Pence Seeks to Go Where No Vice President Has Gone Before

June 06, 2023
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“Having a former vice president contest the president he served for their party’s nomination in contested primaries is like a 234-year flood,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a specialist on the vice presidency at the St. Louis University School of Law. “It doesn’t happen.”

“Defeated presidents don’t run again in modern times,” he added, “and vice presidents tend to inherit support from their administration’s supporters, not become pariahs to them” as Mr. Pence has since defying Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The broken relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence is itself a historical anomaly, of course. Mr. Trump sought to pressure Mr. Pence to claim the power to effectively reject Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the Electoral College, a power the vice president said he did not have. Mr. Trump was so angry that he publicly excoriated his own vice president, prompting a mob to hunt for him while chanting “hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6, 2021. According to testimony, Mr. Trump suggested to aides that maybe his supporters were right.

“The reason why no other vice president appears to have run against his president is that he was selected by the president, and there is almost always a personal bond stemming from a sense of loyalty and gratitude,” said Richard Moe, who was the chief of staff to Vice President Walter F. Mondale. “I can’t think of another vice president who was treated more disrespectfully than Pence was by Trump.”

There are no precise parallels to the current situation. In 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson challenged President John Adams, defeating the incumbent’s bid for a second term. In those early days of the republic, however, the vice president was not the president’s running mate, but the second-highest vote recipient in the previous election. Adams and Jefferson had run against each other in 1796, with Adams prevailing and Jefferson becoming vice president because he was the runner-up.

Source: The New York Times