How ‘spirit guide’ Usha Vance boosted JD Vance’s meteoric rise

From her speech, Americans discovered that JD Vance learned how to cook Indian dishes that accommodate his wife’s vegetarian diet, among other things.

And when the time came to defend her husband, she was ready to do that, too.

Last July, previous comments by JD Vance in which he called some Democratic politicians “childless cat ladies” resurfaced on social media, and it was his wife whose damage control seemed to do most to quell the ensuing uproar.

She described his remarks as a “quip”, reframing them as a reflection on the challenges facing working families in America, and expressing a wish that critics would look at the larger context of what her husband had said.

She acknowledged in the Fox interview that she does not agree with her husband on all political issues, though she said she has never doubted his intention.

“Usha has never been an overly political person,” JJ Snidow, a former Yale Law School classmate of the pair, told the BBC. “What America has come to see of her being a very impressive, reserved person is real – that is who she is.”

Charles Tyler says Usha Vance does not fit tidily into any political box.

“The reason so many people have difficulty characterising her politics is not because she keeps her cards close to the vest,” he says, “it’s because she doesn’t conform to the kind of ideological tribes that most of us have identified with.”

That will probably serve her well as US second lady, a role that has historically been removed from the cut-and-thrust of Washington’s partisan politics.

But with JD Vance’s star firmly in the ascent, few who know the power couple doubt that Usha Vance will continue to serve as his spirit guide, perhaps even one day as first lady of the United States.