For Trump and his potential 2024 GOP rivals, It’s all about Iowa
By Trip Gabriel
Donald Trump was in Iowa last Monday. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made his first visit the previous week. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., have each made recent trips. And Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a forum on foreign policy.
Even as Democrats have chosen to snub Iowa in 2024, the state has never loomed so large for Republicans in the presidential nominating race. For one Republican, it has taken on a do-or-die feel — the first real-world test of the strength or vulnerability of Trump.
No former president has sought to regain the White House in modern times. A loss or even a less-than-convincing win for Trump in the state’s caucuses, the kickoff contest for Republicans early next year, would signal a nearly fatal weakness for his campaign, according to GOP strategists in and out of the state. For that reason, both his challengers and Trump himself are paying extra attention to Iowa.
“I don’t see a formula where Trump loses Iowa, and it doesn’t really wound him and his chances as a candidate,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Even though Trump easily carried Iowa in the general elections of 2016 and 2020, Republican activists in the state said a 2024 caucus victory was not assured for him, although he remains the front-runner.
Last week, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll found that Trump’s appeal was eroding: If he is the nominee in 2024, only 47% of Iowa Republicans would definitely support him in the general election. That was a double-digit decline from the 69% who in 2021 said that they would definitely support him.
“For the former president, winning the Iowa caucuses is everything,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential leader of the state’s evangelical voters. “If he loses, it’s ‘game on’ to the nomination” for everyone else, he said. “If he wins the Iowa caucuses, there’s nobody stopping him.”
After Democrats decided that Iowa’s nearly all-white, largely rural population was not representative and substituted South Carolina as the kickoff state for their 2024 primaries, Republicans are embracing the state’s traditional role as a proving ground.
The Trump campaign has hired experienced state leaders and plans to build an Iowa caucus infrastructure that signals its wish for a do-over of 2016, when Trump was shocked to finish second in the caucuses.
Back then, the politically inexperienced reality TV star had believed that big crowds at his rallies would easily translate into a surge of caucusgoers. Instead, he lost to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Trump was so angry that he flew out of Iowa without thanking his local staff, baselessly tweeting later that Cruz had won because of “fraud” — a preview of his approach after losing reelection in 2020.
Trump advisers said they did not intend to repeat the mistakes of 2016. “We have a serious political operation in the state of Iowa, run by and coordinated with extraordinarily competent professionals who know what they’re doing,” said Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. “We’re doing that because, one, we’re serious, and two, we’re in it to win it.”
Trump has hired as his state director Marshall Moreau, who managed the upset victory last year of Iowa’s Republican attorney general. He also hired as his director of early voting states Alex Latcham, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. Latcham witnessed close-up the bumbling Trump effort in 2016.
In 2016, Trump’s Iowa staff members — including a former “Apprentice” contestant — signed up volunteer organizers but failed to teach them how to reach caucusgoers or even to provide literature to leave at their doors. The Trump headquarters in suburban Des Moines, Iowa, was dark many nights when rivals had scores of volunteers working the phones.
Trump advisers said things would run differently this time. They pointed to Trump’s first visit to Iowa on Monday as a 2024 candidate. The campaign said it was following up on the names and emails of thousands of people who registered to attend and filled the packed hall, seating 2,400, in Davenport, Iowa.
“The real work of the campaign starts when the president is wheels up,” Latcham said. “We’re going to continue to engage these people constantly every single day up until February.”
Trump has also bowed to campaign traditions he once eschewed. At his Davenport appearance, he took unscripted questions from the audience for 20 minutes. Before the rally, he made an unannounced visit to a Machine Shed restaurant, a popular Iowa chain.
One of Trump’s rivals, Haley, a former United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, has twice visited Iowa since entering the race last month, and on both visits, she engaged voters at length, leaning into the one-on-one campaign style that helped her win elections as South Carolina governor.
Drop-ins at restaurants are a not-so-subtle way in which Trump’s 2024 advisers mean to draw a contrast with his likely chief rival, DeSantis, who is combating a reputation for woodenness.
“In the past, the big rallies worked,” said LaCivita, the senior Trump adviser. “It’s a different campaign most definitely than it was in 2016. It’s a different time. We’re going to do a mix of retail politics and large-scale rallies.”
Vander Plaats, the leader of evangelical voters, who make up a large Republican bloc in Iowa, said many were wide open to an alternative to Trump.
“My fear, along with a lot of other people’s fears, is, we’re concerned about how America has largely made up its mind about Donald Trump,” he said. “I think it’s time to get behind the next leader who can win in 2024.”
Vander Plaats said evangelicals had not forgotten that Trump blamed the broad Republican losses in the 2022 midterms on candidates’ putting too much focus on the “abortion issue.”
“It showed a character thing with Trump that he cast the blame on the pro-life movement,” Vander Plaats said. “If you’re trying to win the Iowa caucuses, I would not put that base under the bus.”
Should Pence enter the race, as widely expected, the Trump campaign could have a problem cutting into the former vice president’s appeal among evangelical voters. And Pence may adopt a strategy of camping out in Iowa — spending most of his time in the state to make a strong caucus showing.
On Saturday in Des Moines, Pence reiterated at a foreign policy forum his view that America must support Ukraine, setting himself crosswise with Trump and DeSantis, both of whom have said the Russian invasion is a regional matter of no vital U.S. concern. “Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin is going to stop if he takes Ukraine has what we say in this part of the country another thing coming,” Pence told Iowans.
The former vice president also defended Trump’s call Saturday for protests to “take back” the country if, as expected, Trump is indicted in Manhattan — a call that echoes Trump’s incendiary messages before the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Pence, speaking to reporters, called the potential indictment “politically charged” and said people have a right “to express the frustration that they feel,” while urging protesters to be peaceful. Pence recently said that Trump will be “accountable” to history for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Asked Saturday if the former president should be prosecuted if he broke the law, Pence said, “No one is above the law. I’m confident President Trump can take care of himself.”
The foreign policy forum attracted Pence supporters as well as detractors. “Even though he may not have the excitement of some of the other candidates, he’s a very good person,” David Payer, 70, said of Pence. “He’s got this rock-solid foundation that he stands on that I can respect and appreciate.”
Davis Heywood, a retired roofer in a “Trump 2024” hat, said he was disappointed by what he saw as Pence’s efforts to put daylight between himself and the former president over Jan. 6, Ukraine and other issues.
For years, Pence acted as if the “best thing of his whole life was being vice president under President Trump,” Heywood said. “All of a sudden, he’s talking different than what he talked before.”