WASHINGTON (JTA) — Until the January 6 rebellion, Mike Pence made certain to keep on the identical web page as Donald Trump — besides, typically, when it got here to the Jews.
Both males delighted the pro-Israel institution — Trump by fulfilling a protracted wishlist of Israel’s right-wing authorities, Pence by proving himself as a stalwart Christian Zionist by way of years in elected workplace. But simply weeks after Trump assumed workplace, the distinction in how every man approached Jewish anxieties was already stark.
Jewish neighborhood facilities and different Jewish establishments have been getting bomb threats, and a Jewish journalist requested the US president what he deliberate to do about antisemitism. Trump lashed out, accusing the reporter of mendacity and quipping, “Welcome to the world of the media.”
Every week later, Jews in St. Louis have been reeling after a vandal knocked over over 150 tombstones in a Jewish cemetery. Pence was on the town and took the chance to condemn the bomb threats and the vandalism as “a sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” Then, he headed over to the cemetery, picked up a rake and helped clear up the mess.
Pence’s bid is the longest of pictures. He polls within the low single digits, whereas Trump leads within the polls. The former president routinely depicts Pence as a traitor for not attempting to hand him the election when Pence presided over the certification of the electoral vote on January 6, 2021.
Pence, in the meantime, has mentioned Trump’s conduct that day endangered his household. If Pence does achieve unseating his outdated boss, it is going to be as a result of he’s tapped right into a deep thirst amongst some Republicans for a extra standard candidate to wean the occasion off Trump.
No matter how he does within the race, right here’s what you want to learn about Mike Pence and the Jews.
He has been pro-Israel from the get-go
First elected to the US House of Representatives as an Indiana Republican in 2000, Pence made clear from the outset that defending Israel was amongst his priorities.
“My support for Israel stems largely from my personal faith,” he instructed Congressional Quarterly in 2002. “God promises Abraham, ‘those who bless you, I will bless, and those who curse you, I will curse.’”
In his autobiography revealed final 12 months, “So Help me God,” he credit his curiosity in Israel and in Jewish points to his late sister-in-law, Judy, “an elegant, sophisticated young woman from a prominent Jewish family in Milwaukee” who married his brother, Thomas, “a pickup-driving, dirt bike-riding, banjo-playing country boy from southern Indiana.” Pence wrote, “She made him a better man.”
Then-US Vice President Mike Pence visits a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis following an act of vandalism on the web site. (YouTube screenshot)
For years, he has positioned a quote from the Biblical e book of Jeremiah above the hearth in his private after which his official residences — within the governor’s mansion in Indiana after which within the vice chairman’s residence in Washington, DC: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope, and a future.”
“They’re words to which my family has repaired to as generations of Americans have done so throughout our history, and the people of Israel through all their storied history have clung,” Pence instructed a convention of Christians United for Israel in 2017.
In Congress, Pence took the lead in advancing pro-Israel laws, particularly in defending the barrier Israel constructed chopping by way of parts of the West Bank to defend Israel and a few of its settlements from terrorist assaults. Together with Representative Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat, and the late Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who was the one Holocaust survivor elected to Congress, he co-founded the House’s antisemitism process drive.
Lantos, Pence mentioned in his autobiography, had a profound affect on him. “He and I almost always disagreed on politics, but I was always inspired by his moral clarity and courage,” he wrote. Klein now chairs the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
Then-US Vice President Mike Pence kneels beside his spouse Karen, proper, at a freight automobile as soon as used to transport Jews, throughout their go to to the previous Nazi loss of life camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, February 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
As Indiana governor in 2016, Pence enacted the primary state legislation banning state enterprise with corporations that assist the boycott, divestment and sanctions motion concentrating on Israel, referred to as BDS. The invoice additionally utilized to companies that boycott Israel’s settlements — one of many first items of laws to erase the road between Israel and the West Bank.
Later that 12 months, the Republican Jewish Coalition effusively praised Pence’s choice as Trump’s working mate, calling him “a critical leader and important voice regarding Israel during his time in the House and as governor.”
He attended each coverage convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee through the Trump administration; Trump averted all of them.
His evangelical beliefs form his home coverage
One of essentially the most outstanding problems with the 2024 election shall be abortion, following the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade final 12 months. The determination gave states the authority to decide reproductive rights and led to the swift narrowing of abortion entry in lots of states. On abortion and different points together with LGBTQ rights, Pence departs from many of the Jewish neighborhood, the place assist for abortion entry and LGBTQ points are excessive.
Numerous Republicans — chief amongst them Trump — imagine that the occasion ought to take the win and never pursue additional abortion restrictions, arguing that the choice final 12 months contributed to Republican losses within the midterm elections.
Not Pence: he needs to ban abortion nationwide. “Having been given this second chance for life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land,” he mentioned after the courtroom’s determination.
Pence additionally has a protracted profession of opposing LGBTQ rights. When he was governor, he sought to exempt Indiana from a Supreme Court ruling recognizing same-sex marriages. As a congressman, he opposed funding for outreach to HIV sufferers that he mentioned promoted homosexual life. (His dealing with of an HIV outbreak in Indiana is known to have worsened it.)
As Indiana governor in 2015, Pence signed one of the crucial far-reaching state legal guidelines permitting companies to decline to serve LGBTQ clients. Businesses threatened to boycott the state, and he quickly signed modified laws that elevated protections for LGBTQ folks.
Then-US Vice President Mike Pence bows his head in prayer throughout a dialogue with native religion leaders to encourage them to resume in-person church providers in a accountable trend in response to the coronavirus pandemic, May 8, 2020, in Urbandale, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Months later, Pence was dealing with questions on why he pushed by way of the legislation from the Republican Jewish Coalition, a bunch that developments average on social points and whose director mentioned members had “a lot of questions” concerning the laws. His tone was apologetic. “Ultimately we adopted a few reforms and made it clear this was a shield, not a sword,” he mentioned of the invoice.
He was the Trump administration’s prime trauma whisperer for the Jews
During his time as vice chairman, Pence was typically the favored spokesman when tragedy befell the Jews.
In 2018, at a Trump administration non secular freedom occasion, Pence singled out the threats of violence confronted by Jews in Europe, together with in international locations seen as allies by Trump.
“While religious freedom is always in danger in authoritarian regimes, threats to religious minorities are not confined to autocracies or dictatorships,” he mentioned “They can, and do, arise in free societies, as well — not from government persecution but from prejudice and hatred.”
The identical 12 months, he mentioned he was “sickened and appalled” at Nazi graffiti on an Indiana synagogue he knew properly.
In 2019, he and his spouse visited the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, after a lethal assault by a white supremacist. “We had to come,” he instructed the rabbi.
(From L-R) Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein blesses US Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence on the Chabad of Poway on July 10, 2019. (Screen seize/Twitter)
The identical 12 months, he toured Auschwitz and the following 12 months, he attended the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
Some efforts to mark Jewish tragedy went awry. In 2018, when Pence marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jewish figures chided him for imbuing Christian imagery in his celebration of Israel’s founding within the wake of the Holocaust. “A few days ago, Karen & I paid our respects at Yad Vashem to honor the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust who 3 years after walking beneath the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future,” he mentioned on Twitter.
It was not the final time a Pence occasion would carry Christian themes into Jewish mourning. Pence was scheduled on Oct. 29, 2018, to marketing campaign in Michigan for a Jewish Republican working for Congress, Leah Epstein.
Two days earlier, a gunman massacred 11 Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the worst-ever assault on Jews in US historical past. Epstein invited a Messianic Jewish chief to ship a prayer. Messianic Jews, who name their non secular leaders rabbis, imagine within the divinity of Jesus, and Jewish teams took offense. That led Pence’s of us to scramble to inform reporters that he was unaware that the rabbi was not, the truth is, Jewish.
Pence was not among the many many Trump administration figures and supporters who urged the president to stroll again his “very fine people on both sides” equivocation after a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 by which a counter-protester was killed. The vice chairman defended his boss: “I stand with the president,” he mentioned when requested about Trump’s statements.
Trump-Pence vs. Trump
Pence, more and more at odds along with his former boss since their January 6, 2021, falling-out, has a singular method of distinguishing Good Trump from Bad Trump: He portrays the administration’s wins as “Trump-Pence” insurance policies, whereas the not-so-salutary stuff is Trump’s alone.
That dynamic was in proof final November on the annual convention of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, when Pence was amongst an array of presidential potential candidates to communicate, together with DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Trump himself.
Moving the embassy to Jerusalem? “Trump-Pence.” “It was the Trump-Pence administration that kept our word to the American people and our most cherished ally, when we moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the state of Israel,” Pence mentioned.
Then-US president Donald Trump speaks within the press briefing room as then-vice president Mike Pence listens, November 24, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
As for Trump’s false claims that he gained the 2020 election? Pence didn’t straight title the previous president, however differentiated himself from him.
“The American people must know that our party keeps our oath to the Constitution even when political expediency may suggest that we do otherwise,” Pence mentioned then. “We must be the leaders to keep our oath even when it hurts.”
Will he get Jewish funding?
Until submitting papers on Monday, Pence’s essential car for fundraising has been a 501(c)4, a political advocacy group that’s not required to reveal donors or intensive monetary data. Advancing American Freedom has mentioned its intention is to elevate tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to promote Pence’s favored conservative causes.
Now that he’s within the race, it is going to be attention-grabbing to watch the place Pence attracts Jewish assist. One clue could also be in a aircraft trip: Last 12 months, Pence went on a marketing campaign type tour of Israel and Ukraine. Loaning him the aircraft was Miriam Adelson, the widow of on line casino magnate and Republican kingmaker Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson has since mentioned she’s not planning to get entangled within the GOP primaries.
