(Radio Iowa) – Former Vice President Mike Pence says he welcomes Governor Kim Reynolds’ pledge to remain neutral right now in the 2024 presidential race. Pence’s comments come after former President Donald Trump lashed out at Reynolds, noting he endorsed her in 2018. Trump said Reynolds was not being invited to his campaign events because she won’t endorse a candidate before the Iowa Caucuses. “It’s not the first time that my former running mate has expressed his opinion or his frustration with people acting on their own lights and their own steam,” Pence says. “But for my part I’m grateful that Governor Kim Reynolds is continuing that great tradition of neutrality.”

Sitting Iowa governors rarely endorse a candidate before the Iowa Caucuses. It’s only happened twice in the last 44 years. Reynolds has said her neutrality shows all candidates are welcome to campaign in Iowa. Pence says he’s grateful for the words of encouragement Reynolds has given him about his campaign. “I’m a great admirer of Governor Kim Reynolds. She and I have been friends since my days as governor when she was serving as an exceptional lieutenant governor,” Pence says.

Pence is praising Reynolds for calling the legislature back into special session yesterday (Tuesday) to pass a fetal heartbeat law. It will ban most abortions after an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity. That happens around the sixth week of a pregnancy. “I couldn’t be more grateful for the stand for the right to life that Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate have taken. I look forward to the day, this coming Friday, when Governor Kim Reynolds will sign that heartbeat bill into law,” Pence says. “I think it’s evidence that life is winning Iowa and life is winning in America and I join pro-lifers across the country in just cheering them on.”

Pence is among the six G-O-P presidential candidates who will be speaking Friday in Des Moines at The Family Leader’s Leadership Summit. Pence says his message to the group is that he’ll be a champion of traditional marriage and the pro-life cause if he’s elected president. “We’ll stand for those issues as we have throughout our lives,” Pence said.

As a leading Republican conservative in congress in 2006, Pence called for an amendment to the U-S constitution that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. As governor of Indiana, he signed a religious freedom law in 2015 that lets citizens of that state who’re being sued cite their religious beliefs as a defense.