Mike Pence

• Born: June 7, 1959
• Place of Birth: Columbus, Indiana

Born: June 7, 1959

Place of birth: Columbus, Indiana

Mike Pence became the forty-eighth vice president of the United States in January 2017. Previously, he represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives for six terms between 2000 and 2013 and was governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chose Pence as his running mate for the 2016 presidential election, bringing to his campaign Pence's knowledge of policy, experience in government, and allies in the Republican establishment. Pence was known as a deeply religious social conservative and a supporter of controversial religious freedom and abortion laws. For the majority of his tenure as vice president, he remained highly loyal to Trump even as the president and his administration drew intense controversy. Pence and Trump lost their reelection bid in 2020.

Background

Mike Pence was born in Columbus, Indiana, in 1959. Pence, like his family members, was a Democrat early in his adult life, and he voted for Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election. In college, a fraternity brother inspired him to become an evangelical Christian, and as a result he broke from the Democratic Party.

After spending numerous years in his law practice, Pence began his political career by running for Congress in 1988 and 1990. He was defeated when financial records showed he allegedly used campaign funds to pay for personal expenses. He drew criticism for airing a commercial showing a person of apparent Arabic descent dressed in stereotypical garb. After the incident, he swore off negative campaigning. He went on to act as the president of a conservative think tank, the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. In addition, he hosted a radio show called The Mike Pence Show, which broadcast his views on many issues to voters across Indiana.

House Seat and Governorship

In 2000, Pence was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and gained a reputation as an independent thinker and strong social conservative. In his twelve years in Congress, he focused on limiting the role of the government. He introduced ninety bills and resolutions, but none were ultimately passed and made into law. In 2009, he was elected to a high-ranking position as the chairman of the House Republican Conference. He also served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he was known as a stalwart supporter of Israel.

In 2012, Pence was elected governor of Indiana. During his tenure, he focused on issues such as tax reform and access to education while also taking a conservative stance on social issues. He opposed funding for embryonic stem cell research, promoted religious freedoms seemingly at the expense of LGBTQ rights, and supported one of the most restrictive antiabortion laws in the nation. In 2015, Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that sought to ban local governments from intervening when businesses turned away customers for religious reasons. The LGBTQ community strongly opposed Pence for the potential discrimination it would allow. Pence claimed the bill was an attempt to stop government overreach. After facing backlash through boycotts, protests, and petitions, he signed a new bill touted as not discriminatory.

Pence endorsed Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, calling him a "strong man" who could address the frustrations of the American people. Trump ultimately chose Pence as his running mate in July 2016. Together, they accomplished an upset victory against Democrat Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine to win the election in November.

Vice Presidency

In the months following his election and inauguration as vice president, Pence received considerable media attention. He assisted in the cleanup of a Jewish cemetery in Missouri after 150 gravestones were vandalized. He appeared at the yearly March for Life Rally in Washington, D.C. He spoke at the Munich Security Conference to urge North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members to increase their defense spending. Notably, Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. He would later act as the tiebreaker in several other Senate votes.

In March 2017, the Indianapolis Star reported that Pence had used a private email account to discuss sensitive state matters when he was governor of Indiana and that the account had been hacked. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he had criticized Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Another controversy arose when National Security Adviser Michael Flynn failed to disclose information to Pence about a meeting with the Russian ambassador. Under political pressure, Trump asked for Flynn's resignation.

Pence remained a staunch supporter of Trump even as the president drew criticism for his inflammatory and often false or misleading statements. He continued to be involved in high-profile partisan issues, such as joining Trump in criticizing National Football League (NFL) players who protested during the performance of the national anthem at games. Pence also led the presidential delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. He played a role in the Trump administration's negotiations with North Korea later that year. Pence was the first-ever vice president to form his own political action committee (PAC) while in office. In November 2018, Trump confirmed that Pence would again be his running mate for the 2020 election. The Trump-Pence reelection campaign formally kicked off at a rally in June 2019.

For much of his political career, Pence had earned a reputation for being amiable and treating people with respect regardless of their political views. He forged several strong relationships with Democratic figures despite his deeply conservative outlook. However, under the national spotlight as vice president, some opponents and political observers publicly questioned whether Pence's reputation for kindness was largely a political strategy. In particular, critics characterized his record of vigorously opposing LGBTQ rights and his support of the Trump administration's detention of migrants. These actions placed him at odds with his public image. Pence's supporters contested this characterization.

Throughout Pence's vice presidency, political analysts continued to assess his broader ambitions. He was widely considered to represent an older branch of the Republican Party, chosen by the unconventional Trump to win over traditional conservatives and the religious right. He also was deferential to Trump, supporting the president on virtually every issue. Pence typically stayed in the background, avoiding the headlines that Trump often dominated.

When House Democrats opened a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump's actions in September 2019, it brought some renewed attention to Pence, who would become president if Trump were impeached and convicted in the Senate. Pence himself was also a subject of interest in the Trump-Ukraine scandal that generated the impeachment inquiry. Information emerged that the vice president was closely involved in diplomatic exchanges with the Ukraine government. This was during an episode where the Trump administration pressured the country into investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden by delaying military aid. Pence claimed his interactions with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky were not related to Biden and defended the administration's actions.

Pence joined other Republicans in disparaging House Democrats' official vote to impeach Trump in December 2019. Pence continued this line of support for Trump through the Senate impeachment trial in January–February 2020. Trump was acquitted on both the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Other prominent instances where Pence voiced his strong support for Trump included the U.S. assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and critiques of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi during Trump's 2020 State of the Union address.

In February 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading worldwide, Trump announced Pence as the leader of the White House Task Force directing crisis response. However, Pence's role largely took a backseat to Trump's efforts to downplay the virus, even as the U.S. infection rate skyrocketed and the economy turned sharply downward. Pence also drew criticism from health experts for appearing in public and on hospital visits without a face mask. This was recommended as a key means of slowing the spread of the disease. After Trump tested positive for COVID-19 in early October 2020, Pence announced he had tested negative.

Pence and Trump ramped up their reelection campaign throughout 2020, notably attempting to cast doubt on the legitimacy of mail-in voting, which many states expanded as a COVID-19 precaution. They also frequently attacked Democratic nominee Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, seeking to cast them as radical and corrupt. Pence debated Harris on October 7, defending the administration's COVID-19 response and claiming Trump would handle the U.S. economy better than Biden. He was also the subject of viral media attention when a fly landed on his head during the debate, remaining there for about two minutes.

In November 2020, Pence and Trump ultimately lost their reelection bid, losing the popular vote by over 7 million votes and the Electoral College by 306-232. Ironically, this was Trump's same margin of victory in the electoral college in 2016. While Trump refused to concede and challenged the results, Pence remained relatively quiet in the election's immediate aftermath. Trump tried to convince Pence to reject the Electoral College results and block congressional verification of the election. Pence supported championing election integrity but argued that his constitutional powers as vice president did not permit such action and would go against the system of checks and balances.

The joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, seeking to ratify the election results, was interrupted by rioters who overwhelmed the police force guarding the U.S. Capitol Building. Trump supporters stormed and broke into the Capitol building where the proceedings were taking place. Earlier in the morning, Trump had publically suggested that Pence was authorized to halt the Electoral College proceedings. Furthermore, Trump assailed Pence in front of a crowd of thousands of supporters for not having the courage to stop the event, one that has historically been considered ceremonial. As rioters breached the Capitol Building, many issued chants threatening the life of Pence. The vice-president was whisked away from the Capitol Building by U.S. Secret Service agents, but not before coming in close proximity to the rioters. Pence condemned the attack and presided over the session, which continued later that evening. He formally announced the election of Biden after the completion of the Electoral College vote counts. Because of his role in instigating the take-over of the Capitol Building, an event attributed to the deaths of multiple people, Trump was again impeached in the final days of his presidency.

The January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill violence broke Pence's relationship with Trump. While Trump ignored presidential tradition and did not attend President Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2021. Pence was in attendance and later returned to Indiana.

In Pence's time away from Washington D.C., questions circulated whether he would run for the presidency in 2024. In April 2021, Pence established Advancing American Freedom, a new conservative political advocacy group, and took a position as the group's chairman. Meanwhile, he also continued engagements as a public speaker, including an appearance at a July summit in Iowa, an early-voting state. Pence took the occasion to voice heavy criticism of the Biden administration.

In August of 2022, a scandal developed concerning Trump's retention of hundreds of pages of Top-Secret classified documents. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided Trump's Florida Mar-A-Lago residence to recover boxes of classified documents. These had been improperly retained by Trump after he left the White House and had been stored without protection. Trump had also previously ignored requests from the U.S. National Archives for their return. In early 2023, media reports emerged that President Biden and former Vice-President Pence were also found to have retained classified documents from their previous time in office. Pence, cooperating fully in turning the documents over for review by the proper authorities, allowed the FBI to conduct a search of his home in February 2023. Agents allegedly found one additional document marked classified. The Justice Department's special counsel tasked with investigating Trump's actions following his election loss issued a subpoena to Pence. Investigators later concluded that, unlike the later criminal charges levied against Trump, neither Biden nor Pence had willfully mishandled the documents, sought their retention, or interfered with investigators. As of the summer of 2024, only Trump was under criminal prosecution for mishandling classified information, although U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had largely halted his trial.

In June 2023 Pence launched a bid for the Republican nomination for president. In October 2023, scant support resulted in Pence suspending his campaign.

Personal Life

Pence married his wife Karen in 1985, and the couple had three children together. He earned attention for reportedly avoiding being alone with women other than his wife, a practice known as the "Billy Graham rule" in reference to the famous evangelical leader. Well known for his strong religious convictions, Pence identified as a Christian above all else and expressed support for controversial beliefs such as intelligent design.

Bibliography

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