Pence Running Out of Steam, Hardly Anyone Shows Up to Event at Pizza Restaurant
If there’s one thing that Politico loves, it’s touting a new “Trump alternative” in the GOP field who isn’t named Ron DeSantis.
To that extent, the left-leaning political outlet seems to have gone through the entire field and then some. First, it was South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. Then, it was businessman and conservative activist Vivek Ramaswamy. Even Chris Christie was in there somewhere.
Former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was Politico’s latest pick. But don’t forget Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who Politico has speculated might still run despite huge barriers to his entry at this late stage. At this rate, I might be their next viable “Trump alternative.” Or maybe you. Perhaps your neighbor Bob.
Thus, please understand that how damning this Politico is: “He Was Once a Favorite of the Right. Now, Mike Pence Can’t Get a Crowd of 15 to a Pizza Ranch.”
When Politico is saying that about a potential GOP “Trump alternative,” his chances at the nomination are — to paraphrase the not-so-late, not-so-great Dan Rather — between slim and none, and slim just left town.
The piece is as sad as it sounds. Pence, as it turns out, is pinning all of his hopes on a surprise win in the Iowa caucuses, in a state that sounds somewhat surprised he’s still running for the GOP nomination. How surprised? Pence is pushing retail politics to the limit — and still isn’t selling.
“On a crisp evening in a small town not far from Iowa’s southwestern border, Mike Pence’s decades-long quest for the White House has come down to a coin toss,” stated the lede to the sad-sack Politico piece, published Saturday.
“Here he is, the most recent former GOP vice president, standing at the 50-yard-line of a high school football field in a town just shy of 7,000. The team captains stand alongside him and his wife Karen, the smell of brats grilling and corn popping in the air. Tails. The hometown Trojans win the toss against the Perry Bluejays. ‘There’s nothing like Friday night lights,’ he will soon tell a reporter from the student newspaper. ‘We wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’”
Yeah, something tells me I think he would have missed it had the crowd at Atlantic High School in Atlantic, Iowa, weren’t a mostly captive audience of thousands, there to see the hometown Trojans win the Oct. 6 match-up. Pence was merely an afterthought.
It was a rare victory for Atlantic — who, according to high school athletics stat aggregator MaxPreps, are having a 3-7 season and have since lost two straight.
Pence is currently fifth in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate with a 3.8 percent average as of Sunday morning Eastern Time. He’s only 55.3 points behind his former boss, Donald Trump, who’s at 59.1 percent in the aggregate.
According to the Politico piece, by national political correspondent Adam Wren, Pence spent part of the night in Atlantic in “the press box to provide color commentary for the game on the local AM radio station KJAN (‘contemporary adult hits!’).”
“Earlier this afternoon he confessed to me that he was nervous about the ordeal — it’s been decades since, after losing congressional bids in 1988 and 1990, he hosted a Saturday morning call-in show on WNDE-AM in Indianapolis before jumping to FM syndication of The Mike Pence Show. ‘They told me I could go up to the booth and do play by play,’ I overheard him tell a voter. ‘Not good. It’s been a long time.’”
According to the Atlantic High School Needle, the former vice president “set off from the game after halftime and left a message for the students of Atlantic High School.”
“This is the greatest nation on Earth, and when we have the right leadership, [we’re] going to be standing tall in the world again, and I feel very confident in the future,” Pence said, adding that “help is on the way.”
If he meant help was coming to America, it’s likely not coming from him. If he was talking about his campaign chances, it’s likely not coming to him, at least not from the people of Iowa. Remember, there were 7,000-ish captive fans there to watch the high school football game. When Pence isn’t the sideshow to Friday night lights, things aren’t going so stellar.
“Nearly six months into his presidential campaign, and fewer than 90 days until the Iowa caucuses, Pence is not seeing massive crowds like his former running mate Donald Trump, or his fellow Midwesterner Vivek Ramaswamy, or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or even his longtime frenemy, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley,” Wren wrote.
“Thirty folks at Penn Drug store in Sidney on a recent Friday morning; another 30 at the Olive Branch Restaurant in Greenfield that afternoon; 60 at a senior center in Glenwood the next day. Nor is he seeing anything but single-digit backing in polls. In Iowa, he’s currently averaging just 2.6 percent among Republican voters.”
And then there was the disaster at the Pizza Ranch in Red Oak, Iowa, where 13 people could be bothered to see the former vice president campaign.
“The media has already decided how all this is going to end,” he told the audience. “But as you all know, I think Iowa has a unique opportunity to give our party, give our country a fresh start.”
He urged the crowd to “keep an open mind.” So that’s at least 13 Iowans receptive to him. Just 51,653 supporters short of the total Texas Sen. Ted Cruz needed to take the state in 2016, the last time there was a competitive Iowa caucus among the GOP field. That’s quite a few Pizza Ranches and high-school football games.
Nevertheless, a splash in Iowa might be Pence’s best chance, given Iowa’s arcane caucus format and the fact that the state has a large evangelical GOP base — although even his allies admit Pence’s faith, easily the most relatable part of his personal story to voters, might not be enough to carry him over the finish line either in Iowa or elsewhere.
“Mike Pence’s greatest strengths are his doggedness and his belief that God has a plan for him,” said former Indiana state GOP Rep. Mike Murphy, described as a “longtime friend” of the former vice president, told Wren in the “Pizza Ranch” piece. “But he’s going to have to be open to discerning the difference between his plan and God’s plan.”
Ouch.
Another ouch is the fact that even successfully navigating the strange waters of Iowa retail politics still doesn’t guarantee any real return.
Cruz’s 2016 win was seen by some as a sign that Trump’s early polling advantage was merely the result of populist frustration combined with his celebrity status and, once actual voting started, Republicans would be scared off.
A week later, he trounced the field in New Hampshire — beating former Ohio Gov. John Kasich by nearly 20 points and Cruz by 23.6 percent — and steadily pulled away from the field from there.
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg won the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses; that paved a road not to the Oval Office but to the Department of Transportation secretary, a career move the overmatched Buttigieg likely now considers a horizontal one and not as a promotion.
As for whether Pence would consider a cold-storage role like Transportation secretary in any future Republican administration run by a guy not named Donald Trump, be sure to scour Iowa’s high-school newspapers for the latest information. The former vice president’s run at 1600 Pennsylvania isn’t being taken seriously in many other places.
When even Politico not-so-subtly tells you it’s over, Mr. Pence, it’s over.
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