He might not make it to the Oval Office. But he’ll make it into the historical past books, at the least as an asterisk.

As Mike Pence formally kicks off his underdog campaign for the White House on Wednesday, he’ll develop into one thing nearly unheard-of because the founding of the republic — a former vp operating in opposition to the president who initially put him on the ticket.

While it’s not uncommon for stress and even enmity to develop between presidents and vice presidents, by no means earlier than has a No. 2 mounted a direct problem to a onetime operating mate in the way in which that Mr. Pence is taking over former President Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination subsequent yr.

Vice presidents, in spite of everything, sometimes owe their nationwide stature to the presidents who selected them, and even when they don’t seem to be particularly grateful, they hardly ever discover it politically possible to compete with their patrons. But Mr. Pence is playing that Republican main voters might ultimately develop weary of Mr. Trump and switch to the opposite member of their get together’s 2016 and 2020 tickets.

“Having a former vice president contest the president he served for their party’s nomination in contested primaries is like a 234-year flood,” mentioned Joel Ok. Goldstein, a specialist on the vice presidency on the St. Louis University School of Law. “It doesn’t happen.”

“Defeated presidents don’t run again in modern times,” he added, “and vice presidents tend to inherit support from their administration’s supporters, not become pariahs to them” as Mr. Pence has since defying Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The damaged relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence is itself a historic anomaly, in fact. Mr. Trump sought to stress Mr. Pence to say the facility to successfully reject Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory within the Electoral College, an influence the vp mentioned he didn’t have. Mr. Trump was so indignant that he publicly excoriated his personal vp, prompting a mob to hunt for him while chanting “hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6, 2021. According to testimony, Mr. Trump steered to aides that perhaps his supporters had been proper.

“The reason why no other vice president appears to have run against his president is that he was selected by the president, and there is almost always a personal bond stemming from a sense of loyalty and gratitude,” mentioned Richard Moe, who was the chief of employees to Vice President Walter F. Mondale. “I can’t think of another vice president who was treated more disrespectfully than Pence was by Trump.”

There aren’t any exact parallels to the present state of affairs. In 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson challenged President John Adams, defeating the incumbent’s bid for a second time period. In these early days of the republic, nevertheless, the vp was not the president’s operating mate, however the second-highest vote recipient within the earlier election. Adams and Jefferson had run in opposition to one another in 1796, with Adams prevailing and Jefferson turning into vp as a result of he was the runner-up.

The twelfth Amendment ratified in 1804 modified that system in order that the vp was chosen in tandem with the president as a part of the identical ticket. That didn’t imply they had been at all times on the identical workforce. Many tickets have been solid between rivals who had simply run in opposition to one another for the nomination, together with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1980 and Barack Obama and Mr. Biden in 2008.

Some vice presidents grew hostile to the presidents they served underneath, as when John C. Calhoun brazenly opposed Andrew Jackson through the nullification disaster pitting South Carolina in opposition to Washington over a tariff. After being dumped from the re-election ticket in 1832, Calhoun resigned the vice presidency to sit within the Senate to withstand his former ticket mate’s agenda. Still, Calhoun by no means challenged Jackson as a candidate.

In 1916, former President Theodore Roosevelt and his onetime vp Charles W. Fairbanks each drew help on the opening ballots on the Republican conference however weren’t actively campaigning in opposition to one another. Hubert Humphrey and his 1968 operating mate Edmund Muskie each ran in 1972 for the Democratic nomination, neither efficiently. In 2000, former Vice President Dan Quayle ran in opposition to George W. Bush, the son of the person who put Mr. Quayle on the 1988 and 1992 tickets.

But the closest the nation has beforehand come to a direct contest between operating mates was in 1940 when Vice President John Nance Garner, a conservative Texan referred to as Cactus Jack and no fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, waged a marketing campaign for the White House.

Garner was identified for his love of whiskey, as soon as noting that “I don’t get drunk but once a day.” He is most well-known at present for his bitter evaluation of the vice presidency, which he declared not “worth a bucket of warm spit,” or some variation of that.

Since no president to that time had run for a 3rd consecutive time period owing to the precedent set by George Washington, it was not solely clear that Roosevelt can be a candidate in 1940, and he made no transfer to cease Garner or different associates from operating. Still, there was no love misplaced between the 2. “I see that the vice president has thrown his bottle — I mean his hat — into the ring,” Roosevelt quipped to his cupboard.

Garner, a traditionalist, had fallen out with F.D.R. over the president’s effort to pack the Supreme Court and opposed breaking Washington’s precedent. “As retribution, he declared that he would run for the 1940 presidential nomination, but he never put his heart into it, and no one took his candidacy seriously,” mentioned Mr. Moe, who wrote “Roosevelt’s Second Act,” a guide in regards to the 1940 race.

Roosevelt performed coy all the way in which as much as the Democratic conference, when he lastly organized to be “drafted” to run once more. Roosevelt swept to the nomination with 946 delegates. Garner completed third with 61.

That election ushered in one other change. Until that time, the events usually selected the vice-presidential candidates, however from then on the nominees successfully took over that call. Roosevelt picked Henry A. Wallace, leaving Garner to retire to his Texas ranch.

At this level, Mr. Trump might remorse the selection he made in 2016. But it’s not clear that Mr. Pence will do any higher than Cactus Jack did.