United States: Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president, runs as a candidate and the Republican internal lights up

The race for the White House for next year reheats with the entry of former Vice President Mike Pence as a candidate in the Republican internal, where they will undoubtedly star in heated duels with his former boss, Donald Trump, who considers him a "traitor". The arrival of this ultraconservative to the race puts even more spice the campaign of the opposition that seeks to displace Joe Biden.

Pence presented on Monday the papers to the US electoral authority to compete in the internal Republican Party that today dominates Trump by far, followed by Florida Governor Ron de Santis and further away by former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.

Pence had already let it be known that he would run, but only now has it become official: he will now have to overcome Trump's strength within the Republican electorate and convince voters that he is a better option than the man with whom he governed for four years before their relationship fractured after the 2020 election.

Pence, a man with little charisma and often described as "gray", enters the race with some very strong scrolls within the Republican world. Beyond serving as Trump's vice president, he was previously a congressman and governor of Indiana.

Trump VS Pence, in the race for the White House. AP Photo

Surveys

His team believes Pence's profuse conservative and religious record will be vital to capturing an electorate that focuses more on issues rather than the candidate's charisma.

For now, Pence trails Trump and DeSantis in national polls of Republican voters, and in some cases is below Haley, who entered the race in February. However, the primary elections are still a long way off, experts agree, and everything can change.

In addition, a CNN poll in late May found that 54 percent of respondents said they support or would consider supporting Pence.

Pence's biggest challenge as a candidate will undoubtedly be to confront his former boss but at the same time seek support among voters who follow the tycoon. One fact: Trump and Pence haven't spoken in about two years.

Pence's relationship with Trump broke down after the 2020 election.

Mike Pence is distancing himself from Donald Trump. AFP Photo

While the tycoon advocated that there was fraud against him, the vice president stayed out of that dispute, but at the time that corresponded to him for his position he sought to endorse the result.

The total rupture was on January 6, 2021, when a crowd of Trumpistas stormed Congress while lawmakers, led by Pence, tried to certify Biden's victory in the elections.

Video of the attack on the Capitol that day showed some of the violent chanting "Hang Mike Pence," and Trump said at the time that Pence did not have the "courage" to act.

Pence called Jan. 6 a "dark day" for U.S. democracy, expressed frustration that Trump's rhetoric endangered his family, and repeatedly claimed the vice president did not have the constitutional right to single-handedly overturn the election result as Trump had claimed.

Pence testified in late April before a grand jury examining Trump's attempts to stay in power.

Clear positions on controversial issues

Pence is a strongly conservative and religious man. It is known in Washington, for example, that he does not attend any work cocktail without his wife. He has built strong relationships over the years with evangelical voters, with whom he frequently speaks about their faith and issues that resonate with that bloc, such as abortion, school choice and religious freedom.

The former vice president has clear positions on controversial issues that other candidates have largely avoided. For example, Pence has said he supports states passing more restrictive laws limiting access to abortion, and that mifepristone, the most commonly used abortion pill that is the subject of a court battle, should be taken off the market.

He also said he would support legislation at the federal level that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Other candidates, notably Trump and Haley, have yet to establish whether they support some sort of federal abortion ban.

Pence also breaks with others in the party over Social Security and Medicare, two benefits he said need "commonsense reforms" to remain solvent and accessible to future generations, a subtle way to call for cuts in those areas.

The vice president's rhetoric on the issue breaks hard with Trump in particular, who has called on Republicans to leave Social Security and Medicare intact in upcoming budget talks.

And Pence has been an outspoken defender of U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia at a time when Trump, DeSantis and others in the party have suggested it's not in America's interest to provide aid to Ukrainians.

The Democratic National Committee was quick to react to the former vice president's announcement. "Pence pushed an extreme agenda in Congress and the Indiana state house before becoming Donald Trump's MAGA partner for four years and then campaigning for election deniers last year," Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

"He now promises to take the Trump-Pence agenda even further, leading the charge for a national abortion ban, cutting Medicare and ending Social Security as we know it."

Washington, correspondent

ap

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