Stop Calling Mike Pence Boring. Here’s His Track Record on Gays, Women, Immigrants, and the Planet.

Bland on the outside. Terrifying on the inside.

Darron Cummings/AP

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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will square off against Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) tonight in the campaign’s only vice presidential debate. The showdown could prove pretty interesting, even if it cannot approach the pyrotechnics of last week’s Trump-Clinton matchup. Pence and Kaine may seem “boring” compared with their running mates, but, Trump aside, Pence is anything but. Over nearly two decades in political life, first as a congressman and later as Indiana’s governor, Pence has been one of the leaders in efforts to push extreme conservative ideas—from limiting abortion access to questioning climate change—into public policy.

We’ve covered plenty of these before, but here’s a refresher:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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