The Shadow President Page 6

  Newly married, Pence returned to law school and a clerk position at a local firm. The law would be not a career but a step on the road to fulfilling his political ambitions. Karen returned to teaching second graders at Acton Elementary School in southeast Indianapolis. Mike graduated from law school in 1986 and was ready to make his move in politics. Karen was ready to help.

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  MUDSLINGER

  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.

  —Luke 14:11

  One day, Mike Pence would be considered the most famous person ever to have visited Fountain City, Indiana. On a cloudless one hundred–degree day in July 1988, he was just an apparition in the shimmering heat on two-lane Route 27. Ahead waited a tiny community—shops on the main highway, neat side streets—of roughly seven hundred.

  A little too old for his short-shorts and a little too big for his fat-tire mountain bike, Pence struggled against the drafts created by passing 18-wheelers. When he reached a slight incline, which passed for a hill in the flat terrain, he stood to use the weight of his body against the pedals. A sticker pasted onto the front of his plaid short-sleeve shirt read, “Mike Pence Congress.”

  An attorney who hated the law and a native son with the grandest political ambition, it had been inevitable that Pence would run for office. He started by visiting Republican grandees to seek their blessings. One, an irascible former Nixon man named Keith Bulen, received him in a basement office Pence described as a “bat cave” illuminated only by a single desk lamp. With a gift for drama that hid his own insecurities, Bulen liked to test others. He asked why Pence thought he could succeed at politics. Pence replied, “Well, I’ve won several awards for public speaking.”

  “What the hell does public speaking have to do with winning an election?” shot back Bulen.1

  Although Bulen was on to something, Pence didn’t hesitate to bypass the training grounds of city and state politics, where men and women traditionally paid their dues, made connections, established reputations, and honed their craft. Just as Bulen had once been an upstart challenging the party elders, Pence presumed he was ready to shoot for the top. At age twenty-nine, Pence showed he had the stamina to conduct an aggressive campaign, including the bike tour, which brought him face-to-face with voters across the Second Congressional District. He was often accompanied by Karen, who rode a matching bike and wore a white PENCE FOR CONGRESS T-shirt. Every bit as bright and assertive as her husband, Karen was a political advisor as well as a spouse. Together they looked like a nice young couple sweatily committed to a dream, which is exactly what they were.

  In politics, as in showbiz, backstage planning makes a performance seem spontaneous. So it was with the Mike-on-a-bike show. An advance man or woman drove ahead of the bikers to arrange meetings and press interviews at photo-friendly sites—a grain silo, a general store, a diner. Behind them, a staffer followed in a van emblazoned with the campaign sign: PENCE FOR CONGRESS. Trouper that he was, Pence stayed in character. Why spoil it for the audience and voters? “I think people responded well to someone who comes riding along down the street straddling a bicycle,” he told a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Republic. “It’s nothing more than one person relating to another and I don’t think you can get any more effective in campaigning than that.”2

  The tour did offer unplanned encounters. On open stretches of road, the campaigning couple would pause to chat with a man mowing his lawn or a woman collecting letters from her mailbox. Here, Mike could blend Midwest charm with the poise of a skillful public speaker, creating just the right impression. Even die-hard Democrats liked him. “He stopped at the house and asked for a glass of water,” recalled Tracy Souza, whose father, then-congressman Lee Hamilton, was a giant in the state’s Democratic Party. “He came across as a really nice guy.” Pence came across well with donors too. Individual contributions poured in from wealthy Indiana supporters along with other well-heeled midwesterners, such as Mary Kohler of the Kohler plumbing fortune. She and her husband were deeply engaged in politics and giving money to candidates and causes, though Mary Kohler had her own distinct brand of private funding. She used her private jet, for example, to transport rare bird eggs around the country to help restore species that had been wiped out in regions where development and industries destroyed their habitat.3

  Mike’s father, Ed, had been a tough sell when Mike sought his support. Mike and his family told the story that Ed Pence had been against his son’s decision to run. Mike held his ground when his father peppered him with questions. Finally satisfied, Ed was all in. By the spring of 1988, with the primary approaching, Ed was touring the district with a trunkful of campaign yard signs as he introduced his son to everyone he knew.

  On April 12, Ed decided to take a break and play golf at Harrison Lakes Country Club. Somewhere out on the course, he suffered a heart attack. The fire department ambulance brought him to the emergency room at Bartholomew County Hospital, which was less than ten miles away. Although he got immediate attention, the damage to Pence’s heart muscle was too great. He was pronounced dead soon after arriving. He was fifty-eight years old. Mike suspended his campaign for a few days so that he could be with his family and Karen. Her own father, a former United Airlines executive who had moved to Las Vegas, had died only a month earlier.

  Coming weeks before primary voting, the break didn’t affect Pence’s momentum. Thanks in part to his father’s enthusiastic support, Pence enjoyed a five-to-one funding advantage over his primary election rival, an accountant named Raymond Schwab. Executives at Cummins and other corporations rallied donations for Pence. In political campaigning, money attracts money, and Republican Party bosses recognized Mike’s ability to make the system work. Ten of the eleven county chairmen in the district announced their support. Pence defeated Schwab by more than two to one. Flush with victory, Pence declared himself a natural-born winner. “What you are seeing is the genesis of a consensus candidacy, a candidacy that the vast majority of Republicans can say, ‘This is the guy who can beat Phil Sharp and we’re going to get behind him.’”4

  A Democrat who kept getting reelected, Philip Sharp, a professor at Ball State University, first went to Congress in 1974 as part of the huge post-Watergate class. (Voters punished President Nixon’s GOP by electing dozens of new Democrats to Congress.) Sharp’s party affiliation and his doctorate in foreign policy made him a bit of an anomaly in a state where Republicans dominated. But with impeccable manners and a long fuse, Sharp had the neighborly demeanor Indiana voters seemed to favor. He counted farmers in his immediate family and understood the concerns of his constituents and the way they looked at the world.5

  Sensitive to Tip O’Neill’s old saw, “All politics is local,” Sharp hired more aides to work in Indiana than in Washington and assigned some of them to travel the district in a van offering on-the-spot constituent services. People got so accustomed to turning to him for help that all sorts of strange requests came in. (In one instance when a worker fell into a big water tank, Sharp’s office got the first emergency call.) Constituent services helped the Democrat win over just enough Republicans and independents to come out on top in seven straight elections.

  In addition to his modest style, Sharp cultivated a middle-of-the-road voting record that gave opponents little to attack. During his time in Congress, both parties counted substantial numbers of moderates who frequently crossed party lines to support legislation. Northern Republicans voted for social programs. Southern Democrats eagerly funded the military and cut taxes. In this environment, Sharp was remarkably successful at devising proposals that would be adopted by Congress. After analyzing the records of the state’s House members, The Indianapolis News judged him the most effective of them all, noting that ten of the thirteen bills he proposed passed. The runner-up had managed only five legislative successes. At the bottom of the rankings, Representative Andy Jacobs went three for sixty-four.

  Sharp’s total package—personality, performance, perspectiv
e—made him such a formidable incumbent that established politicians feared running against him. In seven elections, he had squared off against a farmer, a shoe salesman turned state bureaucrat, and a Ball State University public affairs officer. Conservative third-party candidates such as Libertarian Cecil Bohannon sometimes complicated things for the GOP and split the vote, making victory even more difficult. The net result was that in a district where 56 percent of the voters were registered Republicans, Sharp had achieved victory every time, with margins that ranged from seven to twenty-five percentage points.

  The GOP’s advantage in registration meant that national party leaders generally considered Sharp one of the more vulnerable Democrats in the House, and he was always among the thirty or forty members targeted for special attention. However, none of the candidates put forward against him since 1974 had proved to have much charisma or skill. Young, handsome, and gifted on the stump, Pence had more promise, but anyone willing to take the chance knew that, in all likelihood, the result would be a losing campaign that would only yield valuable experience and, perhaps, some useful contacts.6

  In 1988, a young Republican couldn’t hope for a better point of contact than President Reagan, and thus many made their way to the Capitol seeking a handshake and photo opportunity. All presidents do this kind of duty, giving candidates both a reward and a trophy in the form of a story to tell about how “I was just with the president.” During a lifetime of celebrity, Reagan had so perfected his meet-and-greet technique that he seemed to enjoy every encounter; perhaps he did, or perhaps it was his Hollywood training. The party’s slate of congressional contenders was invited to attend a reception in the Blue Room. With its French Empire furnishings, acquired in the refurbishing done after the mansion was burned by the British in the War of 1812, the room overlooks the South Lawn and is often used for receiving lines.

  As he waited in his dark suit and red tie, Pence prepared, as he would recall, “to say something of meaning to the great man.” For a president who no doubt heard thousands of attempts at meaning in reception lines, the brief exchanges that occurred as hand met hand and cameras clicked were not memorable. Pence, however, recounted the moment for the Congressional Record, upon Reagan’s death, in 2004:

  I had the privilege in 1988 as a candidate for Congress to sit with the president in the Blue Room of the White House and speak to him personally, and on that occasion, that great privilege of my life, I was able to look the president in the eye as he asked me how my campaign was going. I said, “Mr. President, it is going fine, but I just want to thank you for everything you have done for our country and to encourage my generation of Americans to believe in this country again.”

  In other tellings, Pence would add that Reagan demonstrated “real humility,” which he admired. “He seemed surprised,” Pence said of Reagan. “His cheeks appeared to redden with embarrassment, and he said, “‘Well, Mike, that’s a very nice thing for you to say.’”

  In the Blue Room, Reagan and Pence sat side by side in matching gilded chairs, which had been placed in front of a fireplace. A French bronze doré clock, acquired by James Madison, kept time on the carved white mantel behind them. When the White House photographer moved in to capture the moment, neither Reagan and Pence struck very different poses. The smiling Reagan set himself in perfect profile with his chin slightly raised and his eyes focused over Pence’s shoulder. He looked like he had his face toward the sun and it had lit him up. Pence, his curly, dark hair cut short, grasped one arm of his chair and looked down at the hands of the seventy-seven-year-old president. In this image, they could have been grandfather and grandson.

  After all the photos were taken, Reagan spoke to the assembly of young Republicans, saying, “Many of you have thanked me for what I did for America, but I want you to know I don’t think I did anything. The American people decided it was time to right the ship, and I was just the captain they put on the bridge when they did it.”

  * * *

  Back home in Indiana, candidate Pence resumed his bike tour, though as the novelty faded, it gained him less and less attention. With no record of his own to defend, Pence played offense on the campaign. He criticized Sharp for taking money from political action committees (PACs), which presumably gave donations in hopes of advancing their interests. Pence vowed not to take any money from PACs, but his wealthy supporters gave him more than $425,000, a sizeable sum at the time and about the same amount that Sharp took in. In a sign of his rookie status, Pence provoked his own campaign finance snafu by repeatedly missing the filing deadline to report on his fund-raising. When he finally did submit his papers to state and federal officials, they were riddled with errors. His campaign aides blamed Pence’s mother and a friend, who had handled these responsibilities. They said the problems were not a matter of intent but rather the result of inexperience and poor arithmetic skills.

  Pence and Sharp differed on basic issues. Pence opposed abortion and wanted it outlawed. Sharp was pro-choice. The voters were so closely divided that neither candidate got much advantage out of any issue, even such a contentious one. For every fervent antiabortion voter who might choose Pence solely on this issue, a comparable number could have voted for Phil Sharp because he was among the first to talk about defending the earth from pollution-caused climate change. In this era, when people were more likely to identify themselves as political moderates than in later years, elections were not likely to be determined by any single issue. Voters tended to pick among individual candidates rather than mark straight party tickets. Pence understood this, saying, “I never had a whole lot of faith in people who said, ‘Vote for me because I’m a Republican or Democrat.’ I think it’s a lot more important to tell who you are and what you stand for. The reason I became a Republican is because it was their ideas I agreed with.”

  Besides his opposition to abortion, Pence advanced a standard Republican platform, which called for increased defense spending, tax cuts, and curbs on federal regulations. Faced with an incumbent who was a whiz at bringing projects home to Indiana, he pledged that getting funds to widen a local highway—he called it “four-laning” the road—would be his number one priority. Of course, there was no reason why Sharp couldn’t deliver the same highway funds, and given his seniority in the party that controlled the Congress, he might have been expected to have an easier time of it.

  As the election drew closer, Pence could not find traction against Sharp. Few voters seemed moved by road projects or his stance on campaign finance. At the same time, his pleasant personality was so similar to Sharp’s that they could have been brothers. When newspaper articles began to note that many voters didn’t seem to know much at all about him, Pence tried to win over Republicans by appealing to party identity. That didn’t work well either. When he complained that Sharp’s votes in Congress too often aligned with his Democratic colleagues, he was met with the fact that Sharp actually voted with House Republicans almost 30 percent of the time. On the opposite side of the ledger, Pence had to admit that he had admired certain Democrats, especially President Kennedy, who “meant something to me because he was a leader and not simply a politician. He stood for a lot of things I believe in. If you look at the record, you’ll see he cut taxes, was strong in defense, and stood up to the Russians.”

  Pence also used the Republican argument that he was more likely than a Democrat to hold strong against America’s adversaries, and he suggested that some of his resolve in life developed in response to hard times in childhood. “I had a lot of experiences in life that were very difficult,” he said. “I was very chubby and unpopular when I was a kid. And I had a hard time keeping up with the rest of the guys my age.” Although he overcame his difficulties, Pence said, “I’ve never forgot what it’s like to be in that position, to be looked down upon because I was fat, or a fourth-string center, or in shop class.” In a state where factory work remained an essential part of the economy, the shop class note probably sounded sour to some voters, but Pence’s intentio
n—to claim that despite all appearances he had experienced some suffering in life—was clear. “Having gone through that,” he continued, “has taught me that every person in this world has value, no matter what their position or status. I’ll never forget that.”

  Pence’s life story, as he recalled it, would have sounded odd to anyone who knew him well. This was the same person who modeled spring clothes as a child, won debates, led the CYO, was elected president of his high school class, and became president of his fraternity at an expensive private college. His family had been sufficiently well off to live in ever-larger homes and to belong to the private country club in Columbus.

  The challenge Pence faced—to connect with voters personally and politically—would have been daunting in a race for city council. In a sprawling rural congressional district with small cities like Muncie and rural expanses of rolling farmland, he could, at best, present a series of clichés about himself. “Conservative, energetic, and earnest young man” was what he chose to offer. Sometimes he tried to mix in a bit of humor, but the tactic came with its own risks. After answering questions at Franklin College, a small liberal arts school, he spotted a student wearing an armband bearing Sharp’s name. “Ah, Hitler Youth, I see,” said the candidate.7