knew with one overriding ambition: to become a husband and a father, and to build the kind of tight-knit family that he had longed for as a child.
She praised Mr. Vance for embracing her background and customs.
“Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food for my mother, Indian food,” she said.
Ms. Vance also received her bachelor’s degree from Yale and was selected for a Gates Fellowship at Cambridge, springboards to a career as a corporate lawyer with a prestigious San Francisco law firm.
She clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge.
Ms. Vance spoke for about five minutes, telling the delegates that her husband’s focus in the Senate — keeping people safe and creating opportunities — would continue as vice president if he is elected in November.
She said that Mr. Vance had not changed since they first met.
“Except for that beard,” she said.
Joseph Bernstein contributed reporting.
Neil Vigdor covers politics for The Times, focusing on voting rights issues and election disinformation. More about Neil Vigdor
See more on: U.S. Politics, Republican Party, U.S. Senate, J.D. Vance, John G. Roberts Jr.
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Source: nytimes.com
