Mike Pence, Trump's vice president, finalizes his candidacy for president

Former Vice President Mike Pence in Des Moines, Iowa, last week. Only Italy and SpainAssociated Press/LaPresse (APN)

The Republican Party primaries are lively. After the bumpy entrances of Florida Governor Ron de Santis and Senator Tim Scott last week, several more candidates are preparing to take the plunge. Among them is Mike Pence, who was vice president under Donald Trump. Pence, who faced his boss in the last stretch of the presidency by certifying Joe Biden's victory, will take the step on Wednesday, June 7 with an event in Des Moines (Iowa). On Tuesday 6, Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey and prominent anti-Trumpist, is scheduled to enter the race.

The main beneficiary of the avalanche of candidates willing to challenge Donald Trump may end up being the former president himself. The fact that many take the step shows that they do not see him in such a strong position as the polls suggest. At the same time, the division of the vote between different alternatives may end up ensuring his victory.

In addition to Ron DeSantis and the only black Republican senator, Tim Scott; Also entering the Republican primary race are former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison; the billionaire entrepreneur of the world of biotechnology and scourge of the woke ideology Vivek Ramaswamy; former U.S. ambassador to the UN and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley; businessman Perry Johnson; political commentator Larry Elder, and politician and businessman Rollan Roberts, son of the West Virginia senator of the same name. Pence and Christie are now added to the list. Other names sound like, some as probable, others more speculative, such as the governors of North Dakota, Doug Burgum; from New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, and from Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, among others.

Primary rules in many states state that the winner takes all the delegates. Even where Trumpists are not a majority among Republican primary voters, it will be difficult for all the dissenting vote to be concentrated in a single candidate. In any case, the experience of previous primaries shows that many of the candidates throw in the towel at the first change if they do badly.

Mike Pence is scheduled for a prime-time interview with CNN next Wednesday. The news channel's announcements do not say so openly, but suggest that it is an interview on the occasion of the presentation of his candidacy. The format, with public attendance, will be similar to that of the controversial interview with Donald Trump a few weeks ago and will be broadcast live from Iowa, the first state where Republican voters express their preferences in the primary race.

It has been another rival network, NBC, which has advanced that that day Pence will make his candidacy official with the broadcast of a video and with an electoral act in Des Moines, the capital and most populous city of the State, with about 210,000 inhabitants.

The former vice president, a traditional conservative, has a complicated position in the Republican Party, where he became one of the characters most hated by the staunchest followers of Donald Trump for his refusal to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election, in which the former president had lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Pence witnessed first-row the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He refused to heed Trump's request to halt the certification of Biden's victory in Congress on Jan. 6. That refusal earned him the wrath of his former boss and his followers. The mob chanted "let's hang Mike Pence" as it forced its way into the Capitol. Later videos showed how he lived those hours of tension, in the company at times of the then speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

For what happened those days, Pence has had to testify before a grand jury investigating Trump. He filed an appeal to prevent it, but lost. However, Pence managed to avoid declaring specifically about his actions on January 6, 2021, the date of the storming of the Capitol. He alleged that on January 6 he was exercising his role as president of the Senate and that forcing him to testify violated the so-called "expression or debate clause" that protects congressmen from accounting for their parliamentary actions.

An enemy of Trump

The other candidate who will take the step next week is former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who also ran in 2016. He plans to present his candidacy at a public event Tuesday night at Saint Anselm College's New Hampshire Institute of Politics, according to Axios. Several Christie advisers have set up a political action committee to support his candidacy.

Christie, a former federal prosecutor, was a longtime friend and adviser to Trump but broke with him over his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. Since then, Christie has emerged as one of the main critics of the former president and is presented to the primaries willing to openly confront him, unlike other candidates who keep a balance so as not to anger their voters. Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential race a day after placing sixth in the New Hampshire primary. At the moment it barely appears in the polls this year either.

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