Former Vice President Mike Pence formalized his 2024 presidential candidacy on Monday in rivalry with his former boss, Donald Trump, whom he challenged after the 2020 elections by refusing to suspend the results ratification session in Congress. “Hang Pence!” Trump supporters then shouted as they stormed the Capitol that same day, January 6, 2021, resulting in five deaths in the incident plus two suicides by agents in subsequent days.
Pence is the eighth big-name candidate to step into the 2024 Republican primary arena. The list includes Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and Sen. from the same state Tim Scott.
The Republican race will also feature the former governor of New Jersey and staunch opponent of the former president, Chris Christie, who recently accused him of acting like "a coward" and "a puppet of Vladimir Putin" for refusing to express his support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. Christie announced through the next of him that he would launch his candidacy this Tuesday.
Pence, for his part, will make his launch on Wednesday through a video and a speech in Iowa, where the primaries begin.
Other Republicans who have moved forward or suggested they will enter the internal race include North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
The total number of candidates for the conservative primaries may be close to fortnight, although there may still be changes: not only due to possible resignations but also in relation to the increasingly complicated legal situation of the ex-president, already convicted of sexual assault and defamation of the writer. Jean Carroll, accused of bribing the porn actress Stormy Daniels and pending investigations into the secret papers she took home, the assault on the Capitol and the attempts to falsify the last elections.
The Department of Justice exonerated Pence a few days ago of criminal responsibility for the dozen secret papers that his lawyers found in January at his Indiana home after an inadvertent transfer when he left the vice presidency.
