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When former Vice President Mike Pence walked up last week to the storied Concord, New Hampshire, office where presidential candidates file paperwork to appear on the ballot, cameras clicked, reporters shuffled after him and he smiled.
No one cheered.
One family who was standing in the hallway had filled in behind him, and when he saw the children holding American flags, he remarked: “You really draw a crowd.”
But the few New Hampshire voters who turned out for the former vice president were far outnumbered by the news media.
Four months after launching his campaign with an embrace of traditional conservatism and a rejection of his former running mate Donald Trump, Pence, who once sat a heartbeat away from the presidency, now stands at a difficult crossroads. Plagued by financial problems, low polling numbers and a message that hasn’t resonated with the party base, the former Indiana governor has been forced to confront tough realities this fall about the future of his campaign.
At the New Hampshire State House, Pence signed a declaration and handed over a $1,000 check, officially seeking to add himself to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary ballot. Pence told reporters he is a “small-town guy from Indiana” seeking the nation’s highest office and the best to lead his party. He took questions about his former running mate’s recent statements, his campaign’s troubled financial state and the chance he might not qualify for the third debate next month.
Pence warned that “it may be obvious in the days ahead that other campaigns have more money than ours.”
It was. Days later, his latest campaign finance filings showed he’d raised $3.3 million and spent almost the same amount in the third quarter of the year. His campaign also ran up a debt of $620,000, and Pence gave $150,000 of his money to the effort.
The Pence campaign has also made some cuts to staff, according to a person familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about a move that has not been announced publicly. Those changes come as Pence has consistently struggled to gain traction in recent months in both polling and fundraising.
The extent of the cuts was not immediately clear. Pence campaign spokesman Devin O’Malley declined to comment.
It’s not clear whether Pence will reach the threshold of 70,000 unique donors to qualify for the third debate, which will be in Miami on Nov. 8.
“It’s not about money, it’s about votes,” Pence told reporters in Concord.
Polling shows that votes for Pence are also in short supply.
Pence runs behind Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, according to most polls, trailing with a single-digit percentage support. All of the candidates have struggled to make up for Trump’s dominating lead. In New Hampshire, Pence polls at 2 percent, according to a recent CBS News/YouGov poll. His campaign is betting heavily on a strong performance in Iowa, where Pence is seeking to connect with evangelical voters who form a crucial voting bloc.
The day after the filing in New Hampshire, Pence spoke at the First in the Nation summit in Nashua, where every candidate but Trump had made their pitch. Pence, the last to speak, had smiled and shook hands with a few of the audience members as he walked through the main hall. But as he left, the event staff was already stacking chairs and attendees were bidding farewell, some not even registering that the former vice president was feet away with a small entourage in tow.
At small-scale events with few attendees compared with other candidates, Pence has sought to distance himself from his former running mate. While he says their administration helped business grow, protected the border and put money back in Americans’ pockets, he tells voters that he can provide the most conservative leadership for the party.
He has also hinted at the former president’s fixation on re-litigating the last election. And that message has appealed to some – to an extent.
Chris Clark, an Iowa caucus-goer at a Pence meet-and-greet this month, said he was considering the former vice president, but he said he liked DeSantis “a little bit more.” He had grown tired of Trump’s rhetoric claiming falsely his 2020 election was stolen, and DeSantis was a fresh face.
Pence has yet to make any noticeable progress in a party staunchly backing the former president, who has called him “delusional” and “not a very good person.” Trump mocked Pence’s low polling after Pence’s testimony was revealed in a federal indictment of Trump.
Pence rejected Trump’s pressure to try to reverse the election in 2020, certifying now-President Biden’s win after Trump supporters had stormed the Capitol, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
Pence has gone after other rivals at the debates, which Trump has skipped, and rebuked some of Trump’s recent comments. When Trump referred to Hezbollah as “very smart” and criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Hamas attacks, Pence called the words “incomprehensible” in a question-and-answer session with reporters in the Concord office.
After those comments, he thanked the news media and walked out the back door just as a crowd of supporters for Haley filled the empty hallway he had just walked in, the family he had just shook hands with among them, chanting “Nikki, Nikki, Nikki.”
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Come home, Mike. You’re done. Be a consultant. Be a news commentator. But its pretty clear you’re not going to be the President of the USA. Maybe Hanover can give you an emeritus chair, and you can teach a government class. Or McKinney Law School can find a place for you.
Come home. Eventually, and probably sooner than later, you’ll be the old guy in the back of the room or side of the stage, the one everyone laughs at behind his back while publicly showing respect (well, everyone except the bronze -dyed guy you used to work for). Come home while you still have some dignity left to your name.
Come home, rediscover the Mike Pence who was a Roman Catholic and moderate Democrat, and work for positive change, not for the foolishness that is today’s Republican Party.
Truly, the positive change we need from the “moderate Democrat” party is reflected in places with lots of “moderates” and all the glorious social ills that they, through their wisdom and general decency, have managed to eradicate. Look no further than the glory of the great American city. All of them. They’re doing just great.
The hayseeds in the backcountry, clinging to their G-d and g-ns, don’t know what they’re missing. I mean, they don’t know much of anything, but that’s besides the point.
The “hayseeds” certainly aren’t doing well Lauren. They’re poorer and more addicted to drugs than ever before. Don’t fool yourself into thinking rural America is doing any better than urban America. They’re actually doing worse. The problems in their communities are just ignored by the media because their local media outlets no longer exist.
I never said rural America is doing better Wesley.
But rural America doesn’t think itself intellectually, culturally, and morally superior.
Not sure if they’re doing worse. I mean, your home state of California is heavily urban and is an absolute cesspool. And, 90% of the time, your media backpedals for it. Other highly urban states like New York and Illinois are losing population.
As for “doing worse”, those hayseeds don’t seem to have the same kindness and tolerance for open drug use, opioid stupors on the ground, outbreaks of third-world diseases from all the trash and vermin, masturbation on mass transit, or breaking into parked cars in the street and sleeping in them. That’s pure urban America–mostly urban West Coast.
And while “body count” may mostly refer to sexual escapades among the young fashionable crowd these days, it still has some meaning in police records, despite the fact that the DAs largely exculpate criminal behavior in these lovely cities. But you can’t easily deny a dead body or a missing person. And virtually all homicides are still taking place in your habitat, Wesley, even when measured on a per capita basis.
As important as it is for your to smear rural America, the New York Slimes loves to go out to the backcountry, Dian Fossey-style, and capture how awful things are. Far easier to deflect from the problems piling up at their front doors. Open defecation on a sidewalk? Try THAT in a small town.
Lauren: I can’t help but wonder how so many stories in a local business journal lead you to such apocalyptic pronouncements about so many other places (other than they contain people not like yourself). Honestly, it’s like listening to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (complete with the repeated references to defecation). But his was only a character. Of course it was played by Robert De Niro, noted liberal, so I’m pretty sure this comment is going to trigger you all over again.
Lauren, your beliefs aren’t based in reality. I’m not going to respond to all that right-wing gibberish. I also didn’t smear rural America, I just pointed out it has as many problems as urban America. They also definitely view themselves as morally superior to “city folks”. Unlike you who spews nonsense about places you haven’t visited in over a decade (if ever), I actually spend some time visiting family in rural Indiana.
They constantly spend time talking about how my cousins and I live in liberal cesspools, and how they’re surprised we haven’t been robbed. They go on and on about how high our taxes are and how we should move back to Indiana where everything/everyone is better. How is that not acting morally and culturally superior? Your whole diatribe reeks of someone who views themselves and their beliefs as superior.
Mike Pense is a conflicted politician, at least when it comes to Donald Trump.
On one hand, he says Trump-Pence did some good things but on the other hand, he says Trump did that one bad thing. He obviously doesn’t want to alienate any Trump voters, not realizing that Trump voters will never ever vote for anyone not named Trump.
In the end, especially in a crowded primary field of candidates, Pence doesn’t stand out. He lacks a “unique sales proposition” (though neither does rest of the field, except for Trump who promises to be everyone’s “retribution”). Pence is left with little or nothing to show for his years in politics as congressman, governor, and vice president.
He has no place to go.
I just hope that numerous voters in the Republican party wake up soon and realize that Donald Trump can never win a national election again and they move on to someone who can. I’m just one of many Republicans who desperately hopes that we don’t have the same two choices for president that we did in 2020.