Mike Pence, a former vice president, officially began his presidential campaign on Monday by submitting paperwork to the Federal Election Commission.
The filing kicks off Pence’s eagerly anticipated 2024 campaign, which will place him in the middle of a crowded GOP primary field that also includes former president Donald Trump, who Pence served under, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is widely regarded as Trump’s most serious Republican rival.
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, and others are also running.
Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, and Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, are also expected to start their campaigns this week. However, Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, said on Monday that he won’t run for president after saying for months that he was thinking about it.
Pence has been hinting for a long time that he might run for president in 2024. He has been traveling to early primary states and friends have set up a super PAC that will likely help his campaign get off the ground.
On Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa, Pence will have the official start of his campaign. Later that night, he will take part in a CNN town hall.
In regional and national polls, the former vice president has yet to get more than 10% of the vote.
Pence is expected to have a strong campaign presence in Iowa, where his strict social policies and religious appeals could win over the state’s powerful evangelical voters. He is also from Indiana, which is close by.
Throughout their four years in the White House, Pence remained largely loyal to Trump. However, the two fell out after the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising, when Trump pushed his No. 2 to use his ceremonial position supervising the certification of the Electoral College results to overturn their defeat.
Since then, Pence has made comments to the effect of “there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president” and intimated that he thinks the party is prepared to move past Trump’s bombast and return to a party more defined by Ronald Reagan’s era ideals.
He said last weekend in Iowa, “I think we need to resist the politics of personality and the allure of populism in favor of more timeless conservative principles, and we need to stand firm on the conservative agenda of life and liberty and a commitment to freedom, which has always led us to victory.”
