Global Courant 2023-05-13 17:00:37
The top two candidates in the polls for the early 2024 Republican presidential election will converge on Saturday in Iowa, the state whose primaries lead the GOP road to the White House calendar.
Former President Donald Trump will hold a rally in Des Moines on Saturday evening. It will be Trump’s second trip to Iowa since he launched his third straight presidential campaign in November. Polls in Iowa and the other early voting primary and caucus states, as well as national surveys, indicate Trump is the clear front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination at this early stage in the cycle.
“Our mass rallies are back and bigger than ever before,” Trump boasted in a video message to his supporters posted to social media on Friday.
Referring to Saturday’s rally in Des Moines, Trump praised that “it’s by far the hottest ticket in town and unlike any other political event in history. There’s never been any rallies like we’re having rallies. Nowhere, nowhere.”
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Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on Monday, March 13, 2023 in Davenport, Iowa. (AP Photo/Ron Johnson) (AP)
But Trump will be in the spotlight of Iowa this weekend as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will also be in Hawkeye state on Saturday, headlining events in both the western and eastern parts of the state to raise money for fellow Republicans. Although the popular conservative governor will be sidelined for two terms in 2024, he is expected to launch a presidential campaign in the coming weeks, and polls show him Trump’s closest rival – firmly in second place and way ahead of the rest of the pack of current and likely GOP White House contenders.
Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann, noting the former president’s “almost universal name recognition and universal knowledge of his policies,” told Fox News that Trump “clearly has an inside track.”
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“Do I believe Donald Trump is ahead in the Iowa polls? Absolutely. Do I believe the Iowa caucuses are a foregone conclusion? Absolutely not,” Kaufmann stressed. “It’s not in our nature to do that. And I think a lot of Iowans would be hesitant to organize a caucus before January, when we actually have one.”
Bob Vander Place, president and CEO of the Family Leader, a leading social-conservative organization in Iowa, said Trump “probably starts with 30% support that probably won’t go anywhere. They’re going to stick with the former president.”
“Typically, in an Iowa caucus, if you can start at 30%, you’re in good shape. The challenge for President Trump is that 30% may be his ceiling, which means a lot of others are looking for an alternative to Trump ‘ said Vander Place.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis addresses Iowa voters on March 10, 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
While Trump will gather his base on Saturday night, DeSantis will be on a mission to raise money for fellow Republicans and make friendships that could pay dividends in the coming months.
Florida’s governor will be in the deep red northwestern part of the state in the late morning to lead Republican Representative Randy Feenstra’s third annual Feenstra Family Picnic fundraiser at Sioux Center.
Feenstra’s past two family picnics have been headlined by former Vice President Mike Pence, who is expected to launch his own 2024 bid in the coming weeks, and former ambassador to the United Nations and former governor Nikki Haley, who will announce her candidacy for the White House in February.
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In a statement to Fox News announcing that DeSantis would be joining him, Feenstra praised the governor’s conservative values. “As liberal states shut down their economies, forced businesses to close and kept our kids out of the classroom, Governor DeSantis championed freedom and common sense. Florida – like Iowa – is a clear example of what strong conservative leadership can bring to our country,” Feenstra wrote.
Feenstra, along with the rest of the state’s Republican congressional delegation, remains neutral in the Iowa GOP presidential caucus race.
DeSantis will head east later Saturday, and while Trump holds his rally in Des Moines, the governor will be in Cedar Rapids to lead an Iowa GOP fundraising event and join Kaufmann.
More than three dozen state legislators — including two high-profile Iowa Republicans, Senate President Amy Sinclair and State House Leader Matt Windschitl — endorsed DeSantis ahead of his second trip to the state of Hawkeye this year.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, and former President Donald Trump, right. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images // Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Trump released a dozen messages of support from Republican leaders in Iowa ahead of a March stop in Davenport.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire two weeks ago, the former president unveiled a list of about 50 endorsements from Granite State Republicans. Trump’s campaign tells Fox News it can expect approval “announcements” at Saturday’s rally.
Iowa’ has seen a lot of campaign traffic so far this year, with numerous visits from South Carolina’s Haley, Pence and Senator Tim Scott — who is expected to announce his candidacy later this month — as well as three other declared presidential candidates: former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson; multimillionaire entrepreneur, best-selling author and conservative commentator Vivek Ramaswamy; and businessman Perry Johnson.
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Several of the candidates or likely contenders want to impress the state’s evangelical voters, who play an outsized role in Iowa’s Republican politics.
Trump’s Iowa quit comes just days after a New York City jury found the former president liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan luxury department store nearly three decades ago, but not liable for the rape that Carroll accused Trump of committing.
Writer E. Jean Carroll leaves a Manhattan courthouse after a jury finds former President Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting her in a 1990s Manhattan department store, on May 9, 2023, in New York City. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages for her accusations of battery and libel. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The jury concluded within hours on Tuesday that Trump was also liable for defamation based on the former president’s denial of Carroll’s allegations in an October 2022 social media post, when he called her claims a “hoax” and a ” scammer”. The jury awarded Carroll nearly $5 million in damages for her battery and libel charges.
Trump, who is appealing the verdict, at a nationally televised town hall on Wednesday evening accused the verdict of being a “rigged deal” and claimed Carroll was a “goofball.”
Asked about the reaction of socially conservative voters in Iowa to the verdict, Vander Plaat told Fox News, “The bad news with that is I don’t think anyone is shocked by the verdict. I don’t think anybody said, ‘Oh my God , I didn’t see that coming.'”
But he stressed that Iowa voters “know that sexual abuse, assault, is wrong for anyone at any time.”
“I think it builds on that continued exhaustion” with Trump, he added. “If you just continue to debate the past, we don’t see how that wins in 2024.”
While Iowa — along with New Hampshire, which holds the first primary and second overall game in the GOP nomination calendar — has played an outrageous role in presidential politics for half a century, Kaufmann noted that Hawkeye state’s job is not to determine the nominees.
The Iowa Caucuses exhibit at the State Historical Museum of Iowa, on January 15, 2020. (Fox news)
“We’re not supposed to elect the next president. That’s not what we’re doing. What we need to do is vet the candidates, create a situation and an environment where these candidates can go out and deliver their message directly. ” to the people,” he explained.
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Kaufmann stressed that “there’s more than one ticket from Iowa,” as he pointed to Trump’s second-place finish in the 2016 primary, narrowly behind eventual nominee runner-up Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
He emphasized that candidates who perform above average in the primary can “leave Iowa with some momentum for the long game. And that’s what Iowa is all about. It’s the beginning of the long game.”
Paul Steinhauser is a political reporter from New Hampshire.
