Pence support for election deniers raises question of where GOP stands on 2020 lies
As he lines up a possible bid for the White House in 2024, former Vice President Mike Pence is campaigning with the strangest of political bedfellows, throwing his name and his money behind candidates who supported the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that put the Indiana Republican’s life in danger.
On Wednesday, Pence raised money for a former aide now running for Indiana’s secretary of state, who called the 2020 election a “scam.” On Thursday, Pence will headline a fundraiser for one of the fake electors enlisted by Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia. And Pence has recently given his endorsement to top Republican candidates in New Hampshire and Arizona, despite their prior support for Trump’s 2020 election lie.
To Pence’s critics, the former vice president is stunningly craven to flirt with an issue that almost got him killed on Jan. 6. But to his supporters, the longtime Republican is deftly navigating the reality of the current Republican Party, split between multiple factions, and keeping the party from going completely off the rails.
Asked by CBS News earlier in October if Pence was supporting candidates “who denied the 2020 election results,” longtime Pence adviser Marc Short replied, “I guess that depends on your definition of denying the election results.”
“If you look to his letter to the American people back on Jan. 6, what he wrote is to say that it is Congress’s right to object, that is what the Electoral Count Act provided for,” Short said. “So again there have been Republican and Democrat objections to the last four elections, and he believes that was their right, even if he doesn’t agree with them on that particular vote.”
The fraught political dynamic for Pence, which includes a potential run against Trump himself, comes into stark relief again on Thursday as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol holds what is likely to be its final hearing.
Pence’s top aides and advisers, including Short, provided House investigators many of their most stunning findings in the historic probe. But Pence, despite teasing a possible interview with the panel, looks likely to avoid providing any information himself.