As JD Vance and Tim Walz prepare to face off in their Tuesday debate, the vice presidential hopefuls have banked several months of campaigning across the country after their sudden elevations into national politics. So have two key players helping shape their messaging and public images: their wives.
While Usha Vance has acted more as a behind-the-scenes adviser, Gwen Walz has been hitting the campaign trail in key swing states as a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign in the months leading up to the election.
Originally from Minnesota and a former longtime public school teacher, Gwen Walz has always played a big role in her husband’s political career. “We have always worked as a partnership,” she told the podcast “What If It Works” in an interview in July. “We do work really closely together, and there are issues where I do a lot of the work and share my thoughts and briefings with him.”
Usha Vance, who built a notable career as a lawyer before and during her husband’s start in electoral politics, is less of a presence in front of the cameras — she has not delivered remarks on behalf of the Trump-Vance campaign at a public event since introducing her husband at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July. But the Vances use each other as sounding boards and partners to think through things, she said in a rare interview.
“I think that he treats everything I say with a lot of seriousness and respect. And that becomes a part of the way that he thinks about things, as is true for me,” Usha Vance said on Fox News a few weeks after the Republican convention. “The way that he talks about things and the conclusions he comes to really shape the way that I think about things, so there’s a nice give and take, but I think it’s a pretty happy one.”
Both potential second ladies have been involved in preparations for Tuesday’s debate: Usha Vance has helped guide her husband as he and his team of advisers worked on his debate strategy, a source directly involved with the preparations told NBC News, while Gwen Walz has joined the Democratic vice presidential nominee at his debate preparations in Harbor Springs, Michigan, in the last week.
Usha Vance often appears onstage with her husband as he kicks off battleground state events — introduced together over the loudspeaker as “the next vice president and second lady of the United States” — and travels with him and their family, where she can provide that sounding board. She typically travels lightly as the campaign enters and exits their planes and vehicles — though when the couple’s three young children are on the trail, Usha Vance can be spotted carrying loose toys into the cabin or helping Secret Service agents fasten car seats into their motorcade’s SUVs.
Taking questions from attendees at a town hall-style event in suburban Pittsburgh, JD Vance told an audience member who mentioned they homeschool their children that his wife has started to do “a little bit of homeschooling” with their 7-year-old son as they travel. She left her law firm not long after her husband was nominated to join the Trump campaign’s ticket.
Tim Walz’s daughter, Hope, more frequently accompanies him on the campaign trail, while Gwen Walz has held multiple solo events in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. The Minnesota governor often tells a story about Gwen stepping in to deliver remarks at a fundraiser during his time in Congress when he was suffering from laryngitis.
“She should be the candidate,” he joked during a fundraiser in Bethesda, Maryland.
When not attending events solo, Walz is sometimes joined by Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, who has also been crisscrossing the country speaking and fundraising for the Democratic ticket.
At her events, Gwen Walz has mostly focused on education, leaning on her and her husband’s experience as teachers, and on protecting reproductive rights, which she has called “personal” for her family.
“We struggled to start our family, and we were only able to start a family because we had access to fertility treatments. And even then, it was quite a journey, and it took a long time,” she explained during a solo campaign appearance in Lansing, Michigan, last week.
During the Democratic National Convention, Gwen and Tim Walz participated in an interview with Glamour highlighting her struggles with infertility and her use of IUI (intrauterine insemination) to have their children.
JD Vance took to social media to call out Tim Walz for making earlier references to using IVF. “Today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF. Who lies about something like that?”
Gwen Walz has gone on defense in her events: “I’m going to use my teacher voice here, my stern teacher voice, and I’m going to send them a message, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance, please mind your own business,” she said in Lansing.
Usha Vance, too, has stepped out to defend JD Vance. In the Fox News interview after the GOP convention, she echoed her husband’s defense of criticism drawn from a 2021 comment likening Democratic leadership to “childless cat ladies,” describing the remark as a “quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive, and it had actual meaning.”
“What he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder,” she said.
Well before JD Vance became a senator and later the Republican vice presidential nominee, Usha Vance has been a longtime partner in his work.
In the acknowledgements of his oft-cited memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” JD Vance wrote: “Last, but certainly not least, is my darling wife, Usha, who read every single word of my manuscript literally dozens of times, offered needed feedback (even when I didn’t want it!), supported me when I felt like quitting, and celebrated with me during times of progress.” He added that “so much of the credit for both this book and the happy life I lead belongs to her.”
