Vance and Walz lean on their wives in different ways leading up to the VP debate and along the way

As J.D. Vance and Tim Walz prepare for their showdown on Tuesday, the vice presidential hopefuls have spent several months campaigning across the country following their sudden elevation into national politics. So there are two key players who help shape their message and public image: their women.

While Usha Vance has acted more as a behind-the-scenes advisor, Gwen Walz has been on the campaign trail in key swing states as a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign in the months leading up to the election.

Gwen Walz, originally from Minnesota and a former public school teacher, has always played a major role in her husband’s political career. “We’ve always worked as a partnership,” she told the “What If It Works” podcast in an interview in July. “We work very 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 distinguished career as a lawyer before and during her husband’s start in electoral politics, has been less present in front of the cameras — she has not made comments on behalf of the Trump-Vance campaign at a public event since. proposed to 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.

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“I think he treats everything I say with a lot of seriousness and respect. And that becomes part of the way he thinks about things, as it is for me,” Usha Vance said on Fox News a few weeks after the Republican convention. “The way he talks about things and the conclusions he draws really shapes the way I think about things, so it’s a nice give and take, but I think it’s quite fortunate.” Both potential second ladies have been involved in preparations for Tuesday’s debate: Usha Vance has been helping her husband as he and his team of advisers worked on his debate strategy, a source directly involved in the preparations told NBC News, while Gwen Walz had joined the debate. Democratic vice presidential candidate during his debate preparations in Harbor Springs, Michigan, last week.

Usha Vance often appears on stage with her husband as he kicks off 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 they can make that sound. plate. She typically travels light as the campaign enters and exits their planes and vehicles — but when the couple’s three young children are out and about, Usha Vance can be seen carrying loose toys into the cabin or helping Secret Service agents secure car seats in the SUVs of their motorcade. . Answering questions from attendees at a town hall-style event in suburban Pittsburgh, J.D. Vance told an audience member who said they homeschool their children that his wife has started doing “a little homeschooling” with their 7-year-old son . they travel. She left her law firm not long after her husband was nominated to join the Trump campaign.

Tim Walz’s daughter, Hope, often 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 make remarks at a fundraiser during his time in Congress when he was suffering from strep throat.

“She should be the candidate,” he joked at a fundraiser in Bethesda, Maryland. When Walz is not attending events alone, he is sometimes accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, who also travels the country speaking and raising money for the Democratic ticket.

During her events, Gwen Walz has focused on education, drawing on her and her husband’s experience as teachers, and protecting reproductive rights, which she has called “personal” to 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 Glamor in which she highlighted 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 past references to using IVF. “Today it emerged that Tim Walz had lied about having a family through IVF. Who lies about something like that?” Gwen Walz has been on the defensive 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 has also stepped up to defend JD Vance. In the Fox News interview after the Republican convention, she reiterated her husband’s defense of criticism stemming from a 2021 comment comparing Democratic leadership to “childless cat ladies,” describing the comment as a “joke to make a point he wanted to make. that was substantive and had actual meaning.”

“What he was really saying is that it can be very difficult to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed to make it even more difficult,” she said.

Long before JD Vance became a senator and later the Republican vice presidential candidate, Usha Vance was a longtime partner in his work.

In the acknowledgments of his oft-quoted memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance wrote, “Last, but certainly not least, is my dear wife, Usha, who read every word of my manuscript literally dozens of times and provided necessary feedback . (even when I didn’t want to!), supported me when I felt like quitting, and celebrated with me in times of progress.” He added that “so much of the credit for both this book and the happy life that I lead belongs to her.”