The Florida governor is hoping that a robust ground game will carry him to victory in Iowa despite the former president’s double-digit lead.
The Florida governor is hoping that a robust ground game will carry him to victory in Iowa despite the former president’s double-digit lead.
Newton, Iowa — Ron DeSantis is betting that following through on his pledge to visit all 99 of Iowa’s counties will give his campaign some much-needed rocket fuel ahead of the country’s first-in-the-nation caucuses on January 15. But even his biggest supporters acknowledge there’s an enormous obstacle standing in the way of that coveted position: former president Donald Trump.
“The big thing I need to do is I just need to give an assurance and a green light: It’s okay not to vote for Trump, that it’s not against him, but it’s for someone who can lead on day one,” says DeSantis backer Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the influential evangelical group the Family Leader.
With about six weeks to go, the Florida governor’s odds of overtaking the former president in Iowa next month look longer than ever. DeSantis and his wife have reportedly lost confidence in the Iowa advertising game of the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down, multiple outlets reported this week, and polling averages show that his campaign has been unable to crack 20 percent of Iowa’s Republican electorate since the summer.
Still, DeSantis barrels ahead. “Nobody is entitled to support,” he told a friendly crowd on Saturday in Newton. “You have the right to support who you want, and you should support the candidate that has earned your trust and earned your support throughout this campaign.” His rally there marked his completion of the “full Grassley,” a nod to Republican senator Chuck Grassley’s famous tradition of visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties every year.
And though it’s an impressive feat, the excitement level in Newton on Saturday afternoon paled in comparison with the production that Trump put on earlier that day at an even smaller venue in Ankeny, where many supporters acted more like they were at a sports game than a political event: whooping and cheering throughout the former president’s speech and standing atop tables to snap photos. Trump is relishing every moment. “We’re in good shape with DeSanctimonious. He seems to be dropping like a very, very sick bird in the ground, slowly into the ground,” Trump told a packed crowd of supporters.
The pro-DeSantis camp argues that if the former president wins big in Iowa, he’ll be virtually impossible to beat elsewhere. Hence the Florida governor’s decision to focus his ground game in the Hawkeye State. He moved a third of his campaign staff here, and the main super PAC supporting him has knocked on more than 600,000 doors, urging Iowans to consider a younger and fresher face as their 2024 Republican nominee.
But it’s far from clear that these efforts are translating into any real momentum for the Florida governor’s campaign on the ground, say many Trump supporters who flocked to Ankeny to hear the former president speak. “I had one of his people come to my door the other day and ask me if I’d consider supporting him, and I said, ‘Absolutely not. I’ve already made my decision,’” says Trump supporter Sandy Carpenter. “Trump supporters are kind of die-hard. I don’t think there’s gonna be any swinging to DeSantis.”
Making matters worse for the Florida governor, many deep-pocketed Republican donors eager for a Trump alternative in 2024 are now warming to former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. She leads DeSantis in New Hampshire polls and is within striking distance of catching DeSantis in Iowa just weeks away from the caucuses.
The strategy in Haley world at this juncture, it seems, is to level expectations in Iowa. If Haley performs well there in January, their theory goes, she can ride that stronger-than-expected momentum into New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina.
The super PAC supporting Haley’s presidential bid maintains that DeSantis’s Iowa-focused strategy will precipitate his undoing. “We’re going to fight to win in Iowa every day from here to caucus day, but it is not an absolute requirement for us, where it is clearly an absolute requirement for the DeSantis campaign,” Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the pro-Haley super PAC Stand for America, said on a call with reporters last month. “He’s made very clear it’s sort of Iowa or bust.”
In just five weeks we’ll find out whether DeSantis’s Iowa-focused strategy paid any dividends. Two main bright spots for DeSantis at this point are his ground game and his coveted endorsement from the state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.
If anyone can influence caucus-goers, says Iowa’s RNC committeeman Steve Scheffler, it’s “probably” Reynolds. But he also recalled the lead-up to the 2016 Iowa caucuses, when then-governor Terry Branstad (R., Iowa) issued an anti-endorsement of Ted Cruz and called him the “biggest opponent of renewable fuels” in the 2016 GOP primary field.
“Cruz still won the caucuses,” adds Scheffler, who also serves as president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. “My point is, past history indicates that endorsements are nice, but at the end of the day, I don’t think they really move the needle that much at all.”