Ron DeSantis bets his presidential campaign on Iowa, campaigning in all of the state’s 99 counties.
Ron DeSantis has, by this point, bet his whole presidential campaign on the Iowa caucus. Whatever else one can say about his campaign for the Republican nomination, this much is clear: Nobody will ever say DeSantis was outworked. The Florida governor is speaking this afternoon in Jasper County, Iowa, east of Des Moines in the center of the state. It’s not a big county: Ted Cruz won it by almost ten points in the 2016 Iowa caucus, but with just 812 votes to 583 for Donald Trump. Marco Rubio got ten times as many votes in winning neighboring Polk County (home of Des Moines) as Cruz got in Jasper. It’s certainly not as sunny in early December in Jasper County as it is in Tallahassee. What’s significant is that Jasper County is the last of Iowa’s 99 counties that DeSantis has visited.
This is known, in Iowa politics, as the “Full Grassley.” The state’s 90-year-old senior senator, Chuck Grassley, has long made it his trademark to visit every county in the state each year. Iowa counties are laid out like a grid, and with so much of the state still rural, it’s much easier to get voters to show up by appearing close to where they live. According to Alec Hernández and Bianca Seward of NBC News, 87 of the 99 DeSantis county stops have been open to the press. By contrast, Donald Trump has made it to just 11 of the state’s counties in this campaign; Nikki Haley, focused on New Hampshire, has been to 21.
Ever since DeSantis abandoned an early policy of limiting his press appearances to friendly venues, he’s also done a punishing daily schedule of interviews, with regular press availability to Iowa media. He’s done the state fair in the broiling midsummer heat, and the Thanksgiving family leader forum. Throw in visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina, governing Florida through a hurricane, debating Gavin Newsom on Fox News and the other Republican candidates, and raising money, and the 45-year-old DeSantis has been tireless.
Grassley hasn’t endorsed in this race, but he did issue a congratulatory statement: “I compliment any candidate that holds meetings in all 99 counties and completes what’s now called the ‘Full Grassley.’ I have found it is the best way to show Iowans everyone is important to hear from and no one is forgotten by their senator.” DeSantis hasn’t lacked for endorsements, however, getting governor Kim Reynolds, Christian conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats (who has been in the corner of Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee when each won Iowa in the last three contested caucuses), leaders in both houses of the Iowa legislature, and twice as many state legislators as Trump.
Trump, for his part, preposterously tried to take credit for Grassley winning reelection in 2022. Grassley was first elected to public office in 1958, in a blue-wave year during the Eisenhower administration; he was elected to the House in another blue-wave year in 1974, following Richard Nixon’s resignation; he was swept into the Senate in a red wave in 1980 behind Ronald Reagan; and among his 38 consecutive election victories, he’s won every reelection campaign by a larger margin than Trump has ever won Iowa. It’s safe to say that, other than Reagan, Chuck Grassley owes his Senate seat to nobody but himself and the voters of Iowa.
If there’s a formula for winning Iowa, DeSantis has checked all the boxes, built all the organization, and done all the work. Now he must put to the test whether, if he builds it, they will come. Enduring month after month of hostile press and grim public polls, he has never gotten discouraged. But he sometimes seems like John Henry hammering against the remorseless machine of Trump, who at 77 has ducked the debates and conducted an indifferent campaign in between court appearances and retreats to Mar-A-Lago. Trump has seemed increasingly forgetful, rambling, and disconnected from anything but his own grievances at his periodic public appearances. The Donald has barely broken a sweat in Iowa, or anywhere else, for that matter. He assumes he doesn’t have to. Maybe he just isn’t up to it anymore. Perhaps Republican voters don’t even care if he is. Perhaps they don’t think the nominee needs to work for it.
The Iowa caucuses have surprised us before. If DeSantis wins, it will be an earthquake in this race. If he doesn’t, he can look back on the 99-county tour and know he left it all on the cornfield.