Former Vice President Mike Pence launched his 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday, arguing Republican voters will have to choose between their loyalty to his old boss, former President Donald Trump, and their commitment to American democracy.
It was a choice, he said, he had to make on Jan. 6, 2021, when the former president pressured him to help overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and some in a violent pro-Trump mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the Capitol.
“On that fateful day, President Trump’s words were reckless, endangering my family and everyone at the Capitol,” Pence said in a speech outside Des Moines, Iowa. “President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution and I always will.”
It’s the first time a vice president has challenged the president he served under since 1940.
Pence, who steadfastly stood by Trump until those final days of his presidency, took care to tout the legacy of the “Trump-Pence administration” while also positioning himself as a true champion of conservative values, promising a hawkish foreign policy, an overhaul of Social Security and Medicare, and a staunch opposition to legal abortion — something he says Trump and other GOP contenders have shied away from.
“When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. Together we did just that. Today, he makes no such promise,” Pence said. “After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn.”
“The sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for a half a century, long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v. Wade,” he continued, pledging to not stop until abortion is banned in every state in the country.
Pence said he kicked off his campaign in Iowa, whose caucuses next January will be the first Republican primary contest, because “we know the next Republican nominee for president and the next president of the United States will get their start right here in the Hawkeye State.”
On the surface, the former governor and congressman from nearby Indiana — his older brother, Rep. Greg Pence, said “the Pence family is from southern Indiana so I’m real comfortable with the corn here in Iowa” in his introductory remarks — is a good fit for Iowa. The goal is to gain support in the state over the next seven months and pick up momentum by finishing on or near the top of the pack.
He has already visited the state more than a dozen times since leaving office, according to the Associated Press, including last week when he wore a leather vest and a helmet and hopped aboard a Harley Davidson at Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s annual “Roast and Ride” rally.
The deeply religious politician described himself as a “Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order” on Wednesday. In 2016, the last time there was an open Republican contest in Iowa, 64% of caucus goers identified as born-again or evangelical Christians.
But Pence’s poll numbers among Iowa Republicans have been dropping since he left office in 2021. In June 2020, according to the highly respected Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, 86% of Republican Iowans viewed Pence favorably. In March of this year, his favorables in that same poll dropped to 66% among Republicans and 58% of evangelicals.
Nationally, the picture is even starker. According to the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Pence is running in a distant third at 5.4%, far behind the race’s frontrunners in Trump (54.7%) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (21.3%). According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, Pence is starting from the worst polling position of any sitting and former vice president running for president in the last 50 years.
In one national poll released last month by CNN, 45% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they would not support Pence under any circumstances.
And while Pence’s fiscal conservatism may have been more popular among his party’s voters in a different era, his proposals for “commonsense and compassionate reforms” to Social Security and Medicare are unlikely to get the base fired up and may even draw their ire.
When the Wall Street Journal polled Republican primary voters in April, 49% said they would be more likely to vote for “a candidate who would preserve Social Security and Medicare in their current form,” compared to 23% who would support reforms including cuts to benefits and raises to the retirement age.
Trump and DeSantis are not Pence’s only rivals, though Trump was the only other Republican he mentioned by name in his remarks. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum joined the race earlier Wednesday and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie jumped in on Tuesday. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a former governor, and fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott are also running, as are former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a self-described nationalist.
Ultimately, Pence is in the race to defeat President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee who Pence said “weakened America at home and abroad” in concert with the “radical left.”
“The crises we face, to borrow a phrase, are all man-made. And that man is Joe Biden,” Pence said. “So the first step to turning America around is ending this disastrous presidency. So here in Iowa we must resolve that Joe Biden will never be reelected as president of the United States.”