Lifestyle
How to create a DIY water feature for a habitat garden without breaking the bank
These days, habitat gardens are all the rage among eco-conscious Californians. They add native plants to their yards, patios or even balconies to provide food and shelter for wildlife.
But here’s the bitter truth: It’s not a real habitat garden if it doesn’t have a water source, as in a place where bees and butterflies can reliably sip without drowning or where birds can splash and preen.
In L.A., water rules everything around us. Drink up, cool off and dive into our stories about hydrating and recreating in the city.
I have been pining for a water feature for years, but I’ve always been too intimidated to proceed. Store-bought fountains are pricy and their setup seems daunting. And while I’ve long lusted over hand-built fountains and elaborate ponds, I’m a klutz when it comes to building things from scratch.
All I wanted was a simple recirculating fountain near my bedroom window, so I could fall asleep to the soothing sounds of gurgling water. But the fear of failure always stopped me until I talked to people who have created their own water features and learned a few crucial tips:
- You don’t need a dedicated water line or even electricity and a pump to create a simple water feature. All you need is a big, watertight pot, wider than deep, a few water plants and a handful of little fish to keep mosquitoes at bay.
- Anyone with time, muscle and access to YouTube (or the library) can build a small pond or simple water feature, but there will be some labor and unavoidable expenses, so try to have all your materials assembled before you engage — unless you like interrupting your project to dash to the store.
- Proceed boldly, but prepare yourself mentally, because something always goes wrong, said Chris Elwell, co-owner (with his husband, Kory Odell) of the fabled Casa Apocalyptica, an arresting landscape of salvaged rubble, water features and native plants around their home in Mid-Wilshire.
“Just know you’re going to make a lot of mistakes,” said Odell, a civil engineer who built an 8-by-12-foot in-ground pond for their front yard. “You’ll screw it up, and then you’re going to fix it, and that’s how you’re going to learn.”
DIY water features instructor Andrew Chaves has created water gardens in recycled plant pots in his Long Beach yard.
(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)
Stand-alones are simplest
Experimentation and patience are the most important tools for creating your own water feature, said DIY water features instructor Andrew Chaves, director of operations at Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Gardens in Long Beach. He’s offering a class called Water Gardening in Small Spaces at the rancho on Aug. 4, and expects to teach another this fall at his former place of employment, the Theodore Payne Foundation.
Chaves doesn’t object to fountains with pumps, but he prefers the simplicity of still water features so he doesn’t have to worry about power cords or special water lines.
Andrew Chaves’ water garden, in a 24-inch-tall sealed clay pot, is a simple, serene way to bring water to a habitat garden.
(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)
He creates “water gardens” in large, watertight pots with (mostly) native water plants that give insects and other tiny drinkers a safe place to perch on floating plants like duckweed (Lemna minor), mosquito fern (Azolla filiculoides) and miniature water lilies, which also shade the water and keep it cool. He keeps mosquitoes away with a dozen or so tiny fish that devour their larvae.
Chaves and his wife, Amanda, also dug out a roughly 4-foot-by-6-foot hole for a preformed plastic pond that a colleague gave them when he couldn’t use it. Fitting the pond into the ground was a difficult project, they said, because the hole had to align with the inflexible contours of the pond and sit flush against the ground. If he did it again, he said, he probably would use a heavy-duty pond liner instead, because it would be easier to press the liner into the hole and disguise the edges with rocks and plants.
Covering the edges of a pond is always a challenge, said Elwell, even if you use a pond liner, because it’s hard to make it look natural. People buy decorative rocks or materials that look pretty in the store “but end up looking hokey around the pond because you don’t see those materials anywhere else in the yard,” he said. “You’re better off using something from your yard, even if it’s ugly, because it looks like it belongs.”
Kory Odell built this small pond with help from his husband, Chris Elwell, in their Mid-Wilshire yard to create a habitat of native plants, water features and salvaged rubble dubbed Casa Apocalyptica.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
At night, their ponds are alive with frog song, and they do whatever they can to nurture their croakers. That’s why Elwell, Odell and Chaves don’t keep fish in their ponds; they don’t want hungry fish to gobble up frog eggs or tiny tadpoles.
Elwell and Odell have a recirculating waterfall in their pond that provides enough movement to deter mosquitoes. Chaves uses mosquito dunks, beige, doughnut-shaped floats that kill mosquito larvae but are nontoxic to other creatures.
In his small water gardens, however, Chaves prefers to use Japanese rice fish, which come in several colors, grow about an inch long and tend to leave beneficial insects alone, unlike mosquito fish, which eat almost anything in their path, he said. Tiny snails and shrimp known as daphnia eat algae and provide additional food for the fish.
A rusty repurposed industrial-sized spigot spills recirculating water into a small waterfall and pond at Casa Apocalyptica.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
He has several other tips:
- The best pots are wider than they are deep to give plants more surface space, but the best depth is 18 inches, to give the fish room to dive into cooler waters and hide. If you want to use deeper pots, you’ll need a brick or shelf at the bottom so plants that like their roots submerged, like water lilies, can still reach the surface.
- Unglazed pots like terracotta should be sealed on the inside with a rubber-based paint like Flex Seal, which the company says is safe around plants and animals once it’s fully cured (after at least 24 hours). The sealant is expensive — about $35 a quart — but Chaves has covered three large clay pots with that amount. He uses Gorilla epoxy stick putty to fill the container holes.
- Some water plants like to have their roots totally submerged, but you can’t grow them in ordinary potting soil, which will just float away. Some people use special potting soils for pond plants or pea gravel, but Chaves prefers a fragrance-free clay kitty litter, which is less expensive and heavy enough to stay in place in the water.
- Water should be dechlorinated before you add fish, by using special tablets or letting the water sit in an open bucket for at least 24 hours so the chlorine can dissipate. Chaves also recommends adding the plants and snails a week or two before adding a few fish, to build up a culture of bacteria that can consume the poop the fish will produce. Otherwise the fish could die from ammonia poisoning.
Jesse Chang’s oval tub pond stands about 18 inches above the ground in his Monterey Park yard, surrounded by tall, California-native water plants to attract pollinators.
(Jesse Chang)
Ponds can be above ground
Jesse Chang, executive director of Catalyst San Gabriel Valley, is another fan of experimentation, along with heavy research. He credits “The Tub Pond Handbook” by Ted Coletti and the “California Native Water Plants and Life” Facebook group with helping him maintain the 85-gallon aboveground “tub pond” he installed outside his Monterey Park home.
Chang bought his roughly 3-by-4-foot oval tub secondhand for under $100 (a similar tub costs $133 new on DK Hardware) at the handbook’s recommendation because he wanted to discourage raccoons. Those animals can be pretty destructive, moving around rocks and plants in search of food — both Chaves and Casa Apocalyptica have had to contend with prying paws — but it’s harder for them to mess with a pond that stands 18 inches above the ground, Chang said.
Instead of lining his pond with rocks, he’s surrounded the tub with water-loving potted plants like monkey flowers and rushes to draw in pollinators and soften the hard edges.
He’s using plain old minnows in his pond for now to deter mosquitoes because he was worried that dragonfly larvae would eat his tiny fish. Minnows are much less expensive than rice fish — “about 20 cents versus $4” — so he started with minnows in case his investment got eaten. He’s lost a few, but most are looking healthier than the ones in the store.
Taking the plunge
These water gardens were lovely and relatively simple, but I still wanted the soothing sound of burbling water.
So summoning up my courage, I followed Elwell’s advice and began scouring YouTube for easy DIY fountains. That’s how I found a cheerful tutorial by permaculture landscape designer Daryl Lindsey of Yardfarmer in Salt Lake City with a title right up my alley: “Make This EASY, FAST, DIY Water Feature for Local Wildlife!”
Astonishingly, I did, although it wasn’t as easy or fast as I had hoped. It took me most of a weekend, multiple trips for things I forgot and a hard lesson in pump mechanics, but by Sunday evening, my little turquoise fountain was ready to turn on.
Following Lindsey’s advice, I rummaged through my collection of containers and found a large ceramic pot without a drain hole to use as my reservoir — saving myself at least $50 to $100 — and purchased the following:
- A submersible recirculating pump with 6.5 feet of half-inch tubing and several connectors ($30 from Amazon).
- A tall black pot to fit upside down in my reservoir, to cover the pump and give my water feature some extra height ($20 on sale at Lowe’s).
- Three black bricks to give the internal pot even more height (about $4 at Lowe’s).
- Three glazed plant saucers to stack above the black pot and hold pretty rocks I’ve been collecting for years. Deciding what to use took most of the day. ($47 from Green Thumb Ventura).
- A half-inch titanium drill bit to drill holes in my saucers ($15 at Lowe’s).
- A tube of silicone adhesive and a couple of half-inch clamps to make sure the hose stayed attached ($8 and $5, respectively, at Lowe’s).
The total? About $130, plus a day of wandering around garden centers fretting about what saucers and pots to choose and how to stack them.
The hardest part was drilling holes in the middle of the glazed saucers. You must drill slowly to avoid cracking or chipping the ceramic plates and spray the surface frequently with water so it doesn’t get too hot.
When the holes were drilled and the fountain was assembled, it weighed a ton, even without water. (Pro tip: Do your assembling where you plan to keep the fountain, or be sure you have a dolly or Hercules to move it.)
Finally, with the reservoir filled with water, I plugged in the pump and stood over my creation with bated breath. I expected to see a gently gurgling fountain. I had purchased a submersible recirculating water pump that moves 880 gallons per hour — I reasoned that bigger was better, right?
Wrong. After a few seconds I was hit full force by an 8-foot-tall geyser, and there wasn’t any lever on the pump that reduced the force. In desperation I piled some bigger rocks on top of the spout, which forced the water into submission. I’m hoping the rocks will keep Old Faithful under control until I can purchase a pump that only moves about 100 gallons per hour.
At long last, however, I went to sleep listening to the soothing babble of running water outside my bedroom window. And I dreamed about using that 880-gallon-per-hour pump to create a little waterfall and pond in my front yard.
Ryan Benk and Ryan Ricciardi are married by their friend Cesar Garcia this year.
Christopher Di Ruggiero
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Christopher Di Ruggiero
Gone is the traditional wedding officiated only by a rabbi, a priest, an imam, a pastor or an archbishop.
In a recent survey by the wedding website The Knot, 67% of couples are getting married by a friend. The share has skyrocketed since 2009, when The Knot started tracking who officiates weddings. That year, 27% of couples used a friend for their ceremony.
“Gen Z culture is really infiltrating the wedding industry, and they just do not do things in a standard, traditional way,” said Esther Lee, The Knot’s editorial director.
“They are scrutinizing every aspect of the wedding day in a sense of ‘How do I make this speak to my story?’” she said.
As people swap traditional vows for more personalized weddings, friends and family are filling many more roles beyond just bridesmaids and groomsmen. The wedding officiant is a really big one.
If you’re asked to perform a wedding for a couple, “take the role seriously,” Lee suggested. “Put a lot of hours and thought into how the ceremony will go.”
An officiant with a close tie to a marrying couple can bring a beautiful intimacy to the ceremony. But Lee warned, “Don’t wing it. You can’t wing it.”
First of all, weddings have a lot of stage directions. And the officiant is in charge of telling everyone in the congregation what to do.
“Part of the proceedings is having everyone be seated at a certain time,” said Shelby Wax, a contributing weddings editor at Vogue. She would know. “I’ve been at a wedding where we have stood up too long because an officiant forgot to say that.”
Wax suggested that officiants keep the proceedings moving without making too many jokes or doing anything to draw attention to themselves and away from the couple.
Ask the couple ahead of time for their vision of the ceremony, and find out some of the special things that draw them together and make them want to commit to marriage. And be sure to find out how long they want the ceremony to last.
You’ll also need to get any necessary credentials for legally officiating a wedding. Some jurisdictions require that wedding officiants be ordained ministers. That can be just a few clicks and is often free. The Universal Life Church ordains ministers online and boasts that it has ordained 20 million people.
“Sometimes you have to register with the state and the county and have all the forms ready to go for them to sign afterwards and mail them afterwards,” Wax said.
If the hassles and the responsibility of planning a ceremony and conducting a wedding are too much, bow out right now. The sooner the better.
But Wax suggested that you consider the invitation carefully. It’s an honor that your loved ones want you to marry them. “You know, if I was asked, I would absolutely make the time to do it,” she said.
Even if weddings have become less traditional, the event is still a joyous milestone and evokes a certain dreaminess in the people who get to witness it.
“I do feel that magic and that hope, similar to a child being born,” said Alisa Allred Mercer, a school board member in Davis County, Utah. She has officiated the weddings of a brother, two nieces, a nephew and many, many others.
If people are willing to give love a try, she said, she is happy to help.
“Each time that I am able to perform a wedding, I think the greatest thing that I’m able to give is to pour out my hope and my faith in their relationship to them,” she said.
Mercer had one final piece of advice: After you pronounce the couple married and tell them to kiss, get out of the picture.
“They do not want you in that photo — they want a photo of the two of them,” she said. “So step out of the way.”
The Knot estimates that more than 2 million couples will get married this year, and we’re not even halfway through wedding season. So if you find yourself sitting at a wedding this summer, maybe offer your silent wishes and prayers not just for the couple, but for the officiant too.
As Al Michel and Mike Sugerman tell it, the first rendition of their L.A. softball team was overflowing with “geeks,” “nerds” and “goofs.”
So they took a name straight out of National Lampoon, a humor magazine that featured “Doc Feeney’s Scrapbook of Sports Oddities,” showing outfielders making catches 40 feet in the air and providing tips to swimmers on proper drowning maneuvers.
“I’m thinking, we’re not a bunch of athletes — we’re a bunch of geeks,” said Michel, the team’s co-founder, current coach and catcher, reflecting on the loose band of UCLA law students, aspiring actors, accountants and other semi-athletic misfits. “Sports oddities? I thought, well, that’s not going to work… Let’s go with ‘All Stars.’”
And thus, in the spring of 1976, Doc Feeney’s All Stars was born. Fifty years and thousands of runs later, six of the original players still take to the diamond nearly every Sunday, swinging for the fences. And if out-of-towners are visiting, the ranks of the older timers swells a few more.
On a recent humid Sunday afternoon, the score was 16-16 going into the final inning. A booming home run at the bottom of the sixth by Aaron Krug — at 36, a youngster by Doc Feeney standards — had tied the game against the Six Pack at the Sepulveda Basin Sports Complex in Encino, one of the many fields across L.A. the Feeneys have graced in the last half-century. The cohort of mostly 70-something players in the dugout rejoiced, waving their caps and hollering.
This wasn’t any old Sunday matchup in the L.A. Municipal Softball League: The Feeneys’ jerseys featured black patches embroidered with “JBK” for Jamie Bailey Krug, the first of the original founders to make it back to home base in the sky.
This game was a memorial dedicated to Krug, the patch a reminder that being a Feeney has never really been about sport anyway.
“Jamie taught me what a best friend was,” said second baseman Richie Greenberg, another Feeney progenitor. “I never knew a best friend was someone you’d never get tired of, or never stopped missing.”
Jeff Koppelman, 72, 48 years on the team, delivers a pitch during a slowpitch softball game against Six Pack at the Sepulveda Basin Sports Complex in Encino.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Jamie’s son, Aaron, belongs to a new generation of All Stars — some of whom grew up watching their fathers’ games from kiddie strollers or their mothers’ arms.
“Every city in this country has a group of morons who get together every Sunday and who have done it for a lifetime, who love each other and love each other’s kids, and who, for some miraculous reason, believe that this will continue with the next generation,” Greenberg said. “We are bound to this thing… It sustains us.”
Feeney history, as told by the founders
The first season of Feeney ball was a resounding success, despite all the strikeouts and bobbled catches in between. The championship game was a struggle of lawfare: Michel, then an attorney in training, noticed that one of the opposing team’s hitters was using a baseball bat instead of the regulation softball bat with a smaller barrel. He kept this fact close to his chest, until the other team went up in the seventh, the last inning.
“The other team is celebrating, thinking they won the championship, high-fives all around,” Michel said. “We call a time out, point out the bat, and the ump comes over and says, ‘Oh yeah, that’s illegal’… It counts as an out and we win the game.”
“The only way to win like a Feeney,” Sugerman added.
Doc Feeney’s All Stars pose for a team photo, circa late 1970s.
(From Doc Feeney’s All-Stars )
Another season, outfielder Craig Simon, knowing he was weak at the plate, intentionally struck out so he could avoid an impending double play, much to the dismay of the opposing team.
“Another Feeney classic,” Greenberg said.
Nobody expected that the Feeneys would go on for half a century, but every winter and spring that passed, the team would be back on the diamond, albeit with a rotating cast.
Krug, Michel and Greenberg were near Sunday constants; Sugerman moved to San Francisco to become an award-winning correspondent on Bay Area radio, but always got a spot when he visited; Howard Lesner and Matt Kaplan became regulars in the 1980s; and other Feeneys faded to time, stuck as a memory of whichever decade they called it quits.
In L.A. Municipal Softball, there is a grading system to facilitate fair competition. The Feeneys oscillated between C and B over the years, a plus or minus coming depending on how much time had passed since the founding. A decade or so back, the team was blown out by a B-minus team in their first game after being upgraded, realizing that the elder’s eyes could no longer keep up with the heat coming off the B-minus bats.
“Couldn’t even see it coming,” Michel said.
Doc Feeney’s All Stars players, from left, Jonny Ehrich, 36, Richie Greenberg, 72, Joel Gerson, 37, and Aaron Krug, 36, warm up before a slowpitch softball game. Greenberg has been a mainstay on the team for 49 years.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Because the team has survived so long, every Feeney has had their day: double plays, home runs and batting averages — think .450 — that would make Shohei Ohtani look like a Triple-A backup. But that’s not what kept players coming back.
“I’ve had a great life and an enjoyable life, but no sense of bond and family,” Kaplan said between innings as dust from home plate lingered about, tears welling up from who-knows-what. “This became my family… This gave me what I was missing.”
The legends surrounding the team can, at times, become muddled. On a recent day outside of the Apple Pan burger joint — a Krug favorite — Michel, Greenberg and Sugerman, all nearly halfway into their 70s, litigated Feeney history:
“Who was it that got kicked off the team for being too competitive?”
“Did he marry the girl in this picture?”
“He never hit a home run in his life.”
“That guy was kind of a jerk.”
“You think so? I thought he was nice.”
But all of these questions led to the same, inevitable conclusion.
“Who cares, he was a Feeney.”
Doc Feeney’s All Stars veterans, Richie Greenberg, from left, Todd Lesner and Jeff Koppelman, all 72, sit together as team rookie Matt Michel, 33, works on the lineup. The trio has played on the team for nearly 50 years.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
The new generation of All Stars
The weekend he died last May, Jamie Krug had planned to play Sunday after attending his grandson’s musical performance Friday and going out to dinner with his wife, Simone, and friends Saturday. Krug heard the music and enjoyed a lovely night out, but he never made it to Sunday’s game.
The All Stars won, but learned Monday that Krug had gone to sleep and never woken up. Heart complications.
Family and friends remember Krug as many things: a reliable laugh, a saint of a father, a hell of a second baseman, a competitive but altruistic coach. At his funeral, his wife recalled, almost every speaker called him their “best friend.”
While some of the wives wouldn’t bother coming to games every Sunday, Michel said, many of the children saw the Feeney fathers as proper heroes. When she finally turned 14, Krug’s daughter, Ali, broke Municipal League barriers when she became the first woman to make an appearance as an All Star.
“My whole childhood was centered around baseball,” Ali said, recalling playing with her dad. “He’d set up these scenarios that were like, two outs, bottom of the ninth, World Series, bases loaded; he’d hit a huge fly ball and I’d catch it.”
From left, Matt Michel, 33, Aaron Krug, 36, and Joel Gerson, 37, high-five after a Doc Feeney’s slowpitch softball game. Michel’s father, Al, and Krug’s late father, Jamie, are both original members of the team.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Aaron — whose homer brought the Feeneys back into the memorial game — also joined the team at 14, playing alongside his father whenever he wasn’t too busy with his own sports schedule.
“Playing with your dad,” he said. “It’s hard to not get romantic about it.”
Michel’s son, Matt, has sought to modernize the team with a score-keeping app that has proved more reliable than Michel’s antiquated paper method.
“They used to pay me $20 to keep score,” Matt said. “I don’t have to pretend anymore, though.”
The game plan in a modern Feeney game revolves around strategically placing the elders in the batting lineup to avoid having two quick strikeouts or slow runners on base. Even though the Feeneys have gotten more competitive under the junior Michel’s management, the rascal-on-the-field ethos of the original team still prevails.
“The combined age of every Feeney in the infield could be 350 at any given time,” Lesner said before heading to the infield.
Winning like a Feeney
Due to some sloppy defensive errors from the silver-haired infield, the Feeneys allowed more runs in the top of the seventh. The Six Pack led, 18-16.
The Feeneys were in precarious waters as Greenberg stepped up to the plate with two outs. For the memorial game, the Feeneys had reverted to their old batting order, so after Greenberg, the lineup would be wholly composed of Feeney elders.
For the first time the whole game, all the players glued their eyes to the plate, conversations and catch-ups stopped mid-sentence.
Greenberg tried his best to ignore an irritating ankle injury that had plagued him the last couple of weeks and grimaced under the hazy sunlight as the pitcher, probably 20 or more years his junior, stared him down.
The high-arc pitch went up.
Jeff Koppelman, 72, drives a single during a slowpitch softball game. He has been a member of Doc Feeney’s All Stars for 48 years.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Greenberg yanked his bat back, looking like a young Ken Griffey Jr. He struck the ball hard, but sent a one-hopper straight toward a third baseman no older than 40. Greenberg made it only about halfway up the basepath.
Out at first.
The Jamie Krug memorial game ended in a loss.
But instead of kicking up dust, breaking bats or throwing fits, the Feeneys coalesced in a green-and-yellow mass behind the dugout. They all high-fived, asked about each other’s families and went to dote on Ali’s 1-year-old daughter — Krug’s granddaughter, Eloise — who wore a shirt that traversed 50 years of family and friendship. It reads: “Littlest Feeney.”
Since leaving office, former Vice President Mike Pence founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom.
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Since leaving office, former Vice President Mike Pence founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Former Vice President Mike Pence played a key role in bringing President Trump to power in 2016. By putting his name on the Republican ticket, he helped reassure the Republican establishment and evangelical voters who were wary of Trump’s brash brand of populism.
Pence’s departure from Trump’s leadership of the Republican party began when Trump called on Pence to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election — pressure Pence rejected.
“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence wrote in his memoir So Help Me God, which was released in 2022.
In the years since leaving office, Pence has been advocating for an ideological restructure of the Republican party, and founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom. Pence builds on the theme of reimagining the Republican party in his new book What Conservatives Want, which provides a critique of the second Trump administration and what he terms the “populist right.”
In an interview with Morning Edition, Pence detailed to NPR’s Steve Inskeep his critique of the second Trump administration, shared his perspective on civil rights legislation and challenged Trump’s tariffs and other interventions in the economy.
Listen to the full interview by clicking on the blue play button above; and read highlights from the conversation below.
‘The populist right’ does not represent conservative beliefs
Pence believes that Trump has embraced “the populist right” over traditional conservatives in the Republican party.
The sale of economic American company U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel in Japan exemplifies this shift, Pence said.
In his first term, President Trump opposed the sale. But in his second term, he approved the sale and took a golden share — a class of shares in which a government can own a very small percentage of the company but has outsized voting rights.
Pence said that he was taken aback by Trump’s decision to take a golden share.
Free trade is essential to American conservatism
Pence takes umbrage with his former boss’ tariff-laden economic policy.
Pence said it violates conservatism’s bedrock belief in the power of free trade, and Trump has gone about granting exceptions to tariffs in an unfair way.
Granting waivers to large corporations from certain tariffs is “one of the lesser reported aspects of the tariff regime that’s been imposed by the administration,” Pence added.
Trump and Pence ran in 2020 on a mission to “drain the swamp,” rooting out government corruption and wasteful spending. However, Pence said Trump appears to have shifted from those goals.
“There’s maybe nothing more swampy than the battle over getting tariff waivers for big business,” Pence said.
Women’s rights on the right
There is a debate among the ultraconservative right about the role of women in civic life.
The concept of “household voting,” has become a familiar talking point for ultra-right-wing communities online. Supporters of “household voting” advocate that every American household should get one vote, the vote being that of the husband’s. This concept has been promoted by figures such as Abby Johnson, a prominent anti-abortion activist who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention. When asked about whether he supported household voting, Pence said he is not aligned
“It’s one person, one vote in this country. And people have bled and died for that principle throughout the years of our history,” Pence said.
He added that American families don’t need to be propped up by government programs to boost childbirth. “What American families need is an application of the kind of principles that will create higher wages, more opportunities, more jobs,” Pence said.
Should conservatives stand for civil rights?
Pence said he was an admirer of senator and one-time presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
Notably, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Should conservatives stand for civil rights?” asked Inskeep.
Pence responded that civil rights are important to conservatives, but that equality of opportunity is what legislation ought to enshrine, not equality of outcome.
Pence added that he stood by the Supreme Court’s decision to ban partisan gerrymandering on the basis of race, rendering ineffective a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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