Pence had voted against the Obama administration’s auto industry bailout in 2009 after the Bush-era financial meltdown, noted Gregg.Mourdock had sued the federal government to shut down a Chrysler plant in Indiana. “Congressman, that ain’t a prop,” Gregg charged. “That’s 120,000 Hoosier jobs that the Pence-Mourdock ticket didn’t lift one finger to help.”8
Analysts said Gregg had roundly won the debate. GREGG PUMMELS PENCE, read one headline. In the waning days of October polls showed Pence’s lead shrinking; the separation between the candidates was approaching 5 percent. Some of Pence’s trouble was being attributed to a third-party candidate, Libertarian Rupert Boneham, who was more appealing to Republicans than Democrats and whose votes would mostly be taking away from Pence’s total. Gregg, in a parting shot, said he was not surprised that he was doing so well. “I’m not painting him as an extremist,” Gregg told The Indianapolis Star a few days before the election. “He painted himself that way.”9
On November 6, Pence won the governorship by about 3 percentage points in a much weaker showing than early polling had indicated. Gregg fared well in traditional urban strongholds, notably Indianapolis itself, but more conservative suburbs and rural areas gave Pence a victory margin of around 70,000 votes out of 2.5 million cast. At the top of the ballot voters gave a much wider margin of victory to Mitt Romney, who defeated President Obama in the state by a 10 percent margin. Richard Mourdock could not overcome his extremist declarations on rape and abortion and was defeated by Joe Donnelly. After Gregg called Pence to congratulate him on the victory, Pence issued a statement with familiar wording; he said he and his running mate, Sue Ellspermann, were “profoundly humble and grateful for the confidence that has been placed in us.”
In retrospect, Pence’s supporters had been wise to downplay his social conservatism and evangelical fervor in what had been a mostly civilized campaign with only a few sparks generated in debates. Pence would go to the Indiana Statehouse facing suspicion from not only the Democratic minority but from many Republican legislators who also thought that Pence was more unyielding and right-wing than the GOP mainstream. They were wrong, however. The Republican Party was making a historic shift itself—to the extreme right.
8
HEAD HOOSIER
Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
—Psalm 82:3–4
On the clear but freezing-cold morning of January 14, 2013, Mike and Karen Pence awoke for the last time in their controversial “professional” residence in the McCordsville suburb of Indianapolis. As the couple and their children got ready for an eventful day, close friends and family arrived for pastry and hot coffee and prayers. A reporter for Pence’s hometown newspaper, The Republic, was on hand to chronicle the governor-elect’s movements as if it were a mission to the moon. It was nothing more than the unremarkable inauguration of a new governor in a midwestern state on a typically cold winter morning, but the newspaper breathlessly reported each step of the way with time-stamped entries.1
8:16 A.M. Mike, Karen, and their eldest child, Mike Jr., exited the McCordsville house. The governor-elect wore a gray wool coat and bright blue tie. Karen wore a bright red coat and black hat. They boarded a Black Chevy Tahoe and rode with a State Police escort to Indianapolis’ Union Station, the historic nineteenth-century terminal that is one of the oldest railroad hubs in the world.
8:55 A.M. The Tahoe reached Union Station, where daughters Audrey and Charlotte joined them among a throng of well-wishers. A cheer went up with a standing ovation when Mike introduced Karen to the crowd: “the love of my life,” who “loves God, her family and the people of Indiana.”
10 A.M. The Pence family arrived at State House to receive greetings and handshakes and then joined dignitaries on the steps of the State House, a Neoclassical gem built to replace one that had been so poorly constructed its roof collapsed.
11:04 A.M. Pence’s long-time friend The Rev. Charles Lake, offers an invocation, praying that Mike might stay true to conviction over compromise.
11:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time (10:26 in the Central time zone counties) Pence, left hand on the Bible and right hand raised, takes the oath of office.
11:30 A.M. He stepped to the lectern decorated with the state seal which depicts a woodsman chopping down a tree, a buffalo jumping over a log and the sun setting in the distance.
Fifteen hundred people had gathered to hear the governor’s first address. To many, his specific policy plans, if they existed at all, were a mystery. During the campaign, which had been mainly concerned with signaling his identity as a Christian conservative, Pence had not said much about specific actions he intended to take. Even fellow Republicans were uninformed. They weren’t going to learn much more in this moment, as Pence said little about what he would do in office. Instead, he spoke about values and the fact that the transition of power from one governor to the next had been accomplished through peaceful means (as if this hadn’t always been true):
Fellow Hoosiers, for the 50th time in our state’s storied history, a new administration has peaceably taken office as a living testament to the strength of our constitution and the character of our people. Young and old, city and country, rich and poor. We are all Hoosiers.2
A homespun magic word, Hoosier was a term with no firmly established origin story or definition, but most agreed that it was a wholesome, perhaps even, in the way of salt-of-the-earth midwestern folks, a superior thing to be. Boosters and cheerleaders used the word often, as did headline writers and politicians. Abraham Lincoln grew up there; Eugene Debs and Booth Tarkington were born Hoosiers. More recent notables included David Letterman, Michael Jackson and his siblings, and Kurt Vonnegut. In Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut wrote that Hoosiers could be regarded as a granfalloon, which was a word he coined to describe “a proud and meaningless association of human beings.” He wrote, “If you wish to examine a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.”
A granfalloon could create an attachment or identity that made life seem more substantial and less random. Vonnegut, who was born and raised in Indianapolis, wrote about this quality in a way that was both teasing and warm. In one passage, his narrator encounters a woman from Indiana:
“My God,” she said, “are you a Hoosier?”
I admitted I was.
“I’m a Hoosier, too,” she crowed. “Nobody has to be ashamed of being a Hoosier.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I never knew anybody who was.” 3
Certainly without intending to do so, Pence echoed Vonnegut in an inaugural address that was heavy on greetings and expressions of gratitude—for everyone from his children to God—and included a recitation of the state’s history. Aside from vague promises of progress, Pence didn’t pledge himself to a single detailed proposal. However, he did use the word Hoosier seventeen times in thirteen minutes.
“Hoosiers are willing to do hard work,” he said; “patriotism and individual responsibility exemplify Hoosier character”; “Hoosiers have strong opinions and stronger hearts”; “Hoosiers are the best people on earth.”
In a gesture to numb fingers and frozen toes, the new governor noted, “the air is cold, so let’s get back inside and get to work!” and retreated to his new office on the second floor. Appointed in wood with gilded details, the office occupied the south end of the statehouse building. Once he reached his teakwood desk—it had been fashioned from the deck of the World War II–era battleship USS Indiana—he turned to the reporters who had followed him inside. He pointed to a shiny red telephone, which had just been installed, and explained that it was a “hotline” connecting him to one person: Indiana’s new First Lady, Karen Sue Batten Pence. Where others may have been satisfied with private cell phones, the Pences would be hardwired together.
The First Lady would have her own office in the statehouse. It was just down the hall from her husband’s, equidistant from the
rotunda at the center of the building, but on the north side. A substantial suite with a reception area and conference area, it previously had been home to the state budget director. Karen, too, had a red phone on her desk.
Other First Ladies had worked from a small office in the official governor’s residence. Karen Pence would be the first to keep an office in the statehouse. The choice to make room for Karen at the capitol was like Bill Clinton’s decision to devote prime space at the White House to his wife, Hillary. It said something important about the relationship. The Pences may have presented themselves to the world as conservative Christians with 1950s sentiments about gender roles, but they were modern enough to be comfortable showing themselves to be a team. They were both keenly interested in politics and power, and she was his most trusted advisor.
Unlike the Clintons, who were so wonky it seemed that their pillow talk must have been about government business, the Pences were hardly consumed with policy matters. As close friends and political allies came to see, the Pences were committed first to the idea that God had decided that Mike Pence was destined for greatness. The Lord’s calling had been personal, not political, which meant Pence was a man of faith, not party. This was why he said so frequently that he was a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order. How far did God want him to go? To place a limit on it would be to thwart His will, which explains why the governor sometimes prefaced a decision with a question: What would help me most to become president?
The first big decision made by Governor Pence involved turning down funding to expand Indiana’s Medicaid program under the federal Affordable Care Act. Branded as “Obamacare” by Republicans who saw the president’s name as a slur, the ACA provided nine federal dollars for every one that a state dedicated to expanding its health care program for the poor. Rejecting the money, and the care it provided citizens, became a way for Republican governors to demonstrate their disdain for Obamacare. In the end, however, many, including Pence, would find ways to tweak their state programs in order to take the money and increase Medicaid rolls while also appearing to push back against Obama.4
* * *
In his work with the state legislature, Pence focused on seeking a 10 percent cut in the state income tax and sought tougher penalties for people who were caught possessing marijuana. Such tax cuts were being pushed by the Koch-created advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which had announced a nationwide campaign to get state lawmakers to reduce taxes. On the issue of pot legislation, Pence’s fellow Republicans were actually determined to reduce punishments and went ahead with their plans but appeased Pence by taking a more gradual approach. On taxes, Pence got far less than he wanted—the rate was reduced from 3.4 percent to 3.3 percent. This would yield $1 per week for a person making $50,000 a year. However, other parts of the tax-cut plan reduced corporate levies more substantially and eliminated state taxes on inheritances. For the small number of wealthy people who would have paid the inheritance tax, the change produced a $150 million annual benefit.5
Although his own party controlled the legislature, Pence hadn’t come close to getting what he wanted. Nevertheless, like George W. Bush on the deck of the aircraft carrier Lincoln during the Iraq War, he declared victory anyway. “At the end of the day,” he said, “I think the tax relief that we crafted together is better than what I was proposing.”6 Lawmakers noticed the disconnect between the policy sausage produced by the political process and the way Pence regarded it as a prime fillet. However, the governor’s sunny statement, simple and direct, established a record that he could return to again and again with pride. The tax cut, which was included in a state budget bill, would become part of the legend of Mike Pence, and only a patient study of actual events would refute his claim that it was a win. And anyone who challenged Pence’s version of the story could be dismissed as a partisan or a nitpicker. Harsh criticism out in the open was not the Hoosier way, especially if the target seemed to be a nice guy.
For Pence, niceness wasn’t passive. It was weaponized as a tool of persuasion and deflection. At the start of his term, he decided he would expose every legislator to his personal charm, and he managed in the first hundred days to have one-on-one meetings with 90 percent of them. He met twice with the capitol’s black caucus, which was once more than Daniels had managed in eight years. This personal outreach was accomplished even as Pence (and his wife, Karen) adopted a work style that called for very few late nights or missed family dinners. Supporters, opponents, and neutral observers all said that Pence didn’t seem to be very attentive. At one point, the governor and his entire staff departed Indianapolis for a leadership retreat and left a handwritten note saying, “Closed for the day.” A charitable view would regard Pence’s work habits as relaxed. A less charitable assessment would hold that he was more interested in the status of the job than the job itself.7
“He kept banker’s hours while he was governor,” recalled Ann DeLaney, who was once head of the Democratic Party in the state. “You didn’t want to have a crisis on a weekend because there wouldn’t be anybody in the office. I’ve worked in the governor’s office. And that can be a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.” DeLaney saw, in Pence, a combination of traits ill-suited to the executive branch of government. “This is going to sound pretty uncharitable. But my impression of Mike is that he does not like to work very hard, and he’s not that intellectually curious. I mean, the Bible is nice. I’m happy for him that he reads the Bible. But he needs to read other things besides that. It’s my impression that he doesn’t.”8
If Pence was diffident when it came to his job, he was much invested in his stylistic approach to being governor. He ordered up a collection of custom-embroidered clothes—dress shirts, polo shirts, and vests and jackets—decorated with his name and the words Governor of Indiana. Some of these garments also bore the state symbol, which included a gold torch and nineteen stars, indicating it was the nineteenth state admitted to the union. No previous Indiana governor had acquired an official wardrobe of this sort, but U.S. presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower (who had designed his own military uniforms) had worn bomber-style jackets decorated with official seals. President Obama looked great in his bomber jacket, and Governor Pence would look fine in his specially designed wardrobe.9
The signs and symbols aligned with long-standing speculation about Pence’s national ambitions. In the spring of 2013, Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post ranked him seventh in a list of top ten contenders for the GOP nomination in 2016. (Among the others were New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush.) As a first-term governor of a midwestern state far from the spotlight, Pence started behind many other hopefuls when it came to visibility and experience. However, he had already consulted with and impressed national pollster Kellyanne Conway, and he was a favorite of the Koch brothers and all those who followed their lead. (In 2010 and 2012, David Koch alone donated $200,000 to Pence’s campaigns.)10
* * *
National and even international contacts would be essential if Pence sought the presidency, and he began traveling overseas almost as soon as he took office. In 2013, he went to Japan, where Karen and his daughter Charlotte shopped the Ginza district and discovered Vera Bradley handbags (an Indiana-based brand) for sale. In the spring of 2014, he went to Germany, where, among other stops, he visited the U.S. Ramstein Air Base, where “on behalf of all Hoosiers,” he praised the “Hoosier troops [who] play an integral role in the operations of our military forces in Europe.” On this visit Pence criticized President Obama’s foreign policy. This critique broke the rules of decorum that bar American officials from criticizing their government while abroad, and suggested that he was more interested in foreign policy than Hoosier matters. He also said this about Russia: “With Russian aggression on the rise again, it is clear that our policy of conciliatory diplomacy has failed.” Pence continued, “Especially now, I believe it is imperative that we who believe in democracy and freedom, stand against the forces that
would reshape Europe by aggression.”
Six months later, Governor Pence would visit Israel, where he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States would be a strong security partner. In China, the United Kingdom, and Canada Pence’s missions amounted to preparation for someone who might soon be asked about foreign policy and who could then answer with delight that he had just come back from a fact-finding mission abroad.
The trips, which were sometimes followed by announcements about foreign firms investing in Indiana, often included large delegations of state officials. (Dozens accompanied Pence to Japan.) It was not possible to say whether the business deals reached on these trips would have been achieved without the governor’s efforts. However, critics couldn’t complain about the cost to taxpayers. The nonprofit Indiana Economic Development Foundation paid for Pence’s international forays. The money was donated by corporations that covered everything from the international flights to hotels and meals. Among the top-ten donors were five utilities, including Duke Energy and Indianapolis Power & Light. The same foundation, and thus these same firms, paid for Pence’s domestic travel as well. One trip to New York City included a visit to Yankee Stadium that cost $24,000.11
At home, Pence refined his skills in news conferences at the Indiana Statehouse and interviews in which he demonstrated he could talk at length without really answering a question. Most galling, recalled longtime Indianapolis Star reporter Mary Beth Schneider, was the way Pence “would always preface his unclear answer by saying, ‘Well, let me be clear.’” In one instance, she and her colleagues asked about a simple state budget item, and the governor drove the “entire press corps absolutely nuts. We kept asking him the same question over and over and over again. And even though he kept saying how he was being clear, we did not know what the answer was at all.” In another instance, Brian Howey, dean of the political press corps, asked Pence what he thought of giving tax breaks to homeowners instead of businesses. Pence passed the question off to his aides. No answer ever came.12
The Shadow President Page 17