The Memo: Pence hits new bumps in 2024 road

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s potential quest for the White House hit two bumps in the road within 24 hours Thursday and Friday.

First, news broke that Pence had been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith for information about the period around the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6. 2021.

On Friday, an FBI search of Pence’s Indiana home reportedly found another document bearing classified markings. 

Last month, a small number of such documents had been discovered at the Pence home and were disclosed by his lawyer in a letter to the National Archives.

Friday’s additional search was done with the consent of Pence’s team and lasted five hours.

The documents may ultimately be less consequential to Pence’s political chances than the Jan.6- related subpoena, however.

A subpoena puts Pence in a tricky political spot as he looks toward 2024. 

So far, Pence has sought to position himself as simultaneously proud of Trump’s record in office and critical of the former president’s behavior around Jan. 6.

Pence often refers to the achievements of the “Trump-Pence administration” — a record that he knows appeals to GOP primary voters on immigration, taxation and judicial appointments, among other topics.

But he also makes plain his disagreement with Trump around Jan. 6. Trump had aggressively but wrongly insisted that Pence could have prevented the election results from being certified. When the then-vice president refused to comply, protestors at the Capitol called for him to be hanged.

In an interview with David Muir of ABC News in November, Pence said that Trump’s fiery speech at a rally immediately preceding the riot “endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.” 

He also described the former president’s rhetoric and actions as “reckless.”

Now Pence is confronted with the question of whether to deepen the potential chasm between him and Trump by complying with the subpoena; or to besmirch his own reputation by declining to do so.

After news of the subpoena broke, Trump called Pence “a very honorable man” in an interview with Fox News Digital — praise that raised eyebrows because of Trump’s previous criticisms of Pence, and the perception that the former president could be in real legal peril as the special counsel bores down.

For Pence, “there is a balancing act there, because on the one hand everyone understands what his view is of J6,” said Matt Mackowiak, the chairman of the Travis County, Texas, Republican Party. “On the other, a chunk of the Republican base sees a lot of this stuff as going overboard and being overly harsh.”

Mackowiak added: “If [Pence] is seen as being a willing witness to a process that millions of Americans think is phony, that puts him in an awkward place. And he already is in an awkward place because of the way TrumpWorld looks at him.”

Pence has little room for error if he chooses to plunge into the 2024 race. 

Early polls show him in third place at best in a hypothetical field, trailing far behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). DeSantis has said little publicly about 2024 but is widely expected to make a run.

In an Economist-YouGov poll this week, Pence was the preferred nominee of just eight percent of Republicans, against 42 percent for Trump and 32 percent for DeSantis.

The same poll also indicated Pence is seen unfavorably by 35 percent of Republicans — a notably higher figure than was recorded for Trump or for the other potential 2024 contenders the pollsters tested: DeSantis, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) or Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.)

The impact of the discovery of classified documents has been diluted by the long-running saga involving Trump keeping such information at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago. There have also been the more recent discoveries of classified documents in a Washington, D.C., office once use by President Biden and, later, at the president’s Wilmington, Del., home.

The alacrity with which Biden and Pence both surrendered the relevant documents when they were discovered is very different from Trump, who battled for over a year to keep at least some such documentation in his possession.

Late Friday afternoon, ABC News reported that Trump’s legal team “turned over a folder with classification markings found last month at his Mar-a-Lago resort to federal agents,” a development that had previously been unknown.

Tobe Berkovitz, a Boston University professor emeritus specializing in political communication, said that the classified documents issue “has almost become a yawn for the average voter — and for Pence it’s almost irrelevant.”

But Berkovitz noted Pence faces big challenges at a possible candidate, not least a perceived lack of newness and magnetism.

“He isn’t the name du jour, which is what DeSantis is, and you have other names floating around in the background like [Georgia Gov.] Brian Kemp and certainly Nikki Haley. Pence is known, and often people want the shiny new thing.”

Pence seems to be clearly leaning toward a run, however. 

He will be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday — the same day Haley is expected to formally announce her campaign in South Carolina.

The former vice president, however, is getting hit with new complications at just the wrong moment.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.