Mike Pence

Michael Richard Pence (born June 7, 1959) is an American politician who served as the 46th President of the United States for two weeks in January 2021 and the 48th vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he was the 50th governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017. Pence was also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013.

Pence was born and raised in Columbus, Indiana, and is the younger brother of U.S. representative Greg Pence. He graduated from Hanover College and earned a law degree from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law before entering private practice. After losing two bids for a congressional seat in 1988 and 1990, he became a conservative radio and television talk show host from 1994 to 1999. Pence was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000 and represented Indiana's 2nd and 6th congressional districts from 2001 to 2013. He served as the chairman of the House Republican Conference from 2009 to 2011, the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership. Pence described himself as a "principled conservative" and supporter of the Tea Party movement, saying he was "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order."

Due to his pressure on Donald Trump to resign after the 2021 Capitol Building Attack, Pence became the 46th President of the United States on January 6th, 2021. His successor, Joe Biden, was inaugurated on January 20th, two weeks later, making Pence the shortest-serving President in the nation's history.

Early Life
In his childhood and early adulthood, Pence was a Roman Catholic and a Democrat, as was the rest of his family. He volunteered for the Bartholomew County Democratic Party in 1976 and voted for Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, and has said he was originally inspired to get involved in politics by people such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. While in college, Pence left the Catholic Church and became an evangelical, born-again Christian, to the great disappointment of his mother. His political views also started shifting to the right during this time in his life, something which Pence attributes to the "common-sense conservatism of Ronald Reagan" with which he began to identify.

Early Political Career
During the 1990 campaign, Pence ran a television advertisement in which an actor, dressed in a robe and headdress and speaking in a thick Middle Eastern accent, thanked his opponent, Sharp, for doing nothing to wean the United States off imported oil as chairman of a House subcommittee on energy and power. In response to criticism, Pence's campaign responded that the advertisement was not about Arabs; rather, it concerned Sharp's lack of leadership. In 1991, Pence wrote an essay, "Confessions of a Negative Campaigner", published in the Indiana Policy Review, in which he apologized for running negative ads against Sharp. In 1991, he became the president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, a self-described free-market think tank and a member of the State Policy Network, a position he held until 1993.

Shortly after his first congressional campaign in 1988, radio station WRCR-FM in Rushville, Indiana, hired Pence to host a weekly half-hour radio show, Washington Update with Mike Pence. In 1992, Pence began hosting a daily talk show on WRCR, The Mike Pence Show, in addition to a Saturday show on WNDE in Indianapolis. Pence called himself "Rush Limbaugh on decaf" since he considered himself politically conservative while not as bombastic as Limbaugh. Beginning on April 11, 1994, Network Indiana syndicated The Mike Pence Show statewide. With a 9:00 a.m. to noon (ET) time slot, the program reached as many as 18 radio stations in Indiana, including WIBC in Indianapolis. Pence ended his radio show in September 1999 to focus on his 2000 campaign for Congress, which he eventually won. From 1995 to 1999, Pence hosted a weekend public affairs TV show also titled The Mike Pence Show on Indianapolis TV station WNDY.

U.S. House Of Representatives
Pence rejuvenated his political career by running for the U.S. House of Representatives again in 2000, this time winning the seat in Indiana's 2nd congressional district after six-year incumbent David M. McIntosh opted to run for governor of Indiana. The district (renumbered as Indiana's 6th congressional district beginning in 2002) comprises all or portions of 19 counties in eastern Indiana. As a congressman, Pence adopted the slogan he had used on the radio, describing himself as "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order". While in Congress, Pence belonged to the Tea Party Caucus.

In his first year in office, Pence opposed President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, as well as President Bush's Medicare prescription drug expansion the following year. Pence was re-elected four more times by comfortable margins. In the 2006, 2008, and 2010 House elections, he defeated Democrat Barry Welsh.

Governor Of Indiana
In May 2011, Pence announced that he would be seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana in 2012. Incumbent Republican Governor Mitch Daniels was term-limited. Pence ran on a platform that touted the successes of his predecessor and promised to continue educational reform and business deregulation of Daniels. The Democratic nominee was former Indiana Speaker of the House John R. Gregg. Despite strong name recognition and a popular outgoing governor of the same party, Pence found himself in a heated race, eventually pulling out a close win with just under 50 percent of the vote, and less than 3% ahead of Gregg, with Libertarian nominee Rupert Boneham receiving most of the remaining votes.

Pence was sworn in as the 50th governor of Indiana on January 14, 2013.

Vice President
On November 8, 2016, Pence was elected vice president of the United States as Trump's running mate.

Soon after the election, he was appointed chairman of President-elect Trump's transition team. During the transition phase of the Trump administration, Pence was reported as holding a large degree of influence in the administration due to his roles as a mediator between Trump and congressional Republicans, for reassuring conservatives about Trump's conservative credentials, and his influence in determining Donald Trump's cabinet.

Pence is the sixth vice president from Indiana, following Schuyler Colfax (1869–1873), Thomas A. Hendricks (1885), Charles W. Fairbanks (1905–1909), Thomas R. Marshall (1913–1921), and Dan Quayle (1989–1993).

On the first day in office (January 20), Pence performed various ceremonial duties, including swearing in Jim Mattis as United States secretary of defense and John Kelly as secretary of homeland security. He also administered the oath of office to the White House senior staff on January 22, 2017.

Pence also sat in on calls made by President Trump to foreign heads of government and state such as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

In January, Pence appointed Josh Pitcock as his chief of staff, whom he had known from his gubernatorial and congressional days. The following month, Jarrod Agen was tapped as deputy assistant to the president and director of communications to the vice president; his previous job being chief of staff for governor of Michigan Rick Snyder through the time of the Flint water crisis. In July, Pitcock stepped down as chief of staff, and was succeeded in the position by Nick Ayers, another longtime Pence advisor.

Presidency
See Presidency of Mike Pence

Pence was in the Capitol Building during the 2021 Capitol Building Attack. Despite Trump's urging him to overturn the results, Pence certified the Biden-Harris ticket as the winner of the election. Pence was vilified by Trump and threatened by Trump's supporters for not trying to overturn the election results.

Many rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence". Pence was swiftly evacuated, and felt that Trump could never recover from this attack. He urged Trump to resign, or he would invoke the 25th amendment. Wishing to leave on his own terms, and hoping to run in 2024, Trump agreed to resign. On January 6th, Pence was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

He attended funerals for the members of Congress killed in the attack and, for security reasons, signed Executive Order 13985, banning non-government citizens from coming within 500 feet of federal government buildings. This led to mass protests, as this prohibited many from meeting immigration officials, delivering supplies to federal buildings, or some cases, even reaching their homes, located within 500 feet of the buildings.