Former Vice President Mike Pence, who spent four years dutifully serving President Donald J. Trump but refused to carry out Mr. Trump’s demand that he block the 2020 election results, ended his presidential bid on Saturday, with a final appeal for his party to return to conservative principles and resist the “siren song of populism.”
The surprise announcement came at the end of his remarks before a crowd of Jewish Republican donors in Las Vegas, and was met with gasps. Mr. Pence had received a standing ovation, opening his speech with a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Then he pivoted to a more “personal note,” saying that after much prayer and deliberation, he had decided to drop out of the race.
“It’s become clear to me that this is not my time,” he told the crowd of 1,500, promising to “never leave the fight for conservative values.”…
Mr. Trump had pressured his vice president to reject Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory. On Jan. 6, 2021, that pressure campaign culminated in a pro-Trump mob attacking the Capitol, with some in the mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”
Mr. Pence was heralded for his resistance by some who see Mr. Trump as an unadulterated threat to democracy. But on the campaign trail, where many Republican voters have come to echo and champion Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, Mr. Pence sometimes faced antagonistic questions about why he had not tried to hand the election to Mr. Trump.