Two Pence, None the Richer

Watch out Washington, there’s (probably gonna be) a New Pence in town!

According to IRS documents submitted this week and obtained by the Associated Press, Vice President Mike Pence’s older brother Greg appears poised to step out from his sibling’s vice presidential melanin-deprived shadow and run for the Indiana congressional seat once held by Mike himself.

By filing the paperwork for “Greg Pence for Congress Inc,” the older Pence seems ready to put to rest the longstanding will-he-won’t-he? rumors of a congressional bid—a supposition bolstered by a currently locked @GregPenceIN Twitter account featuring a decidedly campaign-y cover photograph that was created in July.

Should Pence-the-elder run, political observers in Indiana believe he’d be a likely sho-in for his brother’s old seat in a solidly Republican district.

It’s unclear exactly to what degree Greg’s politics will align with that of his brother. Would he, like Mike, be a virulent homophobe who refuses to eat with another woman without his wife present? Would he, like Mike, agonize over the dangerous liberal propaganda on display in Disney’s animated classic Mulan? And would he, like Mike, insist that “despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill”?

It’s too early to say. What seems clear, however, is that Greg doesn’t actually seem to like his younger brother very much.

In a recent New Yorker profile on the vice president in which Pence’s mother lauded Mike as a “good student,” Greg couldn’t help but snipe, “Not a fabulous one. I don’t think he stood out. He was class president, but that wasn’t cool.”

Later in the same piece, while discussing some sketchy campaign finance dealings Mike had been a part of in 1990, Greg said simply:

Mike burned a lot of bridges. He upset a lot of his backers. It was partly because of immaturity, but he really was kind of full of shit.