2024 GOP presidential candidate Mike Pence can’t even qualify to get on stage for the third GOP presidential debate, and people are asking why he’s even still running anymore.
The Republican National Committee requires that candidates in the November 8 debate show at least 4% support in two polls and get 70,000 individual contributors. Pence has gotten a few polls showing him at three to five percent support, but Politico reports that Pence hasn’t gotten campaign cash from 70,000 donors yet.
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Pence appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, and host Kristen Welker brought up how he might not meet the financial requirement by the November 6 deadline.
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“If you don’t qualify for this next debate, will you drop out of the race?” she asked.
“Well, we’re working really hard to qualify for the debate,” Pence replied. “And, um, I’m gonna be down in Miami, lots of people are going to MikePence2024.com and making a contribution to give us the numbers in contributions that we need to qualify, but, uh, you know, I- I- I will tell you, look, I don’t have the most money in this campaign, but I do have the most experience.”
The third debate’s stage may be substantially less crowded than the first two. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), like Pence, has met the polling requirement but not the financial requirement. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) hasn’t met either requirement yet. The RNC, though, won’t announce who is eligible for another two weeks.
Pence has spent his career opposing LGBTQ+ equality, including when he said in his 2000 campaign for the House of Representatives that he wanted to redirect funding from HIV prevention programs to conversion therapy in order to stop the spread of HIV.
In 2004, as a member of the U.S. House, Pence voted for a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality. Justifying his position, he said, “Marriage is the glue of the family and the safest harbor for children.”
When he was a member of the U.S. House, Pence voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have banned employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act multiple times.
Pence said that expanding federal hate crimes law to include LGBTQ+ people was part of Barack Obama’s “radical social agenda.”
Federal hate crimes legislation had already been around for decades, but adding LGBTQ+ people to it was “radical”?
Pence voted against repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the law that banned gay and bi people from serving openly in the military. Pence said, “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service because the presence of homosexuals in the ranks weakens unit cohesion.”
In fact, Pence’s record in Congress is so anti-LGBTQ+ that he got a score of “O” on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard every single year he was in office.
As governor of Indiana, he didn’t get much better. In 2013, he said that he was “disappointed” that the Supreme Court overturned part of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex relationships.
“I believe marriage is the union between a man and a woman and is a unique institution worth defending in our state and nation,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
He also repeatedly blocked passage of a hate crimes law in Indiana. The state is one of only five without hate crime protections for minorities.
As vice president, he has given a keynote address at an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group conference, refused to mention LGBTQ+ people during his World AIDS Day addresses, gave a speech at a conference about “how gender ideology harms children,” and is rumored to be one of the chief architects behind the transgender military ban.
While Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in the primary at 59% support according to Real Clear Politics’s average of polls, he too will not appear at the third debate. Trump will instead hold a rally in Florida at the same time. Trump skipped the first two debates as well.
