In Jan. 6 spotlight, Mike Pence navigates a tricky post-Trump path

It was a pivotal moment for the vice president – and the nation. Pro-Trump rioters were rampaging through the Capitol building yelling “Hang Mike Pence,” as Mr. Pence and his family huddled in an underground parking bay. But when a Secret Service agent asked him to get into a waiting car, he refused.

“He was determined that we would complete the work that we had begun that day,” Mr. Pence’s legal counsel, Greg Jacob, told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

That work, of course, was the certification of Joe Biden as the next president.

Mr. Pence’s emergence as one of the heroes of the Jan. 6 hearings – which detailed how he resisted an intense pressure campaign by former President Donald Trump to get him to block the counting of electoral votes – has placed him in a singular political position. After four years of loyal service, he’s now spurned by Trump allies as a turncoat, even as Democrats and some former Trump aides see him as a savior of democracy. During Tuesday’s hearing, Trump White House attorney Pat Cipollone testified that Mr. Pence had done the “courageous thing” and deserved a Presidential Medal of Honor.

As the jockeying for 2024 heats up, with Mr. Trump rumored to be nearing a formal announcement, Mr. Pence is laying the groundwork for a run that could pit him against his former boss.

At best, he faces a difficult balancing act. The former vice president, who was booed at a gathering of conservative activists last year, has been touting the Trump administration’s policy achievements and has refrained from criticizing Mr. Trump – even after the Jan. 6 hearings revealed the president’s lack of concern for his safety.

Yet for a vice president who was perpetually in Mr. Trump’s shadow and never seemed destined to inherit the MAGA mantle, it’s also possible Jan. 6 has given Mr. Pence the opening he needed.

In some ways, the former Indiana governor represents a throwback to the GOP of old, before Mr. Trump jettisoned much of its post-Reagan orthodoxy and norms of governance. Beneath the Midwestern humility is a deeply conservative policy agenda, undergirded by close ties to Charles Koch and other GOP donors. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Mr. Pence pointedly called for a nationwide abortion ban. Next week, he’s heading to South Carolina, a key early primary state, to give a talk about “the post-Roe world.” 

Mr. Pence’s evangelical faith also goes hand in hand with an emphasis on decency and decorum that contrasts sharply with Mr. Trump’s performative pugilism.

“He’s never made an enemy in his life – with one notable exception,” says one Indiana Republican, who asked for anonymity so he could talk freely.

If Mr. Pence can build a coalition of religious conservatives, Trump-weary Republicans, and just enough MAGA devotees who don’t hold Jan. 6 against him, it could be enough to emerge from a crowded field. It’s also conceivable he could wind up as a kind of consensus candidate, the elder statesman to whom the party turns if flashier front-runners flame out – not unlike Mr. Biden in 2020.

“Mike’s greatest advantage is that people underestimate him,” says John Gregg, an Indiana Democrat who lost a 2012 gubernatorial race to Mr. Pence. “He’s tireless, and he’s focused. I’ve never met anyone who stays on message more than Mike Pence.” 

On the ground in New Hampshire

Despite Mr. Trump’s popularity among the base, polls and focus groups indicate that many Republican voters are open to or might even prefer a different candidate as their party’s nominee in 2024. As a result, an ever-growing number of would-be candidates are already testing the waters.

Those making the rounds in New Hampshire include Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who leads the pack of Trump alternatives in early GOP primary polls, has so far stayed away. 

In May, Mr. Pence spoke to a sold-out dinner at a New Hampshire winery, hosted by the Rockingham County GOP chapter. He extolled the Trump administration’s conservative record, including the appointment of three Supreme Court justices and 300 federal judges. It was, he boasted, “the most pro-life administration in American history.” 

What went unsaid by Mr. Pence was what he did to usher out that administration on Jan. 6. Much of the GOP base is still upset by Mr. Trump’s defeat and not inclined to cut Mr. Pence any slack.

J. David Bernardy, a Republican state legislator who attended the dinner, concedes that Mr. Pence was constitutionally bound to certify the 2020 election results – but says allegations of fraud should have been investigated more fully. (Senior Trump administration officials, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, testified to the committee that they investigated and found no evidence of widespread fraud.) 

The bigger issue, to Mr. Bernardy, is what he sees as Mr. Pence’s passivity. “The defining issue for me is strength against a virulent Democratic Party,” he says, arguing that Mr. Pence failed to stand up to public health officials when he ran the White House COVID-19 task force. Mr. Pence is “a very nice, soft-spoken, and genial guy,” he concludes, but he’s not the best choice to “counter the absolute horror going on in Washington now.”

Srinivasan Ravikumar, a retired engineer and another local GOP official, says he appreciates Mr. Pence’s temperate style and conservative values. But he’s unhappy that the vice president “rubber stamped” Mr. Biden’s electors. “I think he went into survival mode after the election, and that doesn’t strike me as right,” he says. 

Such attitudes are common among GOP voters here, say party strategists. The vice president “always gets a respectful welcome” in New Hampshire, says Jerry Sickels, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2016. But Mr. Pence’s role on Jan. 6 will unquestionably hang over any presidential run. “It’s a hurdle for him to overcome with the rank and file, no question about that,” he says. 

It’s possible lingering anger over the 2020 election will fade as Republicans start to look to 2024. And the blows to Mr. Trump’s credibility from the House committee hearings and his exposure to potential criminal charges could weaken him.

But even if some GOP voters are growing wary of another Trump campaign, they seem to be leaning toward Trump-like alternatives. A UNH Granite State Poll found Governor DeSantis statistically tied with Mr. Trump among likely Republican primary voters. These voters “have a basically positive attitude towards the former president,” says Dante Scala, a politics professor at the University of New Hampshire. But “they’re open to moving on.” 

Mr. Pence trailed far behind in third place in the same poll, which was taken in June after the first televised Jan. 6 hearings. Of 13 potential candidates polled, he was the only one with a negative favorability rating. “For core Trump voters, he’s seen as a traitor,” Professor Scala says.  

“I think he’s dead in the water. He may not realize it,” says Thomas Patterson, a professor of government at Harvard University.

From “Rush Limbaugh on decaf” to the vice presidency

Mike Pence never set out to make political enemies. Quite the opposite, says Mr. Gregg, who first met him at law school and has remained on cordial terms with him, even after their hard-fought campaign for governor. 

When Mr. Pence became a conservative talk-radio host in the 1990s, he would regularly interview Mr. Gregg, then Democratic speaker of the Indiana House. Their policy debates were always respectful, he says. “There was never anyone more professional, kinder, and more appreciative,” he says. 

Radio proved a perfect fit for the mellifluous tones of Mr. Pence, who called himself “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” It also gave him statewide name recognition, and in 2000 he won an open primary and was elected to the U.S. House. Raised a Roman Catholic, he converted to evangelicalism in college and would become a dogged advocate against abortion and same-sex marriage. 

His six-term legislative record in Congress was thin; he never wrote a successful bill. But Mr. Pence was among the first to try to cut off federal funding for abortion services, says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “It was a time when touching Planned Parenthood was the third rail. He was really a pioneer,” she says. 

By 2008, Mr. Pence had risen to the third rank in House Republican leadership. He had also drawn the attention of the Koch brothers and other conservative donors in their network, which favored candidates who opposed taxes and regulations, particularly on fossil fuel industries. 

Marc Short, his chief of staff in the House and later in the White House, arranged for Mr. Pence to speak at a Koch fundraising retreat in 2009, according to a 2017 New Yorker article. Mr. Short, who has testified to the Jan. 6 committee and was with Mr. Pence that day, later became president of the Kochs’ “dark-money” political organization. Other former Pence staffers also worked for Koch political and corporate entities. 

After Mr. Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012, he continued to build a national profile, leaning into cultural war issues and fueling speculation of a future presidential run. “There was never any doubt in my mind that Mike wanted to go [back] to Washington, D.C. Being the governor was just a steppingstone,” says Mr. Gregg.  

In 2015, Mr. Pence signed a controversial religious freedom bill that critics said permitted companies to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals. The bill, later rescinded, sparked corporate boycotts of Indiana that soured some donors on Mr. Pence’s social agenda and set up an unexpectedly tough rematch against Mr. Gregg. 

“A lot of people thought his time as governor was winding down,” says Andrew Downs, a political science professor at Indiana’s Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Then, Mr. Pence was handed an opportunity. In July 2016, after several other mainstream Republicans had taken a pass, Mr. Trump announced him as his running mate, reportedly praising Mr. Pence backstage as “straight from central casting.”

In joining the ticket, Mr. Pence’s goal may not have been to play second fiddle in the White House as much as it was to set himself up as a presidential contender in 2020, says Joel Goldstein, professor emeritus of law at St. Louis University and an expert on the vice presidency. 

At that stage, a Trump presidency seemed to most observers a long shot. “His calculation was that he would inherit Trump supporters and join that to the religious right support that he had,” Mr. Goldstein says. “What he didn’t bargain on is that he would win.” 

“He did what his conscience told him to do”

Once elected, Vice President Pence served as a loyal lieutenant, displaying a solidarity that critics likened to sycophancy. During Mr. Trump’s most controversial moments, such as when he seemed to offer praise for neo-Nazis or shared discredited COVID-19 treatments, Mr. Pence never betrayed any public discomfort. He defended Trump policies and deflected all criticisms.

Even now, after breaking with Mr. Trump over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Pence can’t seem to decide whether to bury or praise Caesar. He hasn’t testified before the Jan. 6 committee, though has made clear he does not believe he had the authority to do what Mr. Trump asked of him on Jan. 6. The closest he’s come to a direct rebuke was in a February speech to the Federalist Society, in which he said: “I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong.” 

Taking a stronger stand against Mr. Trump would probably carry too big a cost, says the Indiana Republican. “You can do that. But you can’t be president,” he says. 

Last year, Mr. Pence set up an Indianapolis-based advocacy organization, Advancing American Freedom, that he has used to raise money and support GOP candidates. In May, he notably campaigned for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a fellow conservative who drew Mr. Trump’s ire when he refused to overturn his state’s 2020 electoral results. Despite a barrage of attacks from the former president, Governor Kemp never returned fire, focusing instead on his own record. He handily defeated his Trump-backed primary opponent.

Mr. Pence “believes that the Republican Party is the party of the future and will continue to crisscross the country in support of conservative candidates that will return America to a path of safety and prosperity,” says a spokesman for the former vice president. 

The advisory board of Advancing American Freedom has several Trump administration alumni and prominent national conservatives. Among them is Ms. Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who praises Mr. Pence’s actions on Jan. 6. “He’s a man who stood with principles and dignity. He did what his conscience told him to do. He does the hard things,” she says.  

Another board member is former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Mr. Pence recently met with the DeVos family and other influential donors in Michigan, The Washington Post reported.

Mr. Pence’s advisers are reportedly focused on South Carolina and its evangelical voters as key to a possible 2024 campaign. That strategy may run up against the reality that the former president remains extremely popular with white evangelicals who in 2016 decided to look past Mr. Trump’s personal sins in pursuit of larger political goals. By putting three anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump can say he delivered on his promises. 

On the day Mr. Pence’s legal counsel testified before the Jan. 6 committee, the Faith and Freedom Coalition held its annual gathering in Nashville, Tennessee. A year earlier, Mr. Pence had been booed at the same event in Orlando, and he skipped it this time. So he wasn’t present when Mr. Trump dismissed the hearings as “a complete and total lie,” dangling pardons for convicted riot participants, and blasting Mr. Pence for certifying the 2020 electoral count.  

​​“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic. But just like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike – and I say it sadly because I like him – but Mike did not have the courage to act,” Mr. Trump said. 

Still, the 2024 election is more than two years away, and Mr. Pence has time to try to win back alienated Trump supporters. And as longtime political observers know, any number of things could happen between now and then to scramble the race. 

“I think people are willing to hear him out,” says Patrick Hynes, a GOP strategist in New Hampshire. “What happens next is impossible to tell.” 

Note: An earlier version of this story stated that Mr. Pence was booed at some gatherings of conservative activists last year. He was booed at the 2021 Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Orlando.