After breaking with Donald Trump, Mike Pence is selling kindness. Is anyone buying?

NORTH CONWAY, N.H. − As waiters delivered burgers, fish tacos and summer salads to a lunch crowd gathered in a New Hampshire restaurant to hear Mike Pence speak, one listener rose to offer some campaign advice to the former vice president, who seeks to become the Republican White House nominee in 2024.

Tom Loughlin, 77, an independent from Florida visiting the White Mountains to escape the heat, said he’d love to see Pence become president. But Pence has to more directly take on Donald Trump, who, Loughlin said, should never be in public office again.

“Oh, bull----!” interjected another man in the audience, reflecting the passionate and divided views of Trump that his former No. 2 has to navigate as he tries to deny Trump the nomination.

Pence, Loughlin continued, will never win “until the day you stand up to that man.” For Loughlin, that means going beyond Pence’s “excellent” defiance of Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, when he refused to unlawfully block Congress’ acceptance of the Electoral College votes won by Joe Biden.

“Maybe you’re too good a Christian to ever do that,” Loughlin said of the further confrontation he wants to see.

Over the three days last week that Pence spent traveling from New Hampshire’s border with Massachusetts to the Lakes Region and then the sparsely populated North Country where drivers are warned to “Brake for Moose,” those turning out to meet him frequently commented on his character.

They called him a man of morality. A man of his word. A good dude. A Christian. A gentleman. They praised his calm demeanor and his dignity.

But there were also questions about whether that’s enough.

What would Pence tell Trump at debate? Takeaways from USA Today interview

It’s not enough for Trump critics like Loughlin who want Pence to go harder after the former president. It doesn't sway Trump supporters who believe Pence betrayed Trump. And it’s an open question whether it's a winner for Republicans like John Roberts, 75, a retired police officer from North Conway who came to the meet-and-greet to find out if there’s more to Pence than his strong values.

“I’m just wondering if he’s tough enough,” Roberts said. “I think he’s got the right morals and all that stuff. I just want to make sure: Can he follow through, if he has to?”

His wife, however, had no reservations.

“I think he’s got some fire,” Linda Roberts said. “You don’t have to be screaming to have a voice.”

'Tough and kind'

Pence is definitely not screaming.

After four years of trying to soften Trump's edges, explaining and defending his tweets, insults and tantrums, Pence is standing on his own, firmly but politely.

“I don’t waver on my conservative values,” he said in North Conway, “but I think you can be tough and kind.”

Tired of the Trump show? Pence is centering his campaign on character and civility.

That’s built in part, but not entirely, on Jan. 6, the lens through which most people view him – to both his political peril and benefit.

Pence told USA TODAY he doesn’t know if Jan. 6 changed him.

“But I think it may have introduced a part of me to the American people that they didn't know was there,” he said in an interview. “I’m somebody that believes that adversity reveals character. And I think in that day, the American people saw I'm going to put my oath to the Constitution, I'm going to put the promises I made to them, first and foremost, whatever it means to me. The Bible verse Psalm 15 that has lived with me ever since says, 'He keeps his oath, even when it hurts.’”

Asked if other GOP candidates not named Trump should have to say what they would’ve done in Pence’s place, he said he’ll leave that to the media.

Asked if he’s going to tell Trump directly, on the debate stage, that his actions endangered him and his family, Pence said he wouldn’t hesitate, “if I feel it’s necessary to do that.”

“He knows what I thought about what he did,” Pence said. “And he knows why I did what I did.”

In his soothing baritone, Pence told voters in North Conway he’s eager to debate Trump about what matters for the future – restricting abortion, controlling Social Security and Medicare spending, standing up to aggressors around the world. But he’ll do it in his own way.

“I’m not interested in trading insults with my old friend. I’m not,” Pence said. “Some people think that’s the way to win the presidency. I don’t. But laying out the choice for the American people, we’ve been doing it. We'll keep doing it.”

A conservative who's `not in a bad mood about it'

Pence also wants voters to know who he was before Trump.

A conservative leader when he served in the U.S. House, Pence was still friendly enough with Democrats that civil rights icon John Lewis invited Pence to walk with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the 45^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

His failed 1990 congressional campaign that at the time was called the most negative in Indiana history prompted Pence to make a public mea culpa and, he says, dedicate himself in his successful 2000 race to “first and foremost treat others the way we wanted to be treated.”

Before he was elected to Congress and then Indiana’s governor, Pence was a “cordially confrontational” radio talk show host who regularly featured people with different opinions.

Pence’s decadeslong catchphrase – “I’m a conservative, but I’m not in a bad mood about it” – elicited chuckles from his New Hampshire audiences.

Democracy, Pence told a couple of dozen people at a garden party in Hudson, depends on heavy doses of civility.

“I really do believe there’s a hunger across this country for restoring a threshold of civility in our public debate,” he said.

The 'adult in the room'

The event was hosted by former state Senate Majority Leader Bob Clegg, who called Pence “the adult in the room.”

“I really can’t take much more of the nicknames and the bantering back and forth,” Clegg said. “I want to know what people are going to do to save our country.”

This week, Pence – who calls himself a “solutions conservative” – told USA TODAY he will start releasing a series of plans, starting with proposals on fighting inflation and growing jobs.

“People want leadership that can create an environment where we'll actually be able to solve some of these long-term problems,” Pence said.

Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire veteran of Republican presidential politics who is neutral in the 2024 contest, said candidates are strongest when they’re true to their selves. That’s what Pence is trying to do.

“Pence presents in a very calm and cool manner,” Merrill said. “Whether that’s enough remains to be seen.”

It hasn’t gotten Pence very far yet.

Can Pence make the debate stage?

After raising an unimpressive $1.2 million in the first weeks of his campaign, he’s still chasing enough widespread financial support – contributions from at least 40,000 donors across the country – to qualify for the first GOP debate in August.

“If you could all log on to the Pence campaign website and just donate $1,” Clegg urged at his garden party.

“They can give more,” Pence interjected with a smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

Poor polling

He had arrived in the state that will hold the first 2024 primary right after a Granite State Poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center showed him the first choice of 1% of likely primary voters.

Unlike for nearly all the 13 Republicans tested in the poll, 100% of likely primary voters said they knew enough about Pence to form an opinion. Just 18% had a favorable view of Pence while half didn’t like him.

Pence’s candidacy is nonstarter to those who wanted him to stand by Trump on Jan. 6, said University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala. But because of his close association with Trump, Pence is also not appealing to Republicans who want to move on.

And while New Hampshire Republicans traditionally were “very staid, very polite” and “very civil in a Judd Gregg sort of way,” Scala said, many are now looking for a brawler.

Outside Calef’s Country Store – offering New England-made products since 1869 – Eddie Rossetti was thrilled to meet Pence, a fellow Harley enthusiast, who even straddled Rossetti’s Heritage Classic. But while the 62-year-old mechanic from Atkinson believes the country could use more of Pence’s family values, America also needs “a man of action,” he said in his New England accent.” That’s why he’s sticking with Trump and says Pence shouldn’t have “betrayed his paht-nah.”

With so many New Hampshire Republicans having a more negative than positive view of Pence, Scala, the political scientist, wonders, “Where do you go from there?”

A 'slow and low' campaign

You go to Goody Coles, a roadside smokehouse in Brentwood, N.H., where tin-foiled piles of ribs, pulled pork and cornbread were arrayed on a red checkered tablecloth for Pence’s lunch with eight area residents.

“It’s like this good barbeque,” Chip Saltsman, Pence’s national campaign chairman, said of Pence’s focus on small groups as he tries to grow support in Iowa and New Hampshire by building personal relationships. “It’s slow and low.”

Before eating ribs, Pence had met privately that morning with pastors from Bible churches. Christian conservatives are not the influential voting bloc in New Hampshire that they are in Iowa, where Pence launched his campaign last month. But it’s a community that knows Pence well for his decades of leadership on anti-abortion causes and other issues.

“He’s a hero for many of us on parental rights, religious freedom and the right to life,” said Shannon McGinley, executive director of the New Hampshire Christian advocacy group Cornerstone Action.

But McGinley, who hasn’t settled on a candidate, said Jan. 6 has divided the Christian community and its view of Pence.

And though she’s grateful Pence is raising the issue of civility, “I’m not sure it’s as important to people as it probably should be,” she said.

Should Christians vote for Trump?

At a town hall in the Lakes Region community of Meredith, where the ceiling fans struggled to cool the more than 60 people sitting on metal folding chairs, 15-year-old Quinn Mitchell tried to get Pence to address that conundrum.

Telling Pence he stood out in the crowded GOP field because of his code of behavior and Christian principles, Mitchell asked Pence if he thought Christians should vote for Trump.

Rosalie Wright, 76, a retired hospital worker who said she stands with the Bible and with Pence, shot up her arm and pointed her thumb down.

Pence wasn’t as definitive. After saying he would never “presume upon anyone, either on their conservative convictions or their faith,” to tell people how they should vote, Pence returned to his message of civility.

The wrong messenger?

Former New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen, an early opponent of Trump, said that even if there is an untapped appetite for civility – which he doubts − Pence is not the right messenger.

“You stood by for four years while we had Trump-the-insult-comic entertaining people by not being civil,” Cullen said in an interview. “So, sorry.”

Pence doesn’t express culpability for the public divisions that grew during Trump’s presidency or the hit to public civility.

He told USA TODAY he readily joined the ticket in 2016 because of Trump’s policies and remains proud of what they accomplished.

“But I always understood it was his presidency, that he would carry himself the way that he was determined to carry himself,” Pence said. “I always tried to strike my own path, even while supporting and being loyal to the president every day, until my oath to the Constitution required me to do otherwise.”

His own path has now put him in a no-man’s land, said Chris Galdieri, a political science professor at St. Anselm College.

“He’s not hot enough. He’s not cool enough. People don’t like the fact that he’s medium temperature,” Galdieri said. “It’s just a really, really tough position.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: After breaking with Trump, Pence is selling kindness. Is anyone buying?