Mike Wolanin | The Republic Former Vice President Mike Pence talks with John and Barb Hackman during the Bartholomew County GOP election results watch party at Factory 12 Event Loft in Columbus on Nov. 8, 2022.
Experts and local residents say that former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to end his White House bid this past weekend underscored the delicate narrow route that the Columbus native had to chart in a race that continues to be dominated by his former boss-turned-rival, Donald Trump.
On Saturday, Pence, a 1977 graduate of Columbus North High School, dropped his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, ending his campaign for the White House after struggling to raise money and gain traction in the polls, The Associated Press reported.
Even though Pence made the announcement in Las Vegas on Saturday, experts say the die was largely cast during the final days of the Trump administration, which ended with an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and Pence fleeing for his life during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, with some rioters who stormed the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”
Pence had defied Trump’s repeated attempts to pressure him to use power he did not have to decertify Electoral College votes during the session. Trump had falsely claimed that Pence, who had presided over the joint session, had unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted.
While Pence averted a constitutional crisis by rejecting Trump’s attempts, he drew the wrath of the former president and his supporters, suddenly being cast as a traitor after four years of being the former president’s loyal defender.
At the same time, Pence also was seen by Trump critics as an enabler who defended the former president at every turn and refused to criticize even Trump’s most indefensible actions, according to wire reports.
“Fans of Donald Trump will never forgive (Pence) for what he did on Jan. 6,” Leslie Lenkowsky, professor emeritus at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs who has known Pence since the 1990s. “And on the other hand, more moderate Republicans would still be skeptical because he was such a loyal vice president to Donald Trump. He had to chart a very difficult course, and so it doesn’t surprise me that it just didn’t work out.”
Pence tried to thread what often seemed like an impossibly fine needle, according to wire reports. He ran on the record of what he fondly referred to as the Trump-Pence administration while also criticizing his former boss. He accused Trump of abandoning conservative principles on issues such as abortion and of putting himself above the Constitution to stay in power. During his campaign launch event, Pence addressed Jan. 6 head-on, defending his actions and saying Trump disqualified himself during that period.
“Anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” Pence said during the launch event.
Pence spent much of his campaign advocating traditional conservative policies, including more U.S. support for Ukraine, even as those ideas have fallen out of favor in a Republican Party increasingly aligned with Trump’s populist and isolationist leanings, according to wire reports.
“Mike is a small ‘c’ conservative,” Lenkowski told The Republic. “He is trying to conserve the values of the party … he grew up in, but which may no longer be the values and positions of the party.”
Pence’s campaign never resonated with Republican primary voters, with the former vice president consistently polling in the single digits. The day before suspending his campaign, Pence was polling at 3.5%, according to an average of polls by RealClearPolitics.
At the same time, Pence’s favorability among Republicans has plummeted since early last year, according to data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight, which compiled an average of nationwide polls.
In January 2022, two-thirds of Republicans viewed Pence favorably, but by the time Pence ended his campaign, slightly more Republicans were viewing him unfavorably than favorably, according to FiveThirtyEight.
In the meantime, Trump maintained his dominance in the polling even as his legal troubles mounted this year and now faces 91 felony charges in four criminal cases, including cases in Georgia and Washington, D.C., related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
As of this month, about 78.6% of Republicans view Trump favorably, compared to 81.2% in February 2021, just a few weeks after the Capitol attack, according to FiveThirtyEight.
“Ultimately, I think that Pence ran into two big problems,” said Aaron Dusso, associate professor of political science and department chair at IUPUI. “It starts from his unwillingness to go along with the Trump campaign’s plan to not certify the 2020 presidential election. In doing so, he alienated a lot of Trump’s supporters. … But that doesn’t ultimately seal his fate. I think his biggest problem comes when he runs for office in 2024 in the Republican primary, he is also facing the president that he was vice president for.
“There didn’t seem to be a place for him to go and certainly no place for him to rely on his history and experience as vice president to draw on to gain support,” Dusso added.
Additionally, Pence was struggling to attract donors nationwide and ended September with just $1.18 million left in his campaign account, a strikingly low number for a presidential contest and far less than his rivals, according to wire reports.
His campaign also reported $621,000 in debt — more than half the cash he had remaining — and was scrambling to meet donor thresholds for the Nov. 8 debate.
Local support strong
While Pence struggled to attract donors nationwide, that was not the case in Columbus, where he had received far more financial backing than any other presidential candidate, including Trump.
As of the end of September, Pence’s campaign reported $42,210 in contributions from local residents since June, according to the Federal Election Commission. By comparison, Trump’s campaign reported raising $7,250 in Bartholomew County since January.
Pence also was on pace to raise more money in Columbus than several previous GOP presidential contenders, even when adjusting for inflation. Mitt Romney raised a total of $46,842 ($63,606 in today’s dollars) in Columbus during his 2012 presidential bid, while John McCain raised $45,309 ($66,067 in today’s dollars) in 2008.
Additionally, campaign finance records suggest that Pence’s decision to become Trump’s running mate in 2016 injected significant enthusiasm into the Trump’s White House bid among local donors.
Before Trump selected Pence to be his running mate in 2016, Trump reported raising $1,270 from Columbus residents over a 13-month period, federal records show. Within 45 days after Pence joined the ticket, Columbus residents had poured $104,739 into Trump’s campaign coffers, including a $100,000 contribution from local businessman Tony Moravec.
During the 2020 campaign, the Trump-Pence ticket raised $255,195 from Columbus residents, though 71% of that came after most networks, including Fox News, called the race in favor of Biden and Trump was touting false claims of widespread election fraud.
Locally, some Republicans were sad to hear the news that Pence was dropping out of the race, said former Bartholomew County Republican Party Chair Barb Hackman, a longtime Pence supporter who traveled to Iowa this past June to attend the launch of his presidential campaign.
“It’s unfortunate that Jan. 6 hurt him,” Hackman said. “I think he did the right thing. A lot of people do. But Trump still has such a strong backing and support that I think (Pence’s actions) probably helped in some ways but hurt him in other ways in getting those supporters.”
“In Bartholomew County, I think he had strong support,” Hackman added. “… But there is still a lot of people that are very strong Trump supporters as well. Unfortunately, that probably hurt him, but in talking to a lot of my friends, they feel pretty much the same way I do. They’re really sad.”
Throughout his campaign, Pence had insisted that while he was well-known by voters, he was not “known well” and set out to change that with an aggressive schedule that included numerous stops at diners and Pizza Ranch restaurants, according to the AP.
Pence had been betting on Iowa, a state with a large white Evangelical population that has a long history of elevating religious and socially conservative candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum, according to wire reports. But he still struggled to gain traction.
Though Pence has ended his presidential run, experts say it may not be the last time that the former vice president runs for office or is involved in politics. Pence, 64, is 16 years younger than President Joe Biden and 13 years younger than Trump.
But at the same time, it’s hard to say how the Republican base will evolve in the coming years and how the events of Jan. 6, 2021, will be viewed by GOP voters in the future, experts said.
“I don’t think it forecloses a political future for him,” Dusso said.
