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What You Didn’t Know About Mike Pence’s Kids

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Three Pence kids, three completely different paths — and none of them wanted the spotlight.

Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence raised three adult children who have mostly stayed out of the political fray their father built his career on. Michael Jr. flies for the Marine Corps, Audrey reports from conflict zones as a self-declared political independent, and Charlotte writes children’s books about the family rabbit. None of them fit the mold of a typical VP kid, and that’s largely by design.

• Michael Pence Jr. commissioned as a Marine second lieutenant in 2015 and earned his Wings of Gold as a naval aviator at Naval Air Station Meridian.
• Audrey Pence, a Northeastern University graduate, publicly identifies as politically independent and reported on the Armenian Genocide and an underground Syrian newspaper through the Fuller Project.
• Charlotte Pence’s March 2018 children’s book, “Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President,” sparked a parody feud with “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” that Charlotte defused by buying a copy of the rival book.

Mike the Marine

Michael Pence Jr. is the eldest of the three and the one who took the most conventional route into public service — just not the political kind. After graduating from Purdue University, he commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2015 and worked his way into naval aviator training. He earned his Wings of Gold at Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi, a milestone that marks the end of years of flight instruction and one of the tougher qualification pipelines in the Corps.

Unlike the children of other prominent political figures who’ve turned family name into media presence, Michael has kept a low profile. He married his wife, Sarah, in a private ceremony, and there’s been no public push to turn his service into a talking point on the campaign trail.

Audrey the Independent

Audrey Pence, the youngest of the three, graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in international affairs — and then did something that made headlines in a conservative household: she told the world she’s politically independent and socially liberal. She’s said she split her ballot in the 2012 election, a decision her father, according to the profile, actually praised rather than pushed back on.

Audrey has since pursued international journalism through the Fuller Project, reporting from Turkey and the Balkans. She wrote a piece for CNN on the Armenian Genocide and covered an underground Syrian newspaper — reporting work that puts her in territory far removed from the Naval Observatory. For a reader curious how other political offspring have handled being in the public eye, it’s worth comparing her path to how families like Eric Trump have navigated life after their father’s time in office.

Charlotte the Author

Charlotte Pence, the middle child, has built a career as an author and filmmaker. In March 2018, she released “Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President,” a children’s book illustrated by her mother, Karen Pence, that tells the story of the vice presidency from the perspective of the family’s pet rabbit. Proceeds went to two charities, Tracy’s Kids and A21.

The book turned into an unlikely cultural moment when “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” produced a competing, LGBTQ-themed bunny book as a parody. Rather than fire back, Charlotte took the joke in stride and bought a copy herself to support the causes Oliver’s version was raising money for.

Charlotte bought a copy of John Oliver’s rival bunny book — and let the parody stand.

It’s the kind of response that made the whole standoff feel less like a political fight and more like a punchline everyone was in on together, which is a rarer outcome than most parody feuds get.

Charlotte the Vampire Identity

Before the bunny book made her a household name in a different sense, Charlotte briefly went viral for an odder reason. In a 2016 family photo Mike Pence tweeted from a restaurant booth, Charlotte was seated directly across from a mirror — and appeared to have no visible reflection in it. The internet ran with the obvious joke, half-seriously floating vampire theories about the vice president’s daughter over what was almost certainly just a trick of the camera angle and lighting.

The mirror photo was a punchline that faded fast, but the Marlon Bundo book kept earning real money for Tracy’s Kids and A21 long after the John Oliver parody stopped trending — proof that Charlotte got the better end of that particular joke.