Americana

The sputtering effort to stop Trump in Iowa

THE SCENE

Sitting side-by-side at a wooden table at a forum with “discerning Christian voters,” three Republican presidential candidates compared the time they’d spent meeting Iowans.

Nikki Haley told the Iowa Family Leader’s audience that she’d “lost count of how many town halls” she’d had. Ron DeSantis was about to visit his 98th of the state’s 99 counties — “we’re going to save that 99th for a big, big announcement.” Vivek Ramaswamy talked about the apartment his family had rented in Des Moines, becoming “native Iowans,” as his son Karthik goofed around on his lap.

The next day, 100 miles away, Donald Trump rallied 2,000 supporters at a high school and promised to return to Iowa “four or five times, maybe six times” before the Jan. 15 caucuses.

This was Iowa, eight weeks out from the first presidential primary contest — Trump doing only what he had to, and three far-behind rivals who had to try everything. Tim Scott’s exit from the race freed up big donors (ex-Trump adviser Gary Cohn, Citadel founder Ken Griffin) who are now eying Haley after missing her first funding rounds. But DeSantis still presents himself as the only Trump challenger who can compete in Iowa — credible with evangelical voters, backed by Gov. Kim Reynolds.

“He doesn’t need to hold off Haley in Iowa,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host in Des Moines who endorsed DeSantis this summer. “It’s only a two-person race. Only one candidate has the standing to win: Trump. And only one candidate has the organization to win: DeSantis. Haley is no threat on the ground to alter that. Especially within the Family Leader base.”

But the DeSantis operation is treating Haley like a threat. Never Back Down, the super PAC that’s run ads, paid for field operations, and staged town halls for DeSantis, began attacking Haley with paid messaging last month, highlighting times when the former South Carolina governor welcomed Chinese businesses to the state. Fight Right, a new pro-DeSantis group, has reserved $500,000 in ads that will start on Thanksgiving, also targeting Haley.

The airwaves are far from full: Since the end of September, the super PACs supporting Trump (MAGA Inc.), DeSantis (Never Back Down), and Haley (SFA Fund) have spent only around $4 million apiece on TV advertising. But one reason Fight Right exists, according to NBC News, is that Never Back Down’s anti-Haley messaging, like its prior anti-Trump messaging, was ineffective.

“The numbers are showing that Nikki is the very clear alternative to Donald Trump,” said state Sen. Chris Cournoyer, Haley’s Iowa campaign chair. “Her numbers are rising in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I think that DeSantis, even with his 99-county tour in Iowa, is just stagnant, and her message is truly resonating.”

DAVID’S VIEW

The Iowa campaign is unfolding under nearly ideal conditions for Trump, the first choice for most caucus-goers and second choice for most DeSantis voters. Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats brought up that fact at his own event, asking the Florida governor the “biggest question” he’d been hearing: “Why doesn’t he wait his turn?” (Vander Plaats is expected to endorse DeSantis today, which his rivals saw as inevitable after DeSantis-related groups gave $95,000 to the Family Leader.)

DeSantis’s answer hasn’t changed all year: He wins and delivers, Trump loses and falters. “I have laid waste to the Democratic Party,” he told Vander Plaats. “They are a carcass on the side of the road.” In Iowa, where his support among Republicans has stabilized around 17%, he casts Haley as a spoiler, explaining that Trump’s attack strategy — the ex-president’s PAC has only gone after DeSantis — “shows you who the threat is.”

But no candidate truly threatens Trump in Iowa, who has built and held a lead since DeSantis entered the race six months ago. At this point in the 2016 cycle, 55 days before the caucuses, Trump led Ted Cruz by 3 points; a late surge and solid evangelical support helped Cruz win by 3. Fifty-nine days out from the last Democratic caucuses, Pete Buttigieg held a 3-point lead over Bernie Sanders, which the Vermont senator would erase, before a botched count that convinced Democrats it was time for another state to vote first.

In an average of all Iowa polls, Trump heads into the Thanksgiving holiday up 30 points over DeSantis and the field. Not since 2000, when George W. Bush and Al Gore easily won their party caucuses, have Iowa front-runners held such wide leads in competitive races. DeSantis and Haley are viewed favorably by more GOP caucus-goers than Trump, but so was Scott, who abandoned the race this month. And veterans of the Scott campaign expect his voters to scatter between Trump, DeSantis, and Haley.

“Those persuadable evangelicals want someone they believe can win,” said Matt Gorman, a Scott campaign strategist, referring to the voters who make up around two-thirds of the Iowa GOP electorate.

KNOW MORE

​​Of Trump’s remaining rivals, Haley has done the most to use electability as a point of contrast. She cites polls that show her running stronger than Trump in swing states, and she distances herself from any Trump stance that sounds divisive. Asked at a Marshalltown stop about Trump referring to political enemies as “vermin,” a comment that flared into days of mainstream media coverage, Haley characterized it as the sort of gaffe he makes and she doesn’t.

“I think he means well,” she said, “but the chaos has got to stop.”

More often, the candidates say that they can wield power better than Trump did. Haley boils down her problems with Trump into a few decisions he could have made, but didn’t; at the Iowa Family Leader forum, she repeated a story about Trump angrily “ripping out pages” from a list of unfriendly countries that got foreign aid, the point being that she’d rip out even more if she beat Biden. DeSantis, who talks about Trump more frequently than Haley, promises a better-organized, more loyal White House that would create less drama for the media to cover.

“When Trump was president — I mean, he literally would be doing phone calls with foreign leaders, and you’d have people on the NSC leak it to The Washington Post and The New York Times and stuff,” DeSantis told a crowd in Pella. “Part of that is because he kept all these Obama holdovers in the NSC. You cannot do that. All the Biden people, when I’m president, are gone on day one.”

There is no path to a DeSantis White House without an incredible result in Iowa; he has flatlined in New Hampshire, and his campaign and super PAC have been off the air there for months. Haley’s avoidance of the abortion issue, preferring a “consensus” to a specific new federal policy, is well suited to the least-religious GOP electorate on the early calendar.

But at the forum, when pressed if she would have signed South Carolina’s six-week abortion ban, Haley said she would. “Whatever the people decide, you should go,” she told Vander Plaats, going on-record about an issue she’d evaded. She did it at an event hosted by an influencer that everyone expected to endorse DeSantis — an event that Trump felt very free to skip.

NOTABLE

• In Politico, Jack Shafer plays taps for Haley’s social media verification proposal, a brief flare-up that DeSantis took advantage of as he tries to fend her off; it “crumpled under the most gentle scrutiny.”
• In the New York Times, Reid J. Epstein looks at how Democrats want the electorate to realize that Trump will probably be the GOP nominee, keeping up their “yearslong dependence on the Trump outrage machine.”

Louisiana. Republicans swept Saturday’s runoff elections by their largest margins ever, as Democrats fumed about their inability to compete in a state they once dominated. Nancy Landry, who’d questioned “irregularities” in the 2020 election — in other states, not Louisiana — led the secretary of state’s race with 67% of the vote, while GOP candidates for attorney general and treasurer won with 66% and 65%, respectively. Democratic candidates carried just four majority-Black parishes, and turnout collapsed after the October primary, when Attorney Gen. Jeff Landry won the race for governor. He’ll take office on Jan. 8. Meanwhile, outgoing Gov. John Bel Edwards is deciding whether to call a special legislative session to redraw congressional maps.

Utah. The last House race of 2023 ends today with the final deadline for mail ballots in the 2nd Congressional District. Celeste Maloy, who worked for ex-Rep. Chris Stewart and won the primary with his endorsement, has been the favorite ever since; she dispatched a pro-choice Republican and a conservative self-funder in a race that took days to count. State Sen. Kathleen Riebe, a Democrat who represents suburbs south of Salt Lake City, entered the final stretch with slightly more cash than Maloy, but no support from the national party; Trump carried the seat by 17 points, and it’s not a target for the party in 2024.

Celeste for Congress, “Vote Celeste Maloy for Congress.” As soon as she won the GOP primary, Maloy became the heavy favorite to succeed her old boss in a safe Republican seat. Her closing campaign ad barely mentions her politics, briefly identifying her as a “conservative Utahn.” It’s just about encouraging the GOP electorate to turn in mail ballots in between holiday commitments.

Riebe for Congress, “Games.” Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe, like many members of her party in deep red districts, has positioned herself as the pragmatist who wants out of culture wars. The only policies mentioned in her final spot are campaign finance reform (popular) and no salary for members of Congress if they can’t pass a budget (very popular). She focuses more on what she won’t do — side with activists who are “fanning the flames of culture wars for personal gain” in schools, citing her teaching background to say that it just won’t work.

NRSC, “A Choice.” Republicans in D.C. see no way to prevent Kari Lake from winning their nomination for U.S. Senate in nine months. Their polling has Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, if she stays in the race as an independent, taking more GOP votes than Democratic voters; her image with Democratic voters is putrid. This ad, part of a small digital buy, tries to bang up that image with Democrats by pointing to Sinema’s pro-Biden record, and introduces character attacks on Rep. Ruben Gallego, calling him a “deadbeat dad” — no evidence is given for this label — who “abandoned his wife when she was nearly nine months pregnant.” (Gallego and his ex-wife, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, don’t discuss their divorce, and have shared custody of their son.)

Why is New Hampshire’s GOP primary an abattoir for social conservative candidates? Why has DeSantis collapsed there, and Haley done so well? It’s because of the electorate — according to 2016’s exit polls, two-thirds of Iowa Republican caucus-goers were “born again or evangelical Christians,” compared to just one-quarter of New Hampshire GOP primary voters. (A large share of those voters are independents who can vote in either party primary.) Just 40% of likely 2024 primary voters want abortion to be banned in all or “most” cases, and just one candidate in the race — DeSantis — has signed a six-week ban. One result? A lower ceiling on his potential support here.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s brief Democratic primary campaign started with more support than pundits expected, and ended with the majority of national Democratic voters viewing him negatively. Since switching to an independent campaign, he’s vanished from most media coverage; it didn’t help that he announced just 48 hours after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Voters have gotten unhappier with Trump and Biden since then, and 82% call the influx of migrants into New York a “very serious” problem. Kennedy has run to Biden’s right on immigration, promising to build an “impenetrable” border. Biden is running 25 points behind his 2020 vote with a new, angry electorate.

Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin is the heavy favorite for her party’s nomination for Senate, with $5.2 million on hand at the start of October and endorsements from other electeds. The GOP’s primary started later and has no clear favorite, after ex-Rep. Peter Meijer jumped in, and the party’s MAGA leadership has been hurting for money. But the baseline Democratic vote is low. Biden gets 41% support in a race against Trump and 36% in a race against Haley, far worse than he polled at any point in the 2020 campaign.

White House. Multiple, overlapping efforts to get Trump off the 2024 ballot failed last week, even as a Colorado judge handling one case ruled that Trump had “engaged in insurrection.” By Tuesday, both the pro- and anti-Trump sides had appealed that ruling. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which argues that the 14th Amendment bars Trump from running again, appealed over Judge Sarah Wallace’s claim that she could not remove him; the Trump campaign appealed over her claim that his Jan. 6 activities amounted to “insurrection.”

Last year, the Republican National Committee voted to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, rejecting the nonpartisan group that both major parties created to “institutionalize” the debates in 1987. The CPD forged ahead this week, announcing three locations for presidential debates (Texas State University, Virginia State University, the University of Utah) and one for vice presidential candidates (Lafayette College in Easton, Penn.). Neither party has committed to the CPD negotiations in 2024; the RNC’s resolution was passed to find “newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD.”

Senate. New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy kept picking up endorsements after her Nov. 15 campaign launch. By Monday, six members of the state’s House delegation backed Murphy, who’s never before sought office, over Rep. Andy Kim, who’d entered the race just days after Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted. In California, Rep. Barbara Lee fell short of the party’s endorsement at its weekend convention; she needed 60% of the vote, and got 41%, neck-and-neck with Rep. Adam Schiff.

House. California Rep. Tony Cardenas announced his retirement on Monday, the latest member to leave a safe seat this cycle. He told the Los Angeles Times that, at age 60, he had time to write “another chapter of a career where I don’t have to go to Washington, D.C., 32 weeks out of the year.” But a year ago, Cardenas lost the race to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — a job that would have sent him around the country, raising money to win the majority back. The path to party leadership had run out, and a year later, he retired.

On Tuesday, Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson confirmed rumors that he’d leave the House to take over Youngstown State University, exiting before the end of his sixth term, early next year. Neither the Cardenas nor Johnson seats will be competitive in a general election – in 2020 Biden won the California Democrat’s San Fernando Valley district by 51 points, while Trump won Johnson’s Appalachian district by 29 points.

• 15 days until the fourth Republican presidential primary debate
• 55 days until the Iowa Republican caucuses
• 63 days until the New Hampshire primary
• 95 days until the South Carolina Republican primary
• 349 days until the 2024 presidential election

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