Former Vice President Mike Pence announced on Monday that he has finally met the requirements to appear onstage at the upcoming Republican primary debate. Pence will now join seven other candidates in Milwaukee on August 23.
Pence’s team announced that he now surpassed the 40,000 individual donors required to participate in the debate. Currently polling at roughly 5% support in national polls, Pence met the polling requirement weeks ago but struggled to pull in donors at the beginning of his campaign.
Pence announces he’s reached donor threshold to qualify for first Republican presidential debate | Fox News https://t.co/vTdXclZG2A
— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) August 8, 2023
The former vice president now joins an already crowded field of candidates that includes:
- Former President Donald Trump
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
- Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy
- Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley
- South Carolina Senator Tim Scott
- Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
- North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum
Most notably, Pence would be sharing a stage with former President Trump, who Pence criticized extensively ever since the 2020 election. However, given that the former president has not committed to showing up for the debate, the face-off between the one-time partners may not happen at all.
According to polling data from RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight, Pence is currently in fourth place behind Ramaswamy, DeSantis, and Trump heading into the debate.
Pence’s qualification comes amid an ongoing struggle to win over the Republican base, only made worse by recent comments about the Ukraine War. During an episode of the PBD Podcast with conservative commentator Dave Rubin, Patrick Bet-David discussed these comments and the effect they make have on Pence’s political future:
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