The Republican Party primaries are encouraged. Following the rocky arrival of Florida Gov. Ron de Santis and Sen. Tim Scott last week, several more candidates are preparing to take the plunge. Among them stands out Mike Pence, who was vice president with Donald Trump. Pence, who faced his boss in the last stretch of the presidency by certifying the victory of Joe Biden, will take the step on Wednesday, June 7 with an act in Des Moines (Iowa). On Tuesday the 6th, Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey and prominent anti-Trump supporter, is scheduled to enter the race.
The main beneficiary of the flood of candidates willing to challenge Donald Trump may end up being the former president himself. The fact that many take the step shows that they do not see him in as solid a position as the polls suggest. At the same time, the division of the vote between different alternatives may end up ensuring his victory.
In addition to Ron DeSantis and the only black Republican senator, Tim Scott; The former governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchison; the billionaire biotech entrepreneur and scourge of ideology woke Vivek Ramaswamy; former US Ambassador to the UN and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley; fellow businessman Perry Johnson; political commentator Larry Elder, and politician and businessman Rollan Roberts, son of the West Virginia senator of the same name. Pence and Christie are now added to the list. In addition, other names sound, some as probable, others more speculative, such as the governors of North Dakota, Doug Burgum; from New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, and from Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, among others.
Primary rules in many states state that the winner takes all the delegates. Even where the Trumpists are not a majority among Republican primary voters, it will be difficult for all the dissenting vote to be concentrated in a single candidate. In any case, the experience of previous primaries shows that many of the candidates throw in the towel at the first exchange if they do poorly.
Mike Pence is scheduled for an interview with CNN in prime time next Wednesday. The news channel announcements do not say so openly, but suggest that it is an interview on the occasion of his candidacy. The format, with public assistance, will be similar to that of the controversial interview with Donald Trump a few weeks ago and will be broadcast live from Iowa, the first state where Republican voters express their preferences in the primary race.
It has been another rival chain, NBC, which has announced that on that day Pence will make his candidacy official with the broadcast of a video and with an electoral act in Des Moines, the capital and most populous city in the State, with some 210,000 inhabitants.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
The former vice president, a traditional conservative, has a difficult position in the Republican Party, where he became one of the most hated characters by the most staunch supporters of Donald Trump for his refusal to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election, in which the former president had been defeated by Democrat Joe Biden.
Pence was a front-row witness to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He refused to comply with Trump’s request to stop the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress on January 6. That refusal earned him the ire of his boss and his followers. The mob chanted “let’s hang Mike Pence” as they forced their way towards the Capitol. Later videos showed how he lived through those tense hours, in the company at times of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Because of what happened those days, Pence has had to testify before a grand jury investigating Trump. He filed an appeal to avoid it, but lost. However, Pence managed to extricate himself from testifying specifically about his performances on January 6, 2021, the date of the storming of the Capitol. He alleged that on January 6 he was exercising his role as president of the Senate and that forcing him to testify violated the so-called “expression or debate clause” that protects congressmen from accounting for his parliamentary actions.
An enemy of Trump
The other candidate making the move next week is former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who also ran in 2016. He plans to introduce his candidacy at a public event Tuesday night at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Saint Anselm. College, according to Axios. Several Christie advisers have launched a political action committee to support his candidacy.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor, was a longtime friend and adviser to Trump, but broke with him over his refusal to accept the 2020 election results. Since then, Christie has become one of the former president’s leading critics, running to the primaries willing to face him openly, unlike other candidates who keep a balance so as not to anger their voters. Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential race one day after placing sixth in the New Hampshire primary. He barely appears in the polls this year either.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
#Mike #Pence #Trumps #vice #president #finalizes #candidacy #president