Mike Pence’s event in rural Virginia on Wednesday morning had all the trappings of a presidential campaign rally in the final weeks leading up to Election Day.
Traveling to a key swing state and trailed by a national press corps, he was introduced by high-profile Republican stars—in this case Ed Gillespie and Jeb Hensarling—on a stage decked out with pumpkins and hay-bales.
In a business where optics is everything, the nly visual clue that Pence wasn’t running for president was that his name was placed second on campaign posters.
“I know I’m not the main event,” Pence told a crowd of about 300 voters who had gathered to hear him speak. “I’m the ‘other’ picture on the bus.”
Pence’s throwaway campaign trail line suddenly had new meaning—particularly as Hillary Clinton’s surrogates have suggested that Pence’s vice presidential debate showing was so strong that he upstaged his running mate, Donald Trump.
“He was auditioning for 2020,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told Bloomberg’s John Heilemann inside the spin room Tuesday night.