Two Republicans made their presidential primary campaigns official on Wednesday, and while one is a much bigger name than the other, chances are their polling numbers won’t be too different.
The only surprise about Mike Pence officially launching his presidential campaign is that he hadn’t already done it. (Raise your hand if you thought he had.) On the other hand, there’s North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, whose entry into the race merits a giant, “Who?”
Pence faces a real messaging challenge as he attempts to win the primary of a party whose base tried to kill him. Fine—it wasn’t the entire Republican base in the halls of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” But that remains a poor sign of how he’ll be accepted by voters who, according to a September 2022 poll, continue to deny the validity of the 2020 election.
Pence seems to believe he can have it both ways: that he can draft off of Trump’s popularity among Republicans and use his time as Trump’s vice president to present himself as a major national figure and serious statesman, but also gloss right over those four years. In his launch video, Pence opens with a cliched patriotic montage—rippling flags, a fierce-looking bald eagle—and his voiceover saying: “The land of opportunity. Beacon of democracy. The shining city on a hill. Land of the free, home of the brave. The United States of America.” Then it’s on to himself. “As a son of the heartland, grandson of an Irish immigrant, those aren't just words. My family has lived the American dream. I had the great honor to serve in Congress, as governor, and as your vice president, and I’ll always be proud of the progress we made together for a stronger, more prosperous America. But today our country is in a lot of trouble.”
The progress we made together, Mike? Who’s the “we” here?
He really doesn’t want to say it, and in his own carefully edited video, he doesn’t have to. The video moves directly on to an attack on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—though refusing to even name the latter, instead showing an image of her while Pence names “the radical left” as a threat to the nation.
After the attack section in which Politico Playbook identifies some very misleading material, Pence turns to his pitch, one that tries to do double duty to establish him against Biden on the surface but equally if not more so against Trump. “We’re better than this,” he says over an image of Biden. “We can turn this country around, but different times call for different leadership. Today our party and our country need a leader who will appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.” There’s no image of Trump, no direct mention of him, but that’s Pence’s primary pitch: We need a better leader.
Similarly, Axios reporter Alex Thompson flags Pence’s campaign biography, which goes on at length through his youth, his college years, his time in Congress, and devotes two fulsome paragraphs to his time as Indiana governor, then dispenses with his time under Trump in a terse two sentences. Pence’s career since leaving office—cooling his heels as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the “Ronald Reagan Presidential Scholar” at the Young America’s Foundation—also gets more play than four years spent a heartbeat away from the presidency. Pence simultaneously tries to present himself as an important part of a great time in America's history and also to erase exactly how he got there and who was in charge.
Wednesday was the official launch, but Pence has been testing this basic approach for months now and it doesn’t seem like it’s working. He is currently sitting in third place in polls of the Republican primary, but saying “third place” makes his position sound better than it is. The polls show Donald Trump, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 20 points behind. Pence is roughly 15 more points behind DeSantis, at 5.4%. Pence’s low standing means it’s not hard for other candidates to be uncomfortably close behind him, like former South Carolina governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who’s less than 1 point back. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Some Dude of the Republican presidential primary, is just 2 points behind Pence, followed by Sen. Tim Scott and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. In this case, third place is just leader of the stragglers.
As for Burgum, he touts his business career in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, framing it as an economic qualification. Despite that establishment Republican self-presentation, he has also governed North Dakota in the current Republican culture war mode, signing a harsh abortion ban and restrictions on trans health care. He is presumably running for a Cabinet position in a future Republican administration, or maybe vice president if he gets lucky. But who knows: If Vivek Ramaswamy can poll ahead of a high-profile U.S. senator and just 2 points behind Pence, maybe Burgum will have his day in fifth or even fourth place, within a couple points of a former vice president … and 45 or so points behind the leader.