Power Trip
Meet Mike Pence, the GOP’s Cash Machine
A month on the donor circuit with the vice president
There is one thing Mike Pence does that drives all the Republican megadonors wild and gets them worked up enough to write $50,000, $100,000, even quarter-million-dollar checks: He listens, intently.
He looks you in the eye and asks you personal questions: How is your oldest son doing after returning home from deployment to Afghanistan? He appears interested while you talk about your bright idea to improve the Health and Human Services Department.
On a particularly swampy day in Washington, D.C., this past September — mid-80s and stagnant humidity, hot enough to sweat through the Joseph A. Bank standard two-button the vice president favors — Pence drew almost 100 people to meet his older brother and encouraged them to give him their money.
Greg Pence, 61, who shares his 59-year-old brother’s shock-white hair but has a longer face and slightly beadier eyes, is running for the vice president’s former congressional seat in Indiana’s 6th District.
At the Pence brothers’ fundraiser, hosted at the National Restaurant Association’s lobbying headquarters, a few blocks northwest of the White House, Mike Pence worked the room full of Washington lobbyists…
