Pence puts policy first as he weighs future campaign

NEW YORK — Former Vice President Mike Pence is offering a “Freedom Agenda” platform for Republicans ahead of this year’s midterm elections, presenting a framework for GOP candidates — and possibly himself for a 2024 presidential run.

Pence’s platform, released Thursday, combines traditional Republican goals such as increasing American energy production, cutting taxes and rolling back regulations, with priorities pursued by former President Donald Trump on issues like trade and immigration.

Pence also offers plenty of culture war red meat for the GOP base, pledging, for instance, to save women’s sports by “ensuring that sports competitions are between those who share their God-given gender” and calling for all high school students to pass a civics test.

“Elections are about the future, and I think it’s absolutely essential that, while we do our part to take the fight to the failed policies of the Biden administration and the radical left, at the same time, we want to offer a compelling vision built on our highest American ideals,” Pence told reporters ahead of the plan’s release. “It really is an effort to put in one place the agenda that I think carried us to the White House in 2016, carried two Bush presidencies to the White House and carried Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980.“

While Pence in recent weeks has worked to distance himself from his former boss as he begins to reintroduce himself to voters and develop a political identity of his own, he has also been careful to tie himself to the policies of the TrumpPence administration, which remain extremely popular among Republican voters.

“There is a winning coalition for America that believes in the traditionally conservative values that the vice president has championed through his career,” said Marc Short, co-chair of Advancing American Freedom, the advocacy group Pence launched last year.

Still, Pence argues that “elections are about the future,” in contrast to Trump’s continued focus on his own false 2020 election claims.

Pence’s plan comes as the GOP has been at odds over the wisdom of offering voters a concrete policy agenda ahead of the midterm elections this year. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has opposed such efforts, arguing that Republicans should keep the focus on President Biden, whose popularity has slumped amid the highest inflation in 40 years and the Russian war in Ukraine, and make the election a referendum on him.

Andrew Harnik / Associated Press 2020 Former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, appear at the Republican National Convention from Baltimore in 2020. He is offering a “Freedom Agenda” platform.