Mike Pence, former Governor of Indiana and former Vice President yesterday filed paperwork setting-up a campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination for President.
ABC News reported Mr. Pence, the nation’s 48th vice president, will formally launch his bid for the Republican nomination with a video and kickoff event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, which is his 64th birthday, according to people familiar with his plans.
While the establishment media has focused on the incongruities in a match-up between former President Trump and his Vice President, movement conservatives see a known quantity and an old friend entering the race.
The establishment media and Trump-focused social media accounts seem to forget why Mike Pence was chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate, and it wasn’t because he would be a reliable yes-man for the domineering Mr. Trump.
Mike Pence was chosen to reassure three of the four legs of the old Reagan coalition: cultural conservatives, economic conservatives and national defense conservatives, that their voices would be heard in a populist-oriented Trump administration that was prepared to question and later abandon many of the policies, ideas and individuals who had defined Republican politics for a generation.
In the Republican primary field, as it stands today, Mike Pence is the only traditional, Reagan-style conservative in the race.
Mr. Pence has long described himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” has, according to ABC News reporting, spent months laying the groundwork for his expected run, holding events in early voting states like Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, visiting churches, delivering policy speeches and courting donors.
According to Associated Press reports, Pence’s team sees Iowa and its evangelical Christian voters as critical to his potential path to victory. Advisers say he plans to campaign aggressively in the state, hitting every one of its 99 counties before its first-in-the-nation caucuses next year.
The campaign is expected to lean heavily on town halls and retail stops aimed at reintroducing Pence to voters who only know him from his time as Trump’s second-in-command. Pence served for more than a decade in Congress and as Indiana’s governor before he was tapped as Trump’s running mate in 2016.
The former Vice President starts the campaign with a strong team behind him, he is backed by a super PAC, Committed to America, which launched in mid-May and is co-chaired by former Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and veteran GOP consultant Scott Reed. The group’s executive director is Bobby Saparow, who managed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) successful reelection campaign in 2022.
The Hill’s Brett Samuels observed Pence has built strong relationships over the years with evangelical voters, speaking frequently about his faith and issues that resonate with that bloc such as abortion, school choice and religious freedom.
Mr. Samuels reports the former vice president and his team are banking heavily on a strong showing in the Hawkeye State to boost him into the top tier of GOP primary contenders. Pence is well known in Iowa, having visited the state roughly a dozen times in the past year, including as recently as Saturday when he attended Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) “Roast and Ride” event.
While Mike Pence is a known and trusted quantity among cultural conservatives his biggest challenge in the primary will be from Trump loyalists, many of whom still blame him for failing to heed Trump’s demands to use an untested reading of the Constitution to send contested slates of Electors back to state legislatures for investigation and certification.
2024 Republican presidential field
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Committed to America PAC