DES MOINES, Iowa — When Vice President Mike Pence arrived at Westkirk Church in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday, his mission was to hear how faith leaders planned to return to normal services as coronavirus restrictions are lifted.
But as he crisscrosses the country highlighting work to reopen the country, his official visits are taking him to Midwest manufacturing centers, faith communities, Main Street businesses, and battleground states that will decide November’s election. And there is a longer-term benefit for a figure assumed to have 2024 presidential ambitions.
“Make no mistake, this is all about coronavirus,” said a senior administration official. “But it wouldn’t be unusual for official visits to have a secondary strategic purpose.”
That was apparent on Friday when Pence traveled to Iowa, where President Trump’s advantage is slipping and Democrats believe they can snatch Joni Ernst’s Senate seat. He met religious leaders, including evangelical Christians who constituted a key part of the Trump 2016 coalition, and thanked them for playing their part in the pandemic response.
“You know, I think of that verse that says, ‘Don’t absent yourself from the assembly, as some are in the habit of doing,’” he said, as Ernst looked on from a socially distanced seat. “Well, we’ve all been required, because of social distancing, to absent ourselves of being able to gather, whether it be on Saturday or on Sunday or on a Wednesday night.
“And that’s been a burden. It’s been a source of heartache for people across the country.”
His second stop was the headquarters of Hy-Vee, a regional supermarket chain, to hear how grocers, farmers, and meat processors kept food supply chains moving.
“I really am grateful, and I’m really inspired by the example of each one of you have shown, whether it’s people who work in the cash register in a grocery store, whether it’s truckers putting in the long miles,” he said. “Each one of you have been a part of our one mission, one team approach.”
Before COVID-19 upended campaign plans, Pence had settled into a campaign role delivering carefully directed messages to core audiences such as faith communities or farmers at intimate events. While President Trump appeared at televised rallies, Pence chatted with supporters at heartland diners.
Tom LoBianco, author of the Pence biography Piety and Power, said the vice president had continued that role with key constituencies during visits to swing states.
“Like any good Rose Garden incumbent strategy, is it strictly political? Is it strictly government business? The answer is no, it’s both,” he said. “It’s always both.”
So, when Pence visited leading clinicians and pathologists at a world-leading medical facility, it was the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, a state targeted by the Trump campaign as flippable for the first time since President Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide.
Last month, it was a GE Healthcare facility that had ramped up production of ventilators in Wisconsin, one of the states that delivered Trump’s 2016 win.
Other destinations, such as Washington state and Indiana, may not be battlegrounds, but the exposure brings advantages for Pence’s longer game, said LoBianco.
If Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, had struggled to keep pace from his basement with Trump’s White House bully pulpit, then so, too, had Pence’s one-time chief rival in the shadow campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“Prior to COVID-19, Pence’s chief opponent in the shadow campaign for 2024 was Nikki Haley,” he said. “COVID-19 washed her out of the scene.”
Pence began stepping up his travel last month. Officials said the trips are all about preparing people to go back to work and demonstrating that the country can reopen safely.
For his part, the vice president has batted away questions about political considerations. When asked by WCCO, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, how important Minnesota was to reelection plans, he said his only mission was to save lives.
“But I have to tell you, we’re not thinking a lot about politics these days or even elections,” he said. “We’re spending all of our time thinking about the health and well-being of the American people.”
