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      Young Iowa Republicans Raise Their Voices. Will Their Party Listen?

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      G.O.P. presidential candidates have not aggressively courted Gen Z, even as young voters increasingly show an openness to new candidates and a concern for new ideas.As Vivek Ramaswamy walked out of an event this month at Dordt University, a small Christian college in northwestern Iowa, the school’s football players greeted him with bro hugs and a challenge: Could he join one of them in doing 30 push-ups?Mr. Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate, did not miss a beat.“You guys are probably about half my age or so,” he said when he was done, having strained only slightly, “and I’m probably about half the age of everyone else who’s making a real dent in American politics today.”Kellen Browning/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      In Iowa, DeSantis Talks Abortion to Win Over Evangelical Voters

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      The Florida governor is courting white evangelicals by using Donald J. Trump’s criticisms of hard-line abortion restrictions against him.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida paused, looked down and then told a banquet hall filled with conservative Iowa Christians something that he had never before said in public: His wife, Casey DeSantis, experienced a miscarriage several years ago during her first pregnancy.The couple, Mr. DeSantis explained on Friday at a forum for Republican presidential candidates hosted by an influential evangelical group, had been trying to conceive before taking a trip to Israel.“We went to Ruth’s tomb in Hebron — Ruth, Chapter 4, Verse 13 — and we prayed,” Mr. DeSantis, citing Scripture, said at the event in Des Moines. “We prayed a lot to have a family, and then, lo and behold, we go back to the United States and a little time later we got pregnant. But unfortunately we lost that first baby.”The deeply personal revelation — in response to a question about the importance of the nuclear family — was an unexpected moment for Mr. DeSantis, who is usually tight-lipped about both his faith and his family life. On the campaign trail, he rotates through a limited set of anecdotes about Ms. DeSantis and their three young children, as well as his religious beliefs. Still, at the Iowa event, he lingered only briefly on his wife’s miscarriage, calling it simply a “tough thing” and a test of faith.Mr. DeSantis, a Roman Catholic, is heavily courting Iowa’s religious right, which has helped deliver the state’s last three competitive Republican presidential caucuses to candidates who wore their faith on their sleeves. White evangelical voters are likely to play a decisive role in the state’s Jan. 15 caucuses, the first contest in the 2024 G.O.P. primary, and they often turn to politicians who speak the language of the church.“You have to talk authentically from the heart,” said Terry Amann, a conservative pastor from Des Moines. “Anybody can cite Bible verses.”A majority of evangelical voters in Iowa favor former President Donald J. Trump over Mr. DeSantis. But some say they fear Mr. Trump is backing off on abortion.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIf Mr. DeSantis has any hope of beating former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner, who leads him by roughly 30 points in Iowa polls, it lies in winning over conservative Christian voters while fending off the challenge of Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who is seen as more moderate.A DeSantis victory in Iowa remains a long shot, but Mr. Trump’s criticisms of the hard-line abortion restrictions favored by many evangelical voters in Iowa may have created a lane for the Florida governor to bolster his standing. The former president has described a six-week abortion ban signed by Mr. DeSantis in Florida as “a terrible mistake.” Mr. Trump has blamed extreme positions on abortion for recent Republican losses at the polls and, looking to win over moderates in the general election, has avoided supporting a federal abortion ban. That has deeply disappointed some evangelical leaders and voters who cheered him after his appointments to the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade.“Trump has backed off his pro-life position,” said Mike Demastus, who leads an evangelical church in Des Moines. “And that’s caused voters like myself to pause and be willing to listen to other candidates.”Mr. DeSantis is trying to take advantage of concerns like Mr. Demastus’s. As he opened his new Iowa campaign headquarters outside Des Moines on Saturday, the governor told reporters that Mr. Trump’s comments on abortion had been the real “mistake.” He had previously said of Mr. Trump, during an interview with an Iowa radio station, that “all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”Still, Mr. Trump remains immensely popular with conservative Christians, and not only because of his role in Roe’s demise. Mr. Trump moved the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an issue of deep importance to many evangelicals. He is also credited for his anti-immigration policies and for a strong economy during his presidency, reflecting the fact that many religious voters have political concerns beyond their faith.Even many of the evangelical voters who support Mr. DeSantis are deeply grateful to the former president.“The reversal of Roe v. Wade — I didn’t ever think that would happen in my lifetime, and he did that,” Jerry Buseman, 54, a retired school administrator from Hampton, Iowa, said of Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have battled for months to win over influential evangelical leaders and top Republicans in Iowa, a state some say is still Mr. Trump’s to lose.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNow, the DeSantis and Trump campaigns are engaged in a back-and-forth to win over faith leaders and voters. Evangelicals are the single largest religious group among Iowa Republicans, accounting for more than a third of their ranks, according to Pew Research Center. So far, polls suggest Mr. Trump is winning the race for their votes. The former president had the support of 51 percent of white evangelical voters, compared with 30 percent for Mr. DeSantis, according to a September poll by CBS News and YouGov. It’s a major shift from 2016, when evangelicals flocked to Ted Cruz rather than to Mr. Trump, helping the Republican senator from Texas win the caucuses that year.“Trump has already proven himself to have a backbone,” said Brad Sherman, a pastor and state legislator who has endorsed Mr. Trump, even though he said he wished the former president would take a “stronger stand” against abortion. “He’s shown that he will do what he says.”Like Mr. Sherman, many Iowans backing Mr. Trump seem willing to forgive his more recent comments on abortion. Only 40 percent of Trump supporters agreed that he was right to criticize six-week abortion bans, according to an October poll by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom.Alex Latcham, the Trump campaign’s early-states director, said the former president had gotten results on issues that had been “the top priorities” for evangelical voters for decades. In his Des Moines office, Mr. Latcham said, he keeps a map of Iowa showing the locations of more than 100 religious leaders who have endorsed Mr. Trump.“There’s plenty of time, but right now it’s Trump’s to lose,” said Steve Scheffler, the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, who is staying neutral through the caucuses.To counter Mr. Trump’s popularity, Mr. DeSantis held his first official campaign rally in May at a church outside Des Moines, where a group of pastors prayed over him. He has rolled out his own endorsements from more than 100 religious leaders around the state. Before each Republican presidential debate, he has invited a pastor to pray for him and his wife in the green room backstage. His campaign holds a monthly video call for pastors. And unlike Mr. Trump, he has attended several church services in Iowa, including alongside the Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who hosted Mr. DeSantis at the forum where he discussed his wife’s miscarriage.Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting the DeSantis campaign, has produced advertisements that accuse Mr. Trump of a “betrayal of the pro-life movement,” call into question his support for Israel and criticize his attacks on Kim Reynolds, the popular Iowa governor who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis and has also signed a six-week abortion ban.”DeSantis has done an outstanding job networking with evangelicals,” said David Kochel, a veteran Iowa political strategist. “He’s running the campaign the right way. The problem is he’s doing it against someone who has already delivered for evangelical voters.”Ms. Haley, the other top runner-up in the race, who is now tied with Mr. DeSantis in many Iowa polls, does not appear to be pursuing the state’s faith leaders as aggressively, and her more measured way of talking about abortion has turned off many evangelicals.In Iowa, Mr. DeSantis must also fend off Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has become a formidable challenger for second place.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesOlivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, highlighted Ms. Haley’s “steadfast support for Israel” as a reason for evangelical voters to get behind her. And she pointed to Ms. Haley’s recent endorsement by Marlys Popma, a prominent anti-abortion activist in Iowa. For Mr. DeSantis, a lack of folksy charm may still be an issue in Iowa, despite his efforts to be more personal with evangelical voters.Evangelical voters “want to see the heart,” said Sam Brownback, a conservative Christian and former Republican senator from Kansas whose own presidential campaign failed to take off in 2008. “They want to see what you really are inside.”The last three Republicans to win contested caucuses — former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mr. Cruz — all talked easily about their faith. (None of them captured the nomination.)Mr. DeSantis, who has been criticized as stilted on the campaign trail, is not built in that mold. Instead, he is relying on his record as Florida governor, which includes, in addition to the six-week abortion ban, laws to restrict the rights of transgender people and to limit discussions of sexuality in schools.When a reporter asked why he was a better fit for Iowa’s evangelicals than Mr. Trump — a thrice-married former Democrat — Mr. DeSantis replied that he was “better representative of their values.”“I have a better record of actually delivering on my promises and fighting important fights on behalf of children, on behalf of families and on behalf of religious liberty,” he said on Saturday at a coffee shop in Ottumwa, Iowa.Heidi Sokol, 51, a Republican voter who teaches at a Christian school in Clear Lake, Iowa, said she wasn’t bothered that Mr. DeSantis spoke far more about policy than about his personal faith when she saw him speak at a Des Moines church this fall.“We’re not hiring the president to be our pastor,” Ms. Sokol said.Ruth Igielnik More

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      Mike Pence, the Indictment and the Chaos of Donald Trump

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      What if he’s president again? Who will be around for that, inside a second Trump administration, when he asks why the military can’t shoot protesters in the legs, or when he wants to withdraw all military dependents from South Korea and throw Asia into an economic crisis?Nobody, outside his supporters, wants to talk about the eventuality — not probable but definitely not impossible — that Donald Trump will be re-elected. His former cabinet secretaries don’t. The people — the foreign ministers and former national security officials — at the Aspen Security Forum don’t.And the closer you get to presidential campaign events, elections can become a kind of dreamscape, a contained universe where meta attacks are signaled yet nothing seems that weird about Mr. Trump’s dominance. After Friday night’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines — a fund-raiser for the Iowa Republican Party, held in the city’s convention center — the candidates hosted after-parties off a long hallway, producing an animatronicesque gallery effect.In one room, for about an hour, Mr. Trump stood grinning and shaking hands and posing for photos, with an ever-replenishing line of dozens waiting to get in, and dozens wandering out, ice cream in hand and wearing “TRUMP COUNTRY” stickers. In the next room, Senator Tim Scott, a putting green and cornhole game. In the next, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami and a live band, with a foursome playing dominoes, red wine on the table. Through another door, at a more subdued valence, you could see Mike Pence talking to little groups of people, mostly older couples, a father and son, a nod, a hand on a shoulder, a photo. Nikki Haley signed books and posters in the hall, and 20-something aides holding red “DESANTIS 2024” signs roamed, directing people to his room, where Republicans threw baseballs at pyramids of Bud Light cans. Step, repeat.This looked fun and vaguely normal — like something from the past. In reality, Mr. Pence is disappearing, politically, before our eyes. Mr. Scott says he can hold only the rioters who were violent, and not Mr. Trump, responsible for the events of Jan. 6. The physical distance between all three of them on Friday night was roughly the distance that separated that mob from Mr. Pence, or the mob from the Senate chamber, that day.That wasn’t that long ago. You can read all about it, across 45 pages in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump for events some of which unfolded in public. We know what happens to people around Mr. Trump. To preserve influence, those hired by him either exist on a total MAGA wavelength, or else have to dodge or lie sometimes to beat back chaos. And in the indictment, the frayed and unnerving interpersonal dynamics abound: Consider the case of Co-conspirator 4, whose description matches Jeffrey Clark, and who prosecutors say kept pressing to send a letter claiming the Justice Department had concerns — or had even found — “significant irregularities” in the 2020 election.It’s hard not to flash back and then forward, to that surreal period when politicians joined the first administration and to think about the even more uncertain future. Recall the photo of Mitt Romney and Mr. Trump eating dinner after the 2016 election; despite having opposed Mr. Trump’s nomination, there was Mr. Romney, offering himself as secretary of state. Mr. Romney’s expression captured a strong public sentiment toward people who joined the Trump administration: at best, it was seen as a slightly embarrassing exposure of the pursuit of power and personal ambition.The last year of the Trump administration concentrated how bad and complex this situation was: The government transformed into a body that had to handle crisis, but also one in which officials’ intentions could not be always known by the public, and one in which the act of joining government service came with deep personal repercussions. The pandemic required, for instance, a massive collaboration across departments and the private sector to produce a vaccine. Things had to stop, or start, with government employees at moments of intense crisis.And, in books, committee depositions and now in this latest indictment, the months after the 2020 election sound especially abysmal — a White House ghost town deserted by people tired of dealing with Mr. Trump and his break with reality about election’s outcome. They left behind a few panicked people who remained grounded in reality like former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Mr. Pence, and then Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and the rest. Again and again, people describe desperate circumstances, arguments about doing things like seizing the voting machines, or trying to persuade Mr. Trump to call off the riot. According to prosecutors, at 7:01 p.m. on Jan. 6, Mr. Cipollone called Mr. Trump and asked him to withdraw his objections to certification; Mr. Trump refused. Would there be more Clarks or Cipollones in a future administration? The idea for many around Mr. Trump is to use a second administration as a path to clearing out parts of the government and reorganizing it around a stronger executive, with true believers underneath him. Jonathan Swan has written extensively about those plans, most recently in an article about the expansive efforts Trump allies want to undertake, like placing the Federal Trade Commission under presidential control, or using Schedule F to fire federal employees. The idea for the next term, in Mr. Trump’s telling, is also retribution.This only ups the anxiety around, basically, who might be involved in such an administration and what the broader American public would tolerate from them. In his book, “Why We Did It,” Tim Miller debates this question with Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications official. “Governing is happening under him whether we want it to be or not,” she argues, citing the prospect of whatever goon would serve instead of her, which Mr. Miller concedes is true. But, he counters: “This logic is circular. It justifies anything! Alyssa was a flack; she wasn’t securing loose nukes.” She counters again, ticking off different things people had talked Mr. Trump out of: invoking the Insurrection Act during the George Floyd protests or firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper.In these circumstances, the line between “responsible influence, working to contain the worst impulses in private” and “passive bystander” and “amoral chump” is difficult to discern.Mr. Pence’s experience highlights the dangers for the individual and the public. In his book, Mr. Esper describes the way Mr. Pence represented a sane, normal presence in meetings. But, Mr. Esper writes, he could never discern how much their boss even considered the vice president’s views: “He was part cheerleader and part sounding board, though I could never tell how much influence he really had with Trump. He often didn’t say much in meetings that the president attended, and he rarely disagreed with Trump in front of us.”Mr. Trump’s first vice president ended up trapped inside the Capitol with a mob calling for his death by hanging. Now people talk about the other Republican presidential candidates as though they might be his running mate this time around, as though all this didn’t just happen. And now, as Mr. Pence runs for president himself, the reward for coming through in a central moment of American history is a kind of surround-sound aversion.At first, at that dinner in Iowa last week, Mr. Pence talked brightly, in the expectation of applause, which came, sort of, at muted levels, muted even for the kinds of things — like his abortion politics — that resulted in applause for others.This was tepid, indifferent clapping, a kind of subtle hell worse than booing, where people who knew you have forgotten you. Mr. Pence kept talking, the delivery staying even and polished, the brightness fading, talking about restoring civility. “So I thank you for hearing me out tonight,” he said, almost somber.On Tuesday evening, Mr. Pence was one of few Republican candidates to put the situation plainly: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” At the moment, Mr. Pence has not yet qualified for the debates, and is polling badly.As Mr. Trump told him when he balked at the idea of returning votes to the states, according to the indictment, “You’re too honest.”Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump and DeSantis Collide for First Time in Iowa, as Fortunes Diverge

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      A contest once viewed as a two-man race between Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis has settled into a new dynamic: Mr. Trump versus everyone else.When former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida shared the same stage at an Iowa Republican Party dinner on Friday, their appearances seemed to capture the basic dynamics of the 2024 presidential primary.Mr. Trump played headliner. Mr. DeSantis was reduced to an opening act.Even as Mr. Trump has been hit with two criminal indictments, with more possibly coming, he has only consolidated support in recent months, flashing the same resilience in Iowa that he has nationally.Mr. Trump’s rivals have long circled Iowa as the early state where Mr. Trump, who finished a disappointing second in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, might be most vulnerable in 2024. But although some influential leaders have signaled their eagerness for an alternative, Mr. Trump arrived on Friday for one of his episodic visits as the undisputed front-runner, as Republicans look past his political and legal liabilities.His mere appearance generated some of the evening’s loudest applause. Like the 12 other candidates who spoke, he entered to snippets of “Only in America” by Brooks & Dunn. The lyrics that blared as he took the stage were:One could end up going to prison. One just might be president.Mr. DeSantis arrived in Des Moines after a two-day bus tour that was aimed at stabilizing his campaign amid two successive rounds of staff cutbacks and demonstrating his investment in the state, which comes first on the nominating calendar. There were public displays of humility — small-town stops, shopping for snacks at a gas station (he bought a protein bar), taking questions from voters and reporters — that were previously missing from the governor’s once higher-flying campaign.Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, speaking at the dinner on Friday night after a more humble bus tour of Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Six months ago, you would have said there were two tiers: Trump and DeSantis, and then everyone else,” Craig Robinson, an Iowa Republican strategist, said. Now, he said, “you have Donald Trump in a tier by himself and you have everyone else trying to be the alternative to Trump.”While Mr. DeSantis is stuck trying to reset his campaign, former Vice President Mike Pence is facing the possibility of not even qualifying for the first debate next month. The rest of the field is straining for voters to pay any attention at all.Mr. Trump has certainly provided openings for his rivals in Iowa. Against his own team’s wishes, he criticized the popular Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, this month. (He did not mention her on Friday.) And in a state that has often rewarded frequent visits, Mr. Trump has campaigned only sporadically.On Friday, Mr. Trump stayed for an hour after his speech to shake hands and take pictures with supporters. Mr. DeSantis mingled with a crowd down the hall with a Coors Light in hand.Mr. Trump’s growing strength in national polling — he has surged above 50 percent in many surveys — has reinforced an emerging dynamic in which he is being treated as the de facto incumbent, both by party insiders with years of reluctantly falling into line under their belt and by risk-averse donors, according to interviews with numerous Republican strategists and officials.Mr. Trump greeting supporters at his new Iowa campaign headquarters on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesThe first primary debate, scheduled for late August, is widely viewed as the critical next date for Mr. DeSantis or anyone else to upend the current dynamic, even if Mr. Trump does not attend.For now, outside groups looking to slow down Mr. Trump have focused on Iowa. The new political action committee Win It Back, which is tied to the Club for Growth, has run negative television ads worth $3.5 million this month in Iowa and South Carolina.The ads themselves reveal much about the current state of the race. Each features testimonials from Republican voters describing both their affection for the former president and their interest in moving on.“I love what he did,” the narrator in one ad says. “He definitely was the right man in 2016,” the narrator in another says, before pivoting, “It’s just time for new blood.”Mr. Trump’s enduring popularity with the Republican base has meant that even his competitors often sandwich the gentlest of criticism with praise. Few of his rivals mentioned his name on Friday, while Mr. Trump repeatedly used a derisive nickname for Mr. DeSantis. “I wouldn’t take a chance on that one,” he said.One rival who addressed Mr. Trump directly was Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman running a long-shot campaign. He declared that Mr. Trump was running for president again to avoid prison. He was booed as he exited the stage.Former Representative Will Hurd was booed as he left the stage for suggesting that Mr. Trump was running for president again just to avoid prison.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis himself has generally avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump.He did not say the former president’s name on Friday, and when he was asked about the criminal charges facing Mr. Trump in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis answered with only a vague generality: “I think voters have to make this decision on that.”Some prominent Trump critics have questioned such a delicate approach, especially as his criminal problems have mounted.“If you’re down 20 points in the polls to anybody, you’ve got to be able to hit them,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who decided against a 2024 run for president but attended the dinner in Iowa.Mr. Trump has been indicted by the Manhattan district attorney and a Justice Department special counsel already this year, and he may face another special counsel indictment for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A separate investigation into efforts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia could result in yet another charge.Many Republicans who are leery of entering another turbulent cycle with Mr. Trump atop the ticket remain intrigued by the Florida governor but not yet sold.“I think people are just waiting for DeSantis to close the deal for them,” said David Kerr, a DeSantis supporter who attended an event in Osceola with the governor at a distillery this week.Mr. DeSantis during a stop at a center for wounded and disabled veterans in Albia, Iowa, on his bus tour on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has now committed to visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties (he is at 17, according to a campaign aide), an arduous task for a candidate who is trying to compete across all the early states and must travel the country to fund-raise for a campaign supported heavily by big-money bundlers.“This caucus demands that you earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said on Friday. Mr. Trump has mostly focused on visiting more populous areas rather than every county.For Mr. DeSantis, the goal is to come in first — or a strong enough second to prove that Mr. Trump can be beat and narrow the contest to a two-person race. But some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies worry that the heavy emphasis on Iowa could prove a self-inflicted knockout punch — that after investing so much, his campaign will have a less than compelling case to carry on if he falters badly in the opening state.Kathy Kooiker, a Republican activist in Clark County, Iowa, had a Trump flag in her yard for years but said she had folded it folded up and put it away. She is trying to explore the other candidates to decide whom to support instead of Mr. Trump, and she went to the DeSantis event in Osceola.“He hasn’t been in Iowa as much as the other candidates, so I’m glad to see — I think it’s a mistake not to do that,” Ms. Kooiker said.Republicans in Iowa, both those who support Mr. Trump and those who oppose him, see the race there as at least slightly more competitive than national polls would suggest.Amy Sinclair, the president of the Iowa State Senate, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, acknowledged, “it’s a tough uphill battle to fight against a machine like Donald Trump.”But she said Mr. Trump’s swipe at Ms. Reynolds had damaged him. “He’s not doing himself any favors if he wants to win Iowa behaving that way,” she said. “You don’t insult our family.”Ryan Rhodes, who served as Iowa state director for Ben Carson’s presidential campaign in 2016, agreed that the episode had broken through among conservative activists.“Trump needs to get out there and talk to Iowans again,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Trump may not yet have personally worked aggressively for votes in Iowa, but he has professionalized what in 2016 was a scattershot political operation. His campaign had secured its keynote slot on Friday night by being the fastest to confirm its attendance with the state party. More

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      Republican Presidential Candidates Attend Iowa Roast and Ride

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      Eight presidential hopefuls, with Donald Trump absent, spoke at an annual political rally in Des Moines to highlight their conservative bona fides.As the politicians and Republican Party officials tossed out the red meat on Saturday at an event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, Wayne Johnson, a 70-year-old farmer and financial consultant from Forest City, Iowa, had some quieter thoughts about the next president he would like to see.The violence in American schools and public places, the tribalism in politics, the negativity of the nation’s elected officials — “If a leader can take us in a positive direction, people will follow,” Mr. Johnson said.His wife, Gloria, jumped in. “I really don’t care about people’s sexual habits and I don’t want to hear about it all the time,” she said with exasperation about her party’s focus on social issues like transgender care and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. “Politicians are taking positions on ‘woke’ that have more to do with sex than promoting our country in a positive way.”The event, called “Roast and Ride” — an annual motorcycle and barbecue-infused political rally sponsored by Iowa’s junior Republican senator, Joni Ernst — laid bare divisions in the party, with some attendees focusing on pocketbook issues and tone and others looking for a candidate who will take on Democrats on a social and cultural front.Saturday’s gathering featured eight presidential hopefuls, prominent and obscure, declared and undeclared. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor; Mike Pence, the former vice president who will formally announce his run on Wednesday; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, were there, along with hundreds of Iowa Republicans who will cast the first ballots of the Republican nomination season in February.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina at the event in Des Moines on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe politicians had their pitches, waltzing across a stage festooned with flags and stacked with hay bales to rail against “deep state” bureaucrats, “woke” corporations, and liberals indoctrinating and confusing America’s children. Their biggest target, unsurprisingly, was President Biden, for all manner of failings, from Afghanistan and the southern border to transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.For the presidential hopefuls, winning over Iowa Republicans — with their strong religious bent and tradition of political engagement — is the imperative first step toward wresting the G.O.P. from the front-runner for the nomination, Donald J. Trump, the one major candidate who did not make the trip on Saturday.The candidates in attendance tried to differentiate themselves from one another.The next president, Mr. Pence assured, will “hear from heaven, and he’ll heal this land.”Ms. Haley agreed, “We’ve got to leave the baggage and the negativity behind.”Mr. DeSantis chose a culture-war analogy, evoking Winston Churchill, who once vowed to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets. Mr. DeSantis promised on Saturday to fight “woke ideology” in the halls of Congress and in the boardrooms, saying, “We will never surrender.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at the event on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIowa has moved more decisively from swing state to deep red than perhaps any other state, voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, only to shift firmly to Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020. Mr. Trump’s eight-percentage-point victory there in 2020 nearly matched Mr. Obama’s nine-point margin 12 years before.But voters in the audience did not all have the same priorities, interests or solutions. A Republican presidential beauty pageant eight months before the Iowa caucuses will attract only the most ardent partisans, and candidates understand they are reaching out to the edges of their party, not the center.Many voters expressed concern about the economy, especially inflation, a subject most of the presidential candidates barely touched. Ron Greiner, a health insurance salesman from Omaha, was incensed that none of the candidates mentioned the Affordable Care Act — once a reliable target of Republican attacks — or health care at all.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, at the event on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAnd while Ms. Johnson might be tired of all the talk of transgender issues, others leaped to their feet when Ms. Haley called transgender women competing in women’s sports “the biggest women’s issue of our day.”Jackson Cox, a 17-year-old who will vote for the first time in 2024, drove from Albert Lea, Minn., to hear the candidates he will choose from. Top of mind for him are the taxpayer dollars he said were being wasted before they reach American troops fighting for freedom in Ukraine — never mind that no U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Contrary to the conservative consensus, he argued that the United States should be doing more, not less, for Ukraine.Diane Bebb, 66, of New London, Iowa, fretted over inflation, gas and food prices, and the “help wanted signs” for jobs that seemingly could not be filled.“We could start producing oil again, to help the economy and get prices down,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how more oil exploration would fill all those job openings.Her twin sister, Dione Cornelius of Bagley, Iowa, jumped in to reject the idea of backfilling the labor force with more immigrants.“They’re taking all the benefits, free health care and all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Cornelius protested.Mike Clark, 74, a semiretired acoustics consultant, worried that “the rule of law is disappearing,” not so much because of crime in the nation’s streets but because of an out-of-control F.B.I. and Justice Department pursuing Mr. Trump.“Big push for the one-world government, that’s what worries me most,” Mr. Clark said, referring to a common subject of conspiracy theories. He recommended the book “The Creature From Jekyll Island,” which pushes conspiracy theories about the founding of the Federal Reserve.Amid that cornucopia of concerns, the one issue that seemed to be most broadly felt was the porous border with Mexico. “What are we going to do with all these people?” asked Karen Clark, 81, of Des Moines.Beyond that, Iowa conservatives seemed torn. They conceded that unemployment was so low that jobs in the state weren’t being filled, but asserted that the economy was a wreck.Bill Dunton, 68, said he had been coming from his home in Toledo, Iowa, to Ms. Ernst’s Roast and Ride on his Harley-Davidson for six years. His credit card debt was just about paid off, he said with relief. He was particularly proud of the Chevy Silverado High Country diesel pickup truck he bought in 2021, which “was made for pulling.”But, he said with conviction, “the economy has gone” to pieces, using an expletive to describe it.Mr. Dunton also spoke of his ordeal with Covid-19, hospitalized for 28 days on huge tanks of supplemental oxygen, which he was still tethered to a month and a half after his discharge. Yet, he added, “I think we way overreacted” to the pandemic.Responding to the multiplicity of maladies on Iowans’ minds will present a challenge for the presidential hopefuls. But after the program, Mr. Johnson said he was impressed with his choices, and he will have time to watch the race unfold.“It’s a long run,” he noted. “Time has a way of revealing truth.” More

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      How Democrats’ New Primary Calendar Changes the Chessboard

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      President Biden’s push to abandon Iowa for younger, racially diverse states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.When a panel of Democratic Party insiders endorsed President Joseph R. Biden’s preferred lineup of early presidential nominating states on Friday, they didn’t just shatter the exalted status of Iowa and New Hampshire voters.They also formally aligned themselves with a demographic reckoning decades in the making, reflecting the growing clout of the racially diverse coalition that brought Mr. Biden to power — and implicitly rebuking two overwhelmingly white states that rejected him in 2020.According to the proposal recommended by Mr. Biden and adopted by the party’s Rules and Bylines Committee, South Carolina would now go first, holding its primary on Feb. 3, 2024. Three days later, Nevada and New Hampshire would follow. Georgians would vote next on Feb. 13, then Michiganders on Feb. 27.For political obsessives, the change — which must still be voted on by the whole committee — feels sweeping and swift.“For the .000001 percent of people who follow this stuff, this is equivalent to an earthquake,” said Julián Castro, the former secretary of housing and urban development who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “For it to change this much in one cycle is both impressive and will be very impactful in the years to come.”Mr. Castro spent years arguing that Iowa should lose its spot at the front of his party’s presidential nominating calendar, even starting his primary campaign with an event in Puerto Rico — an intentional symbolic rejection of Iowa. He praised the new schedule, saying the broader diversity of states would offer opportunities to a wider range of candidates.Donna Brazile, former acting chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said the changes would offer myriad benefits to the party, “from hearing the voices of people who tend not to matter to candidates until the end to lifting up those who also might need to be part of the process.”Mr. Biden’s recommendations were perhaps the most telling indicator that he planned to seek re-election, despite the prospect that he would be reaching well into his 80s by the end of a second term. His proposed reordering of the political map, noted Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant, happens to be “very Biden-friendly.”Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, right, has pushed for her state’s inclusion among the early states for years. Under Mr. Biden’s proposal, Michigan would hold the fifth primary in 2024.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has lobbied for her state’s inclusion in the early states since the 1990s, said that Mr. Biden’s choices also reflected a recognition that the party must resist the tug of its bicoastal centers of power.“You cannot win the White House without the heartland of America,” she said.The panel’s decision is not the last word on the calendar. Democrats will need to somehow persuade Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to set the date of his state’s primaries according to the wishes of the Democratic National Committee, rather than those of his own party.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Disgruntled Iowa and New Hampshire might stick to their first-in-the-nation guns, even if the party strips them of delegates in retaliation for their defiance. Democrats running in 2024 — assuming there are any candidates besides, or instead of, Mr. Biden — would then have to decide whether the resulting “beauty contests” were worth the bragging rights alone.If Mr. Biden runs again, a decision he has indicated is coming early in the new year, the state that set him on a path to the nomination in 2024 will offer a formidable first hurdle to any would-be challenger.“He’s created a firewall against any insurgency,” said David Axelrod, one of the architects of former President Barack Obama’s political rise. “It doesn’t mean he will run. But it certainly suggests he intends to.”Those seeking to unseat the president would need to connect with South Carolina’s majority Black primary electorate, which is more conservative than either Iowa’s prairie progressives or New Hampshire’s northeastern Brahmins. In the state’s 2020 primary, more than 60 percent of Black voters chose Mr. Biden over his rivals, according to exit polls.Mr. Biden’s triumph in South Carolina exposed not only the regional appeal of liberal candidates like Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, but also the limits of two billionaire candidates who sought to buy a grass-roots following: Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. And it underscored the struggles Pete Buttigieg, then running as the whiz-kid mayor of South Bend, Ind., had in reaching Black voters in particular.Steve Phillips, a Democrat and author of several books on racial politics, said the changes would reward candidates who develop a deep bond with Black communities, rather than train them to appeal to rural Iowans who might not support them in November.“You want somebody who is going to inspire and understand Black voters to be your nominee,” he said.If Mr. Biden does not run, the new lineup is likely to scramble generations of electoral calculations.For decades, the Iowa caucuses were an early proving ground for upstart candidates, including starting Jimmy Carter and Mr. Obama on their roads to the White House. The state carried continued mystique as a kingmaker, even as it increasingly evolved to be older, whiter and more Republican than the Democratic Party. The chaotic counting of the state’s caucus voters in 2020, when final results took a week, marked its demise for many in the party.A number of party strategists argued the low costs of campaigning in South Carolina would allow underdogs to continue to surprise the country with a stronger-than-expected showing.“The state is not so expensive that you can’t go live there and get it done,” said Jeremy Bird, a Democratic strategist.Mr. Bird, who helped guide Mr. Obama to a nearly 30-point primary win in South Carolina in 2008, said the diversity of South Carolina would force candidates to spend more time in rural Black communities, historically Black colleges and universities and Southern cities, and less time in grange halls and the living rooms of caucus microinfluencers.Traditionally, skipping Iowa was viewed as a sign of weakness by pundits, donors and strategists. But the quick pace of the first three states, with Nevada and New Hampshire coming just three days after South Carolina, could reshape that calculation.“If it’s an open primary in the future, you could have lots of different strategies,” Mr. Bird said. “You could have someone that skips South Carolina altogether. You could have someone that skips Nevada. It will be fascinating to see.”The long-term impact of the changes is still very much to be determined. The party says it plans to revisit its lineup in four years, raising the prospect that the calendar itself has become less a function of tradition than political juice.For now, with Georgia’s fate uncertain and Iowa and New Hampshire in potential revolt, candidates will also have to learn how to run in a new entry to the early-state mix: Michigan, a state that has rarely been in serious contention in recent presidential primaries.Compared with pastoral, racially homogeneous Iowa, Michigan presents an emerging America in microcosm — an increasingly diverse state of 10 million people that boasts not just one of the country’s historical centers of Black culture, Detroit, but also one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, among other communities of color dotted in suburbs and smaller cities across the state, like Ann Arbor.Michigan, an increasingly diverse state with a mix of large and small cities, could scramble old ways of campaigning. Allison Farrand for The New York Times“It’s more like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Amy Chapman, a Democratic strategist in Michigan who ran Barack Obama’s campaign in the state in 2008.The state’s geographic diversity could allow candidates to essentially choose their own spending adventure, said Eric Hyers, who directed Mr. Biden’s campaign in Michigan in 2020.“It’s not like there’s just one media market and it’s wicked expensive,” Mr. Hyers said. Campaigning in Nevada means spending heavily in the costly Las Vegas market, and New Hampshire candidates must buy airtime in pricey Boston.Jeff Link, a Des Moines operative who served as a local guide for Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama, said that even Mr. Obama, who forever altered how presidential candidates raise money, might not have won the nomination in Mr. Biden’s proposed calendar. And yet, even as much of Iowa’s Democratic political world spent Friday wallowing in the loss of what many considered a birthright, Mr. Link predicted that as long as Republicans maintained Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, Democrats would come to the state too, even if the state’s caucuses no longer officially mattered. That is, after all, where the media will be.“If you guys are in town covering the other side, candidates are going to show up because you can’t help yourself,” he said.Reid J. Epstein More

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      In Iowa, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz Take Trump's Baton

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      At a rally in Des Moines, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz showed that many Republicans do not plan to move on from the Trump era.DES MOINES — Far from Washington, and even farther from their home congressional districts, Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia found their people.As the two Republican lawmakers spoke at an “America First” rally in Des Moines, held in an auditorium that often hosts people with presidential aspirations, up was down and misinformation was gospel. Ms. Greene denounced Covid-19 vaccines to applause. Both declared former President Donald J. Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 election.These were facts, argued Eric Riedinger of Des Moines, 62, a small-business owner who attended the event and owns the website BigTrumpFan.com. And he would not vote for any Republican who failed to state this clearly, he said.“My biggest issue looking ahead: Stop the RINOs,” he said, using a pejorative conservative phrase for ‘Republicans in Name Only.’ “If they’re part of that infrastructure bill and supporting it, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”The fringe of the Republican Party is sick of being called the fringe. Led by people like Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz, two upstart members of Congress with little legislative power and few allies in their party’s caucus, these conservatives believe they have assets more valuable than Washington clout: a shared language with the party’s base, and a political intuition that echoes Mr. Trump’s.In the months since the former president left the White House, Republican donors and party leaders have flocked to more established figures like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, stirring buzz for their presidential prospects. At the same time, right-wing Republicans like Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz are loudly making the case that the post-Trump version of the Republican Party won’t swing back toward the center but will double down on the former president’s most controversial qualities.With that in mind, the two Republicans traveled to Iowa with a message about their fellow conservatives. It was not enough, they suggested, to insult Democrats as traitors to America or to cast doubt on the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and the legitimacy of the 2020 election. They told rally attendees that winning back the House in 2022 would be useless without more “America First” Republicans and that beating President Biden would require a full embrace of Mr. Trump.They sought to up the rhetorical ante on issue after issue, creating new litmus tests for their conservative rivals in the process.“Last time Republicans had full control, the first year under President Trump, Republicans didn’t fund and build the wall,” Ms. Greene said to the crowd of about 200 people. “Republicans didn’t defund sanctuary cities, they funded them. And this is the one that blows my mind: They did not defund Planned Parenthood.”She added, “This time around, Republicans need to take back the House with people that are going to do as they say.”Mr. Gaetz said that unlike many Republicans in Congress, he and Ms. Greene did not take corporate donations, arguing that many in the party were “too often shills for big business.” (Both of them, especially Ms. Greene, have demonstrated small-dollar fund-raising prowess.)In interviews, Republicans who went to the rally or who have followed Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz from afar said the pair’s efforts should not be discounted. In 2016, Mr. Trump stormed through the Republican primary and swept to power after party leaders underestimated the grass-roots appetite for his openly anti-immigrant language, his insults toward G.O.P. leaders and his economic message that targeted some corporations.Ms. Greene visited the Republican Party booth at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Thursday.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesNow, Mr. Gaetz and Ms. Greene appear intent on doing the same thing, to set the table for another presidential run by Mr. Trump or to send a warning shot to any would-be successors.If their bet is correct and the Republican base has left the Trump era wanting more of his bombastic style, it will have profound effects on the country’s political landscape. At minimum, Trump loyalists have shown themselves to be a stubborn force, threatening to pull additional congressional and presidential candidates into the waters of misinformation and racial intolerance.Kathy Pietraszewski, a 69-year-old rally attendee from Des Moines, said she had formally left the Republican Party after the 2020 election because she believed leaders were insufficiently supportive of Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results. Recently, she has focused on speaking out against Covid vaccines, which is part of the reason she likes Ms. Greene.“I know what the globalist agenda is, and their one world order starts with a vaccine,” Ms. Pietraszewski said. “So my No. 1 issue is freedom.”Polling and voter registration data suggest she is not alone. The Republican base, unlike the Democratic one, has a much higher tolerance for politicians who criticize their own party, and many Republicans still want Mr. Trump to be involved in the party’s future, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll. Vaccine skepticism and distrust in the 2020 election results are also high among conservative Americans. In May, a Quinnipiac University poll found that two-thirds of Republicans believed Mr. Biden’s victory was not legitimate.However, both Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz face significant hurdles to advancing their political careers.Mr. Gaetz is the subject of a Justice Department investigation of whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to people briefed on the matter. Ms. Greene has set off a series of controversies since she took office early this year, repeatedly using antisemitic and Islamophobic language and endorsing the executions of Democrats.Ms. Greene has since been stripped of her House committee assignments, but she has found an audience with Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative media ecosystem. Several attendees at the Iowa rally said they had heard about her appearance there from a podcast run by Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser.“We know what American people want,” Ms. Greene said. “We know for a fact what you want. We don’t buy into the swamp.”In Washington, the two members of Congress are treated like little more than a media sideshow, a nuisance for Republican leaders. They do not have traditional legislative power, and antics like Ms. Greene’s promise to bring impeachment articles against Mr. Biden gain no traction in Congress.Their words support Mr. Trump’s core policies: cutting immigration, attacking liberal messaging on race and policing, targeting big tech companies. But Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist from Georgia, said there was a big difference between someone who excites activists and someone who has Mr. Trump’s universal name recognition and business-friendly persona.“A person like Marjorie Taylor Greene attracts crowds and attention because they are speaking to an audience that feels marginalized but also mobilized, because they’re angry,” he said.“But revving up certain segments of the party can also alienate other parts of the party,” he added, saying the same thing happens to Democrats.Michael Murphy, a Republican consultant based in California, said, “They fascinate the media,” but added that “as far as real muscle, even in the Republican primary, they’re just one of many factions.”Still, Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz may have the next-best thing, according to rally attendees, other close watchers of the Republican Party and even some liberals. They are messengers of the type of white grievance politics that Mr. Trump deployed nationally. They say openly what others will only hint at, no matter its factual basis or the risk of backlash. And they speak with the fearful moral urgency that many Republican voters feel.“It’s hard for me to think about 2024, because I don’t know if we’ll make it there,” Ms. Pietraszewski said, expressing dire worries about the country’s future. “With the Black Lives Matter and Marxism and critical race theory, I don’t know.”At the rally, Ms. Greene called Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is Somali-born, “a traitor to America.” Mr. Gaetz said that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the first Black person to serve in that role, “might be the stupidest person to have ever served in a presidential cabinet in America’s history.” Ms. Greene declared that the United States faced a new “axis of evil” made up of the news media, Democrats and big tech companies. They both promised to support the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters who had been arrested.Each comment drew applause.“I’m not voting for anyone who won’t say Donald Trump had the election stolen from him,” said Ron James, a 68-year-old retiree from Des Moines. “And I don’t think anyone in that room would, either.” More