Meet Usha Chilukuri Vance, the Indian American Wife of Ohio’s GOP Senate Primary Winner J.D. Vance
- The Cincinnati-based couple has been married since 2014 and has three children — two boys, and a girl.
Conservative commentator, venture capitalist, and author J.D. Vance has won the Ohio GOP Senate primary. Vance, who was endorsed by former President Trump, defeated six others including former state treasurer Josh Mandel and Indian American businessman Neil Patel. He will now face Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan in November to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman.
Vance is best known for his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The movie version was released on Netflix in 2020. Vance’s books are described as “a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans.” Vance tells “the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck,” says goodreads.com.
Axios reported that Vance, who was “once a vocal critic” of Trump, “now stands to become the MAGA standard-bearer in a state Trump won handily in 2016 and 2020.” It will be interesting to see if Trump’s backing can help him win the Senate seat.
It will be equally interesting to see if Vance receives the backing from Indian Americans in the state, because of his wife. Vance is married to Usha Chilukuri Vance, a practicing attorney. The couple has been married since 2014, according to Chilukuri’s Facebook page. The couple has three children — two boys and a girl.
Chilukuri works as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, her LinkedIn profile says. According to her bio on the firm’s website, she focuses on “complex civil litigation and appeals in a wide variety of sectors, including higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology. She works with the law firm’s San Francisco and Washington, D.C. offices. She has been licensed to practice law in California since June 2016, reported heavy.com, citing public records on the State Bar of California website.
In a 2017 interview with NBC News, Chilukuri said she and Vance met while they were both law students at Yale. She said she was attracted to Vance in part because of his positive attitude. “He felt very different,” she told Megyn Kelly.
Chilukuri grew up in San Diego, California, and attended Mt. Carmel High School. She moved to the East Coast for college and earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 2007. In 2009, she attended the University of Cambridge for a Master of Philosophy degree as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Her profile on the program’s website explains that she focused on “the career of John Field, a printer who operated between 1642 and 1668 in London and Cambridge” and that her “MPhil project investigated the methods used for protecting printing rights in seventeenth-century England.”
Chilukuri then returned to Yale for her law degree. While a student, she served as the executive development editor of the “Yale Law Journal” and as managing editor of the “Yale Journal of Law & Technology.”
According to her LinkedIn profile, she served as a clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Before that, she clerked at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She worked for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2018. Chilukuri also clerked for Judge Amul Thapar at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2013 to 2014.
In a November 2020 profile on the Vances, The Cinemaholic noted that in “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance wrote that “Usha helped him realize that he had baggage from his tumultuous upbringing even after he managed to achieve all his dreams.” She had told him that he had no idea of how to resolve a conflict, he wrote. He feared becoming like his mother, he wrote, but Usha made him see that all he had to do was talk to her to make her see his side of an argument.
I’m a bit concerned that JD Vance emotionally may rely and lean too much on his spouse, considering his childhood. Many American men who marry foreign born women or though American born first generation, they identify with their ” former culture” more than their spouses upbringing in the USA. When in politics, the elected should make the important decisions possibly with some guidance and discussion of spouses, not the non-elected spouse making most of the decisions with little or no help from the elected. By the way, this can happen with more aggressive people born in the same country, like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Woodrow Wilson and his wife who secretly ran the country for her incapacitated and elected husband who was President.
You left out the current President, Joe Biden. His wife, Dr Jill, definitely runs the show.
She is not Indian, she was born and raised in San Diego California. She is an American from the western United States.
As for influencing her husband, I would think that is a normal thing to expect and I am more than certain that he chose her and she chose him because they have shared values and similar thoughts about the things that matter to them both.
If you are born in the USA then you are an American and no amount of exposure to your foreign born parents is going to change the fact that you are an American with American sensibilities.
If you aren’t concerned that Trump’s wife is foreign born, then apply that same logic to Vance’s American born wife who is an American mother with three American children and American sensibilities.
I hope he wins!!!
Kathy’s comment reads like only slightly veiled racism. We can only hope J D listens to her, she has more experience than him. He’s only been a Senator since 2023, but she’s an experienced attorney who worked for Justice Robert’s and Kavanaugh.
Dear Kathy, I am sorry, your comment makes no sense. At best, it is very convoluted and confusing to figure out what is that you are really trying to say. Perhaps you should rewrite and resubmit it. Thank you.
Ms Chatterjee, let me describe what I mean in a way in a different way: if you were living in India and I came to India and married a man who would become the Prime Minister or Leader of India where you lived, and though maybe smart, was very bossy , manipulative, maybe Marxist and I made life difficult for my spouse and maybe interfered with his decision making for your country, would that make you the least concerned for your and your country’s well-being? Does that make any sense to you?
She grew up in the US (Ca;ifornia) and was educated in the US. Do your research before making such ludicrous comments. At best, your comment is fraught with predudice, whichis exactly what we are trying to get away from in this country.
That is a lot of assumptions! Is all this based on just her assisting her husband in working through past family history? Isn’t that what loving committed spouses do- work together to make each-other the best they can be?
Has no one ever helped you see things from different perspectives so you can work through scenarios for the best outcome?
What proof do you have she will be a domineering wife? Why are you so ethnically bias? Remember American is a melting pot- most of us are multi-ethnic.
Kathy
You should consider Usha’s background. She grew up in San Diego. She has degrees from Yale (undergrad and law school). She studied history and received a Master’s degree in Cambridge, UK. She’s clerked in the Supreme Court of the United States. She’s also a mom of three kids. So you are focusing on the fact her parents are Indian-Americans and pigeon holing her because of this. Yet I think the details of her life experiences are much more relevant. And her choice she made as her life partner speaks volumes about the character and integrity she possesses.
Hello Kathy, this has already happened in India. You can look up “Sonia Gandhi,” an Italian who married Rajiv Gandhi, who later became the Prime Minister of India.
What Kathy means is Vance should have stayed White. Simple!