IndyStar

This story was originally published on July 15, 2016.

On Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence took the oath of office to become Donald Trump's vice president.

Whether your reaction to the news was "Mike Who?" or you just need a refresher on his two-plus decades in politics, here's what you should know about the 50th governor of Indiana.

1. He says he's "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order."

Pence has long said his approach to governing is informed not by party, but by his faith and his love of the Constitution.

He's staunchly anti-abortion rights, and while in Congress he led the federal government to the brink of shutdown in 2011 in a failed attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

A born-again evangelical Christian, Pence has also been a strong proponent of religious freedom, and believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.

In addition to his faith, his views on governance were strongly influenced by Russell Kirk, a fountainhead of modern conservative thought, who wrote "The Conservative Mind."

"The conservative is animated by the principle of driving toward the ideal of solutions that are grounded in economic freedom and individual liberty, but also understanding that compromise is part of the conservative approach to governance," Pence told IndyStar in a 2015 interview, referring to Kirk's philosophy. "I don't believe in compromising principles, but I do believe in finding a way forward on the basis of authentic common ground."

2. He was raised Catholic and idolized JFK.

Pence and his five siblings grew up in Columbus, Ind., in a family of devout Catholic churchgoers. His parents weren't especially political, he told IndyStar in a 2012 profile, but as a young man, figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to get involved in politics.

He volunteered for the Bartholomew County Democratic Party in 1976 and voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980.

It wasn't until college, when he met his future wife, Karen, at an evangelical church that he became a born-again Christian. A history major at Hanover College, Pence said his political views, too, began to shift.

"I started to identify with that kind of common-sense conservatism of Ronald Reagan," Pence told the IndyStar, "and before I knew it, I decided I was a Republican and moved up here in Indianapolis in 1983 to go to law school."

3. He was a six-term Congressman, serving from 2001-2012.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, Pence's championing of conservative social issues gained him the most attention, but he also fought to shrink the size of government, showing a willingness to buck party leadership to do so.

As a freshman in 2001, he opposed the No Child Left Behind policy supported by President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican. That law seeks to raise student performance and increase accountability for educators. Pence calls it an unfunded mandate that grew government.

During Pence's second year in office, he opposed another GOP-favored initiative: the Medicare prescription drug expansion.

In later years, he persuaded Republicans to cut spending in the federal budget before approving money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005. He also opposed the bank bailout in 2008, leading to Congress abandoning a plan to buy financial institutions' most toxic assets.

4. He signed RFRA, and gave a disastrous interview defending it.

Over the objections of the business community and LGBT rights groups, Pence in 2015 signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, setting off the biggest controversy of his political career.

Proponents said RFRA was needed to add another layer of protection for exercising one's religious beliefs free of government intrusion. The law in essence prohibited the government from intruding on a person's religious liberty unless it could prove a compelling interest in imposing that burden and do so in the least restrictive way.

Opponents, however, feared it could be used to discriminate against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the name of religion. Legal experts said it could have allowed people to raise religious freedom objections to existing human rights ordinances that extend anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The bill's passage sparked a national firestorm. National media outlets swarmed Indiana, and major employers and conventions threatened to boycott the state. There was even an unsuccessful movement to relocate the NCAA Men's Final Four, which was held in Indianapolis less than two weeks later.

The weekend following the bill signing, Pence attempted to defend RFRA and pour water on the fire. Instead, he may have only fueled it.

In a nationally televised interview, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Pence six times whether the new law would allow a business to discriminate against gay couples. Six times, Pence ducked the question.

"This is where this debate has gone, with misinformation," Pence said. "We've been doing our level best, George, to correct the gross mischaracterization of this law that has been spread all over the country by many in the media … and the online attacks against the people of our state. I'm just not going to stand for it."

The interview was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, who said he didn't do enough to dispel the idea that Indiana was intolerant of the LGBT community.

Shortly after its passage, the Indiana General Assembly passed a so-called "fix," which Pence signed into law. It prevents RFRA from eroding local human rights protections. That, too, drew criticism, this time much of it from the right: The Indiana Pastors Alliance said they felt "betrayed" by Pence and lawmakers for tweaking the original law.

In some ways, Indiana was the first major battleground for the religious freedom movement. Subsequently, Mississippi and North Carolina passed even stronger religious freedom protections, leading to similar outcry, but so far, neither state has backtracked.

Gov. Mike Pence signs RFRA fix

5. In 2006, he tried to strike a compromise on immigration reform.

Then-Rep. Pence's proposal would have created a temporary guest-worker program that would require illegal immigrants to leave the country before they could enroll. But it went nowhere in the House, and angered many Republicans.

Pence has said his views on immigration were informed by his family's own experience. His grandfather, Richard Michael Cawley, was a Chicago bus driver who immigrated to the United States from Ireland through Ellis Island in the early 1900s.

As governor, he recalled speaking to President George W. Bush in 2006 about the reform proposal. "I said, 'We're a nation of immigrants. I don't just get it. I lived it.'"

On other immigration matters, his stances have more closely aligned with his fellow conservatives.

In 2014, he joined a multi-state lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's executive order that would have protected 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported. A deadlocked Supreme Court this year blocked the order from taking effect.

More recently, he opposed settling Syrian refugees in Indiana, joining at least 22 other governors after reports suggested one of the Paris bombers may have posed as a Syrian refugee to enter France.

6. He's no firebrand.

Pence's polite demeanor would strike a stark contrast with that of Trump, who likes to give his opponents names such as Crooked Hillary and Lyin' Ted.

But in his first two campaigns for office in 1988 and 1990, Pence did go negative — something he later said he regretted.

In a commercial described at the time as the most negative in Indiana history, an actor dressed as a sheik thanked Pence's opponent, former U.S. Rep. Phil Sharp, for the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Afterward he wrote an essay entitled "Confessions of a Negative Campaigner," in which he denounced his own actions.

"I think negative personal attacks have no place in elective politics,” Pence said during his run for governor in 2012. “I just think, as I wrote back in 1991, that negative campaigning I now know is wrong. It's wrong to use one's brief moment in a political debate to talk about what's wrong with your opponent, as opposed to what's right with your ideas.”

Of course, a tight re-election fight this year has challenged his ability to stick to that principle.

Pence assured a crowd of party insiders at the Indiana Republican Party's Spring Dinner last year that he was ready for a fight, and promised a different sort of campaign than they'd seen from him in the past.

7. He tried to start a state-run news service.

Internal documents obtained by IndyStar in 2015 showed Pence's administration had developed plans to start a state-run taxpayer-funded news outlet that would make pre-written news stories available to Indiana media, as well as sometimes break news about his administration.

The plan quickly became the object of ridicule across the nation, drawing comparisons to state-run media in countries such as North Korea and China. One outlet dubbed the Pence news service "Pravda on the Plains."

Within the week, Pence killed the idea, saying plans for the JustIN website would be replaced with an overhaul of the state's online press release system.

Prior to the "Pravda on the Plains" misstep, Pence was long seen as a friend to the press on Capitol Hill. He was widely regarded as accessible and friendly by the D.C. press corps. He also introduced a bill that would have made it harder to subpoena reporters.

As governor, he vetoed bills that critics said would have limited access to public records. One, vetoed this year, would have permitted private colleges and universities to withhold records in cases that involved accidents, complaints and suspected crimes without arrests. The other, from 2015, would have allowed public agencies to charge hourly fees for record searches.

Gov. Pence ditches state-run news site plan after uproar

8. He cut taxes and takes pride in the state's business climate.

Under Pence's watch, Indiana has routinely appeared among the top 10 states for having a "business-friendly" climate, thanks in large part to the state's low corporate taxes.

A 2013 study showed Indiana businesses have the 7th lowest tax burden in the nation, and it's likely dropped since then. In 2014, he signed a bill reducing the corporate income tax to 4.9 percent from 6.5 percent by 2021, making it the second-lowest in the country. And he's proposed even further cuts to business taxes, pressing lawmakers to phase out the business personal property tax entirely.

“With this bill, we give counties the opportunity to incentivize additional investment in new technology and heavy equipment,” Pence said at the time. “We make it easier for companies to expand and create jobs here in Indiana.”

The unemployment rate has fallen from 8.4 percent when he took office in 2013, to around 5 percent today, though critics complain that wages remain below the national average.

The state also has a AAA bond rating, something Pence frequently touts on the campaign trail as evidence of his fiscal prowess.

Study: Indiana has a light bite in business taxes

9. He expanded Medicaid, with a catch.

In January 2015, after months of wrangling with the Obama administration, Pence won approval to expand Indiana's own brand of Medicaid that injects personal responsibility into the healthcare program for the poor.

Pence said the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, a revamped version of a program started by then-Gov. Mitch Daniels, went beyond standard Medicaid expansion by requiring that participants contribute to the cost of their care.

"I believe Medicaid is not a program we should expand. It's a program that we should reform – and that's exactly what we're accomplishing," Pence said at the time. "HIP 2.0 is not intended to be a long-term entitlement program. It's intended to be a safety net that aligns incentives with human aspirations."

With the approval, Indiana became the 28th state to expand Medicaid, along with the District of Columbia, and the fifth to receive a waiver. But none of the other states' programs go quite as far as Indiana when it comes to pushing the personal responsibility piece, experts said.

The expansion was expected to make as many as 350,000 low-income Hoosiers eligible for new benefits.

Gov. Pence gets federal OK for Medicaid alternative

10. He was in a tight battle for re-election.

Although Indiana is a red state — Republicans control both chambers of the Indiana General Assembly by wide margins — Pence was facing a close race against Democratic opponent John Gregg this November if he didn't join Trump's ticket.

The race would have been a rematch of 4 years ago, when Pence narrowly defeated Gregg by 3 percentage points. But the RFRA controversy alienated many moderates, driving Pence's negatives up. A poll taken in late 2015, six months after RFRA, showed just 47 percent of Hoosier residents approved of Pence’s performance — a big drop compared to Pence’s approval rating of 62 percent in the same poll a year earlier.

Two polls taken this spring gave Pence a 4-point edge over Gregg, a slim gap that fell within the polls' margins of error.

10. He has a rabbit named Marlon Bundo.

Joining the Pence family as they made their move to Washington, D.C., were two cats — named Oreo and Pickle — and a black-and-white rabbit named Marlon Bundo.

Yes, Marlon Bundo.

Pence tweeted a photo of the family with the pets mid-air, thanking the U.S. Air Force for the ride. Bundo's eyes seemed wide with excitement, while the cats seemed more casual about the experience.

Latest poll: Race for governor remains tight

Bonus: Things Karen Pence wants us to know about Mike.

According to a description Karen Pence gave of her husband at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2018, an ideal weekend for Pence would including washing back a thin-crust pizza with a nonalcoholic beer, riding a horse and curling up with a good book — probably THE good book. And maybe even some doodling. She said that during law school, he drew a weekly cartoon for the school paper called "Law School Daze," fashioning the main character, Daze, after himself.

IndyStar reporters Tony Cook, Chris Sikich, Amy Bartner and Maureen Groppe contributed to this report. Call IndyStar reporter Brian Eason at (317) 444-6129. Follow him on Twitter: @brianeason.