COMMENTARY: Pence appears ready to embrace new role in supporting Trump

If chosen as Trump’s running mate, the governor and former congressman would be called upon to rally conservative and evangelical voters behind the Republican Party’s unorthodox candidate for president.

It was unclear Wednesday if Pence had convinced Trump to pull him out of the Statehouse and onto the GOP ticket. The two were meeting just hours after campaigning together at a rally the night before, where Trump speculated on Pence’s prospects by telling supporters, “I don’t know if he’s going to be your governor or your vice president.”

Trump was also meeting Wednesday with another possible running mate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, at an Indianapolis hotel.

For Pence, a decision must come soon. He faces a deadline of noon Friday to drop his re-election bid for governor, to give Republicans a chance to field another candidate in hopes of keeping the office in the party.

For Trump, the decision may rest on whether he wants a flashier, more combative candidate, such as Gingrich or if he wants a man described as a reliably staunch conservative given to bragging that he was a tea partier before the Tea Party was cool.

DEMOCRATIC ROOTS

A native of Columbus Pence was born in 1959 and grew up in a family of Irish Catholic Democrats who revered John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected president.

At age 15, he lead the Young Democrats in his home county. Pence admits that he voted for Democrat Jimmy Carter in his 1980 landslide loss to Ronald Reagan.

Even before that vote, Pence was undergoing a political transformation.

Pence credits his conversion to his studies at Hanover College.

He studied American history, with a strong focus on the Founding Father’s original writings. It was there, he’s often said, that he learned the virtues of limited government that eventually led him to the Republican Party.

HAPPY WARRIOR

Despite the partisan leanings of his youth, Pence has remained a steadfast conservative for decades.

Early in his six-term tenure in Congress, in 2001, he bucked Republican President George W. Bush by voting against the sweeping No Child Left Behind Act, which sought to raise education standards. Pence argued that it was an unfunded mandate that would lengthen the federal government’s tentacles.

He opposed Bush’s 2003 expansion of the Medicare prescription plan; voted against Bush’s $700 billion bank bailout in 2008; and called for the federal government in 2011, under President Barack Obama, to stop its funding of Planned Parenthood.

But Pence embraced the role of happy warrior in doing so. In a 2012 interview, as he was running for governor, he recalled his tenure on Capitol Hill with fondness.

“When I wrap up my career in the House, I’ll leave Congress with warm personal relationships on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “I’ve always believed you can disagree without being disagreeable.”

DIVISIVE ISSUES

Pence vowed when he took office to focus on jobs and education, though he also campaigned on a description of himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order.”

He was soon pulled into divisive social issues.

Pence backed tougher abortion measures; opposed efforts to undo a state ban on same-sex marriage; and was slow to allow public health officials to implement a needle-exchange program when an HIV epidemic erupted among drug users in a rural Indiana county.

Tension at the Statehouse reached a boiling point last year, when Pence signed a religious freedom bill that critics said would allow businesses to deny services to gays and lesbians.

The legislation set off a storm of criticism that forced Pence to sign a follow-up bill clarifying the law’s intent.

Soon after, as Pence was getting ready to announce his re-election bid, a poll conducted by Republican Christine Matthews of Bellweather Research found that 54 percent of Indiana voters said they wanted a new governor.

Pence’s poll numbers have since recovered, with the latest showing him slightly ahead of his Democratic opponent John Gregg.

If Pence steps away from the race to join Trump’s ticket, by Indiana law he’d have to pull his name from the governor’s race, triggering a process that would compel the 24-member Republican Party state committee to choose his replacement.

LATE ENDORSEMENT

Unlike Gingrich, who voiced early support for Trump, Pence has been a relative late-comer to the campaign.

Pence endorsed Trump only after his first pick, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, dropped out of the race. But Pence has since been effusive in his praise for Trump, while encouraging reluctant Republicans to get on board the Trump train, as well.

“I think Donald Trump is the kind of leader and the kind of fighter who’s going to bring about the change we need in D.C., so the prosperity we’re seeing here in Indiana can be the prosperity we enjoy all across the U.S.,” he said this week.