Michael Richard Pence was born on June 7,1959 and is an American politician who served as the 48th vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
141 Facts About Mike Pence
2.
Mike Pence graduated from Hanover College and then graduated from Indiana University Robert H McKinney School of Law before entering private practice.
3.
Mike Pence was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2000 and represented the of Indiana from 2001 to 2003 and the of Indiana from 2003 to 2013.
4.
Mike Pence chaired the Republican Study Committee from 2005 to 2007 and served as the chairman of the House Republican Conference from 2009 to 2011, the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership.
5.
Mike Pence signed bills intended to restrict abortions, including one that prohibited abortions if the reason for the procedure was the fetus's race, gender, or disability.
6.
Mike Pence withdrew from his gubernatorial reelection campaign in July 2016 to become the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who went on to win the 2016 presidential election.
7.
In February 2020, Mike Pence was appointed chairman of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which was established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
8.
Mike Pence has distanced himself from Trump by endorsing candidates in several Republican primary elections in opposition to candidates endorsed by Trump.
9.
Mike Pence was born on June 7,1959, in Columbus, Indiana, one of six children of Ann Jane "Nancy" Cawley and Edward Joseph Mike Pence Jr.
10.
Mike Pence's father served in the US Army during the Korean War and received the Bronze Star in 1953, which Pence displays in his office along with its commendation letter and a reception photograph.
11.
Mike Pence's father was of German and Irish descent and his mother is of Irish ancestry.
12.
Mike Pence 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.
13.
In 1988, Mike Pence ran for Congress against Democratic incumbent Philip Sharp, but lost.
14.
Mike Pence ran against Sharp again in 1990, quitting his job in order to work full-time in the campaign, but was unsuccessful.
15.
In 1991, Mike 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.
16.
Mike Pence vowed to refrain from using insulting speech or running ads that belittle his adversaries.
17.
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.
18.
Mike Pence called himself "Rush Limbaugh on decaf" since he considered himself politically conservative while not as bombastic as Limbaugh.
19.
From 1995, Pence hosted a weekend public affairs TV show likewise titled The Mike Pence Show on Indianapolis TV station WNDY.
20.
Mike Pence ended his radio and television shows in 1999 to focus on his 2000 campaign for Congress, which he eventually won.
21.
Mike Pence began to climb the party leadership structure and from 2005 to 2007 was chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative House Republicans.
22.
In November 2006, Mike Pence announced his candidacy for leader of the Republican Party in the United States House of Representatives.
23.
Mike Pence's release announcing his run for minority leader focused on a "return to the values" of the Newt Gingrich-headed 1994 Republican Revolution.
24.
In January 2009, Mike Pence was elected as the Republican Conference chairman, the third-highest-ranking Republican leadership position at the time behind Minority Leader John Boehner and Republican Whip Eric Cantor.
25.
Mike Pence was the first representative from Indiana to hold a House leadership position since 1981.
26.
In May 2011, Mike Pence announced that he would be seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana in 2012.
27.
Mike Pence ran on a platform that touted the successes of his predecessor and promised to continue educational reform and business deregulation of Daniels.
28.
Mike Pence was sworn in as the 50th governor of Indiana on January 14,2013.
29.
Mike Pence was unsuccessful in his efforts to persuade the companies to stay in the state, although the companies agreed to reimburse local and state governments for certain tax incentives they had received.
30.
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation led by Mike Pence had approved $24million in incentives to ten companies who sent jobs abroad.
31.
In 2013, Mike Pence signed a law blocking local governments in Indiana from requiring businesses to offer higher wages or benefits beyond those required by federal law.
32.
In 2015, Mike Pence signed the repeal an Indiana law that required construction companies working on publicly funded projects to pay a prevailing wage.
33.
In 2013, Mike Pence announced the formation of the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute, a life sciences research facility supported with $25million in startup funds from the state.
34.
Mike Pence made tax reform, namely a ten percent income-tax rate cut, a priority for 2013.
35.
The bill, which was passed by a huge majority of legislators and subsequently vetoed by Mike Pence, allowed money to be kept and not returned to the taxpayers as would have otherwise been necessary.
36.
Mike Pence initially proposed the initiative in his State of the State address in January 2015.
37.
In 2014, Mike Pence supported the Indiana Gateway project, a $71.4million passenger and freight rail improvement initiative paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which Mike Pence had voted against while a congressman.
38.
In October 2015, Mike Pence "announced plans to pay off a $250million federal loan" to cover unemployment insurance payments which had spiked during the recession.
39.
In March 2016, Mike Pence signed legislation to fund a $230million two-year road-funding package.
40.
In 2014, a little over one year after taking office, Mike Pence helped establish a $10-million state preschool pilot program in Indiana and testified personally before the state Senate Education Committee in favor of the program to convince fellow Republicans to approve the plan.
41.
In 2015, Mike Pence secured significant increases in charter-school funding from the legislation, although he did not get everything he had proposed.
42.
Mike Pence opposed the Common Core State Standards Initiative, calling for the repeal of the standards in his 2014 State of the State address.
43.
In one of his first acts as governor, Mike Pence removed control of the Educational Employment Relations Board, which was in charge of handling conflicts between unions and school boards, from Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who was the Indiana superintendent of public instruction.
44.
Mike Pence created a new "Center for Education and Career Innovation" to coordinate efforts between schools and the private sector; Ritz opposed the center, viewing it as a "power grab" and encroachment on her own duties.
45.
Mike Pence eventually disestablished the center in order to help defuse the conflict.
46.
In May 2015, Mike Pence signed a bill stripping Ritz of much of her authority over standardized testing and other education issues, and reconstituting the State Board of Education dominated by Mike Pence appointees.
47.
In 2016, Mike Pence said that even if legal challenges failed, Indiana would continue to defy the rule and would not come up with its own plan to reduce emissions.
48.
In 2014, over the opposition of Indiana school organizations, Mike Pence signed a bill which allows firearms to be kept in vehicles on school property.
49.
In 2015, following a shooting in Chattanooga, Mike Pence recruited the National Rifle Association to train the Indiana National Guard on concealed carry.
50.
In May 2015, Mike Pence signed into law Senate Bill 98, which limited lawsuits against gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers and retroactively terminated the City of Gary's still-pending 1999 lawsuit against gun manufacturers and retailers that allegedly made illegal sales of handguns.
51.
In 2016, Mike Pence signed Senate Bill 109 into law, legalizing the captive hunting of farm-raised deer in Indiana.
52.
Mike Pence had long been a vocal opponent of needle exchange programs, which allow drug users to trade in used syringes for sterile ones in order to stop the spread of diseases, despite solid scientific evidence that such programs prevent the spread of AIDS, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C, and do not increase drug abuse.
53.
In March 2015, well after the outbreak began, Mike Pence finally allowed at least five counties to open needle exchanges, but did not move to lift the state ban on funding for needle exchanges.
54.
Critics say Mike Pence's compromise had been ineffective because counties had no way to pay for needle exchanges themselves.
55.
Anesthesiologist Jerome Adams, then the Mike Pence-appointed Indiana state health commissioner and later surgeon general of the United States during the Trump administration, defended Mike Pence, arguing that publicly funded needle exchange programs are controversial in many conservative communities.
56.
Mike Pence had told lawmakers he would veto any bill they might pass that provided for such exchanges.
57.
On March 26,2015, Mike Pence signed Indiana Senate Bill 101, known as the Indiana "religious objections" bill, into law.
58.
Mike Pence defended the law, saying it was not about discrimination.
59.
Mike Pence received heavy criticism from liberals at the time of signing the religious freedom law, who labeled him as anti-gay.
60.
In June 2013, Mike Pence was criticized for deleting comments of others posted on his official government Facebook page; he subsequently apologized.
61.
On January 26,2015, it was widely reported that Mike Pence had planned to launch a state-run, taxpayer-funded news service for Indiana.
62.
In December 2015, Mike Pence said that "calls to ban Muslims from entering the US are offensive and unconstitutional".
63.
Mike Pence "repeatedly stonewalled public records requests as governor, often withholding documents or delaying their release if not denying them outright".
64.
In March 2017, after Mike Pence had become vice president, the State of Indiana released 29 emails to media outlets that had made public records requests, but withheld an undisclosed number of other emails, saying they were deliberative or advisory and thus exempt from public disclosure.
65.
Mike Pence ran for a second term as governor and was unopposed in the Republican primary on May 3,2016.
66.
Mike Pence was to face Democrat John R Gregg in a rematch of the 2012 race.
67.
However, Mike Pence filed paperwork ending his campaign on July 15,2016, as Trump announced his selection of Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate.
68.
Mike Pence endorsed Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.
69.
Mike Pence had stronger connections at the time to the politically influential big donors, the Kochs, than Trump did.
70.
Immediately after the announcement, Mike Pence said he was "very supportive of Donald Trump's call to temporarily suspend immigration from countries where terrorist influence and impact represents a threat to the United States".
71.
Mike Pence said he was "absolutely" in sync with Trump's Mexican wall proposal, saying Mexico was "absolutely" going to pay for it.
72.
That day, Mike Pence said to reporters, "I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them," but made clear that he was standing by Trump.
73.
On October 10,2016, Mike Pence appeared on CNN and said, in response to rumors that he was leaving the ticket, that it was "absolutely false to suggest that at any point in time we considered dropping off this ticket" and that it is the "greatest honor of my life" to be nominated as Trump's running mate.
74.
On November 8,2016, Mike Pence was elected vice president of the United States as Trump's running mate.
75.
On January 20,2017, at noon, Mike Pence became the 48th vice president of the United States, sworn into the office by justice Clarence Thomas, using Ronald Reagan's Bible, opened to 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land," which is the same verse Reagan used for his swearing-ins as governor and president.
76.
Mike Pence used his personal Bible which he opens every morning.
77.
Mike Pence administered the oath of office to the White House senior staff on January 22,2017.
78.
Mike Pence 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.
79.
On February 5,2017, Mike Pence warned Iran "not to test the resolve" of the new Trump administration following their ballistic missile tests.
80.
Mike Pence cast the deciding vote to break a fifty-fifty tie to confirm Betsy DeVos as the secretary of education.
81.
In 2018, Pence broke a tie to confirm Jonathan A Kobes for the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
82.
In total, Mike Pence had cast 13 tie-breaking votes, seventh-most in history and more than his previous four predecessors cast combined.
83.
Mike Pence ended his trip with stops in Sydney, Australia, and Oahu, Hawaii and American Samoa.
84.
On May 21,2017, Mike Pence delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.
85.
Traditionally, the president delivers the address at Notre Dame in his inaugural year, but in 2017 Mike Pence was invited instead when Trump decided to speak at Liberty University.
86.
On October 8,2017, Mike Pence walked out of a game between the NFL's Indianapolis Colts and San Francisco 49ers after members of the 49ers knelt during the national anthem.
87.
Reid expressed doubt over the regularity Mike Pence is in terms of attending Colts matches, and referenced a photograph of the vice president and his wife in Colts uniform that had been tweeted before the match, although the official photograph proved otherwise.
88.
In September 2019, Mike Pence attended official meetings with Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin, Ireland but stayed at President Trump's resort in Doonbeg, 180 miles away.
89.
Mike Pence's schedule included four hours spent in transit in one day, and two flights on Air Force Two before the end of the next day.
90.
In February 2020, Mike Pence defended debt- and deficit-spending as a measure to stimulate economic growth.
91.
In May 2017, Mike Pence filed Federal Election Commission paperwork to form Great America Committee, a political action committee that would be headed by his former campaign staffers Nick Ayers and Marty Obst.
92.
Mike Pence is the only vice president to have started his own PAC while still in office.
93.
Mike Pence denied a New York Times article's allegations that he would run for president in 2020, calling them "laughable and absurd", and said the article was "disgraceful and offensive".
94.
Mike Pence was a key player in the Trump-Ukraine scandal and the Trump impeachment inquiry.
95.
Mike Pence had at least two phone conversations and an in-person meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine.
96.
Mike Pence met with Zelensky in Poland on September 1,2019, during an unexpected delay in US military aid to Ukraine.
97.
Mike Pence later told the press that he did not mention 2020 presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden to Zelensky, but raised issues regarding Ukrainian corruption.
98.
Mike Pence defended Trump's decision in January 2020 to assassinate the Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qasem Soleimani, promoting conspiracy theories that supposedly linked the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States to Iran.
99.
Mike Pence defended his action, saying he needed to look staff "in the eye".
100.
Later, Mike Pence acknowledged he should have worn a mask during the hospital visit, and did so two days later when visiting a ventilator production facility.
101.
In late June 2020, as coronavirus cases were spiking, Mike Pence gave an optimistic press briefing where he made several misleading and false claims about the state of the coronavirus pandemic.
102.
Mike Pence misleadingly argued that surges in cases were the result of increased testing, telling reporters that increases in new cases were "a reflection of a great success in expanding testing across the country".
103.
Mike Pence falsely claimed that coronavirus fatalities were declining all across the country, that the curve had been flattened, and that all 50 states were opening up.
104.
In private meetings with Republican Senators, Mike Pence urged them to focus on "encouraging signs".
105.
Mike Pence declined to endorse Pence should his running mate seek in 2024 to succeed him, but said he would give it "very strong consideration".
106.
In remarks about law enforcement during the 2020 Republican convention, Mike Pence said a federal security officer, Dave Underwood, "was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland", implying he was killed by rioters, when instead a man linked to the far-right Boogaloo movement had exploited the unrest as a cover for murder.
107.
On October 7,2020, Mike Pence participated in a debate with Kamala Harris that was held by USA Today in Salt Lake City, Utah, and moderated by Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of the newspaper.
108.
The United States Department of Justice represented Mike Pence in this case, and argued for its dismissal, stating that the lawsuit was a "walking legal contradiction" because it sought to grant power to the vice president, while suing the vice president.
109.
In January 2021, Trump began to pressure Mike Pence to take action to overturn the election.
110.
On January 6,2021, the day on which a joint session of Congress met to count and certify the results of the electoral college for the 2020 presidential election, Trump held a rally at which he urged listeners to go to the Capitol and repeatedly expressed the hope that Mike Pence would "do the right thing".
111.
Mike Pence was not evacuated from the Senate chambers until 14 minutes after the initial breach of the Capitol was reported.
112.
Mike Pence later approved the deployment of the National Guard, which raised questions as the vice president is not the commander-in-chief.
113.
Aides believed that Mike Pence was being set up as a scapegoat for Trump's failure to overturn the results of the election.
114.
Mike Pence did not have a permanent place of residence in Indiana when he left the vice presidency.
115.
In February 2021, it was announced that Mike Pence would join The Heritage Foundation as a distinguished visiting fellow.
116.
Mike Pence joined the Young America's Foundation conservative youth organization, with plans to launch a new podcast with the group in the coming months.
117.
In March 2021, Mike Pence published an op-ed on a Heritage Foundation website in which he noted "significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law" during the 2020 election.
118.
At speaking engagements in the months after the end of the Trump administration, Mike Pence spoke with reverence of the former president.
119.
Mike Pence narrated a four-part television series on the career of right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh titled Age of Rush, which debuted on Fox Nation in March 2021.
120.
Mike Pence had previously cited Limbaugh as an inspiration for his career in talk radio and then in politics.
121.
Polls of Republicans regarding their preferred presidential candidate in 2024 imply that Mike Pence could begin a campaign as a top-tier candidate if former President Trump were to forgo a run.
122.
In May 2022, The New York Times reported that Mike Pence was considering a presidential run regardless of whether Trump decided to run for a second term.
123.
Since leaving the vice presidency, Mike Pence has distanced himself from Trump's attempts to cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election and made high-profile speeches in early nominating states.
124.
Mike Pence has separated himself from Trump by endorsing candidates in several Republican primary elections in opposition to the candidate endorsed by Trump.
125.
In October 2022, Mike Pence condemned "unprincipled populism" and "Putin apologists" in the Republican Party.
126.
In December 2022, Mike Pence was reported to have filed paperwork to run for President in the 2024 United States presidential election against Trump in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries.
127.
On February 9,2023, it was reported that Mike Pence had been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith regarding the attack on the Capitol, following months of negotiation between Mike Pence's attorneys and the special counsel.
128.
In 2023, Mike Pence criticized former President Donald Trump, especially regarding the events that took place on January 6,2021.
129.
Mike Pence went further, saying that Trump's words not only endangered him, but his family and everyone at the Capitol.
130.
Much of the rhetoric is believed to be a lead-up to Mike Pence's potential run for the Republican nomination heading into the 2024 US presidential election.
131.
In January 2023, Mike Pence asked his lawyer to search his home "out of an abundance of caution".
132.
The discovery came after Mike Pence had repeatedly said that he did not have classified documents.
133.
Mike Pence has taken responsibility for the documents and said that he was unaware of his possession of them.
134.
Mike Pence's father died in 1988, leaving his mother a widow with four grown children and two teenagers.
135.
Mike and Karen Pence have three children: Michael, Charlotte, and Audrey.
136.
Michael Mike Pence is a first lieutenant and pilot in the United States Marine Corps.
137.
Greg and Mike are similar enough in appearance that Greg once successfully acted as a decoy to lure the press away from his brother when Mike Pence was being touted as a potential running mate to Donald Trump.
138.
Mike Pence was raised in a Catholic family, was as an altar server, and attended parochial school.
139.
Mike Pence called himself Catholic in a 1994 news piece, although by 1995, he and his family had joined an evangelical megachurch, the Grace Evangelical Church.
140.
In 2013, Mike Pence said his family was "kind of looking for a church".
141.
Mike Pence has described himself as "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order", and as "a born-again, evangelical Catholic".