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Mike Pence Biography & Facts

Michael Richard Pence (born June 7, 1959) is an American politician who served as the 48th vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 under President Donald Trump. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 50th governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013. Born and raised in Columbus, Indiana, Pence graduated from Hanover College and then from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law before entering private practice. He lost two House bids in 1988 and 1990 and was a conservative radio and television talk show host from 1994 to 1999. After being elected to the House in 2000, Pence represented Indiana's 2nd district from 2001 to 2003 and 6th district from 2003 to 2013. He chaired the Republican Study Committee from 2005 to 2007 and House Republican Conference from 2009 to 2011. He was elected governor of Indiana in 2012. As governor, Pence initiated the largest tax cut in Indiana's history and pushed for more funding for private education initiatives. He 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, and required funerary services for terminated fetuses, including those resulting from miscarriage; this law was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge and prevented from going into effect. After Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he encountered resistance from moderate members of his party, the business community, and LGBT advocates. The backlash against the bill led Pence to approve changes to the law to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and other criteria. He later became the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who went on to win the 2016 presidential election. As vice president, Pence chaired the National Space Council following its reestablishment in 2017 and the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which was established in early 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pence and Trump lost their bid for re-election in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, although Trump's campaign refused to concede, made false or unproven allegations of election fraud and filed many unsuccessful lawsuits in multiple states. Despite Trump's urging to overturn the election results and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Pence oversaw the certification of Biden–Harris as the winner of the election. He has since distanced himself from Trump, endorsing candidates in primary elections in opposition to those supported by Trump and criticizing the latter's conduct on the day of the attack. In June 2023, he launched a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but withdrew by the end of October. He chose not to endorse Trump for the general election. Early life and education Pence was born on June 7, 1959, in Columbus, Indiana, one of six children of Ann Jane "Nancy" Cawley and Edward Joseph Pence Jr., who ran a group of gas stations. His father served in the U.S. 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. His father was of German and Irish descent and his mother is of Irish ancestry. His paternal grandfather, Edward Joseph Pence Sr., worked in the Chicago stockyards. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Richard Michael Cawley, who emigrated from Doocastle, County Mayo, Ireland, to the United States through Ellis Island and who became a bus driver in Chicago, Illinois. His maternal grandmother's parents were from Doonbeg, County Clare, Ireland. Pence graduated from Columbus North High School in 1977. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from Hanover College in 1981, and a Juris Doctor from the Robert H. McKinney School of Law at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis in Indianapolis in 1986. While at Hanover, he joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, where he became the chapter president. After graduating from Hanover, he was an admissions counselor at the college from 1981 to 1983. During his time at Hanover, Pence was a friend of future actor Woody Harrelson, whom he helped prepare to deliver a sermon as part of Harrelson's ministry studies. Harrelson later told late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel that he "'quite liked [Pence]' at the time". 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 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 career and congressional campaigns After graduating from law school in 1986, Pence was an attorney in private practice. In 1988, Pence ran for Congress against Democratic incumbent Philip Sharp, but lost. He ran against Sharp again in 1990, quitting his job in order to work full-time in the campaign, but once again was unsuccessful. During the race, Pence used "political donations to pay the mortgage on his house, his personal credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees and car payments for his wife". While the spending was not illegal at the time, it reportedly undermined his campaign. 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. Pence vowed to refrain from using insulting speech or running ads that belittle his adversaries. Also taking place 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 Mik.... Discover the Mike Pence popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mike Pence books.