Mike Pence

Former Vice President Mike Pence promised “the best days of the greatest nation on earth are yet to come” in the video formally launching his campaign for the Republican nomination for president. The move pits him against Donald Trump, the man he served in the White House for four years from 2017 to 2021. Pence and his advisers see Iowa — the state that will cast the first votes of the GOP nominating calendar — as key to his potential pathway to the nomination. His campaign will test the party’s appetite for a socially conservative, mild-mannered and deeply religious candidate who has denounced the populist tide that has swept through his party under former President Donald Trump, from whom he has distanced himself since the US Capitol riots in January 2021.