DeSantis, Ron

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      In Countdown to Iowa, Trump Is Coasting, as DeSantis and Haley Clash

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      The former president’s chief rivals are running low on time to make a statement in Iowa’s caucuses, which could determine whether the Republicans’ nominating contest is seriously contested at all.Negative mailers are overstuffing Iowa mailboxes. Attack ads are cluttering the airwaves. And door knockers are fanning out from Des Moines to Dubuque and everywhere in between.The Iowa caucuses, the first contest in the Republican nominating calendar, are poised to play an especially consequential role in 2024. But with only 49 days to go, Donald J. Trump’s top rivals are running out of time to catch him as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley thrash each other in the final sprint to the starting line.Far ahead in national polls, Mr. Trump is aiming for an emphatic victory on Jan. 15 in Iowa that could serve as an early knockout punch. He leads in public surveys in the state by a margin twice as large as the most competitive contest in the last 50 years.Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, is betting on Iowa to pierce Mr. Trump’s growing aura of inevitability — and to reassert himself as the main rival to short-circuit Mr. Trump’s third run for president. Mr. DeSantis, who won the backing of the state’s popular Republican governor, has been barnstorming across all of Iowa’s 99 counties, bolstered by an army of door knockers paid for by his related super PAC.On Saturday, Mr. DeSantis will visit his final county with an event in Newton held at the Thunderdome, a venue whose name appropriately captures the increasing acrimony and intensity of the race in the state. Mr. Trump will be in Cedar Rapids that same day.For much of the year, the DeSantis team had insisted the 2024 primary was a two-man race. But Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, has ridden the momentum of her debate performances to transform it into a two-man-plus-one-woman contest.“The more people see of Nikki Haley the more they like her,” said Betsy Ankney, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager. “The more they see Ron DeSantis, the less they like him.”Now Ms. Haley, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Underestimate me — that’ll be fun” to the Iowa State Fair, is seeking to snuff out Mr. DeSantis at the very start. If she can best Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, his strongest early state, her team believes Ms. Haley would be positioned to emerge as the singular Trump alternative when the calendar turns to two friendlier terrains — New Hampshire, where she has polled in second place, and her home state, South Carolina, where she served as governor.Revealingly, Ms. Haley’s allied super PAC has spent $3.5 million on ads and other expenditures attacking Mr. DeSantis in the last two months in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to federal records, but not a dollar explicitly opposing Mr. Trump despite his dominant overall lead.“Nikki Haley and her donors are greedily wasting millions of dollars targeting Ron DeSantis in Iowa,” said David Polyansky, deputy campaign manager for Mr. DeSantis, who called that spending a political gift to Mr. Trump because the likeliest second choice of DeSantis supporters is not Ms. Haley but the former president.Nikki Haley has ridden the momentum of her debate performances to transform the primary contest.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s team has gleefully greeted the battling. James Blair, national field director for Mr. Trump, said Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis were “trying to bludgeon themselves for the title of first loser.”“The biggest win in Iowa ever is 12 points so anything above that is setting a record,” Mr. Blair added, arguing that even an upset in Iowa would only prove a blip given the former president’s superior organization across the rest of the states on the calendar.Iowa always plays a critical role in narrowing a presidential primary field but this year it could determine whether there is much of a contest at all. The Trump campaign has told supporters that it has booked its first significant television ads to begin in Iowa on Dec. 1, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur, has pledged to also spend millions in the final weeks even as his standing has slid since the summer.“Almost everybody is pushing the chips into the middle of the table in Iowa,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist with years of experience in the state. Only Chris Christie is bypassing Iowa, hoping a muddled result could allow him to break through in New Hampshire.As the candidates vie for votes, their strategists and spinmeisters are seeking any possible advantage in the unseen but critical contest of expectations-setting. Those who surprise or surpass where they are expected to finish typically emerge with the most momentum — and money.“If he doesn’t win Iowa, Ron DeSantis has no rationale to move on,” said Ms. Ankney, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager.Mr. DeSantis’s support has mostly collapsed in New Hampshire, where one recent poll showed him in fifth place. The state’s voters are typically more moderate than Iowa’s and the lack of a serious Democratic primary means independents could flood the contest, which could help Ms. Haley or Mr. Christie.The Haley campaign has announced plans to spend $10 million on television, radio and digital ads in Iowa and New Hampshire (about $4.25 million has actually been reserved on television so far). The DeSantis campaign has announced plans to spend $2 million on Iowa television ads.On the trail, Mr. DeSantis has been saying in increasingly blunt terms that Mr. Trump would lose a rematch against President Biden. But the energy behind that argument has diminished both because Mr. Biden has slipped in the polls and because Ms. Haley has tended to fare even better than either Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis in such a hypothetical matchup. In some cases, Mr. DeSantis has fared worse than Mr. Trump, too.The DeSantis super PAC has spent 10 times more money criticizing Ms. Haley in ads and other expenditures than against Mr. Trump, records show. But in private, Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, have expressed disapproval of those ads, according to two people familiar with their remarks. Several DeSantis allies recently created a new entity to explore fresh avenues of attack on Ms. Haley but the decision has caused more turmoil on the team, with the chief executive abruptly resigning last week.In Iowa and beyond, Mr. Trump’s team has almost exclusively focused on Mr. DeSantis, whom Mr. Trump has treated as his only serious challenger throughout 2023. Mr. Blair said it was notable how much the DeSantis operation was spending attacking Ms. Haley rather than “trying to grow Ron’s image or hurt the president — because they’ve given up on those things.”“They’re just trying to stop Nikki Haley from coming in second,” Mr. Blair added.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is betting on Iowa to pierce Mr. Trump’s growing aura of inevitability.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesThere are two debates planned before the Iowa caucuses that could still jostle the dynamics. Only the first, on Dec. 6 in Alabama, has been announced; the second is planned for January in Iowa. Mr. Trump has said he won’t participate in any debates and his team has tried to pressure the Republican National Committee to cancel the rest.The other wild card is the much-discussed door-knocking operation of Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that said it had 26 paid political staff members in the state and thousands of volunteers. The group says it has knocked on almost 677,000 doors to date — including three times on every targeted home.Jeff Roe, the chief strategist for Never Back Down, has told people that he believes the group’s door-knocking push could be worth as much as 10 percentage points on caucus day, according to a person who has heard the pitch.Caucuses, which occur at 7 p.m. on a typically frigid Monday evening, are far more involved than regular elections and tend to benefit the most organized candidates. But some are skeptical that organizing could give such a large lift.“DeSantis seems to have the best groundwork going out here but it’s nothing compared to what people in the past have had,” said Andy Cable, a longtime Republican activist in Hardin County, which is north of Des Moines. “Trump doesn’t need the groundwork. His people will just show up. Nikki has come on late but I’m not sure she has the actual organization on the ground to actually do it.”Trump campaign officials say their operation has already amassed 50,000 signed cards committing to caucus for him, and 1,800 “caucus captains” for the more than 1,600 precincts. The DeSantis campaign said it had more than 30,000 people who had committed to caucus for him. The Haley campaign declined to provide any such data points.For Mr. DeSantis, the endorsement of Kim Reynolds, the state’s Republican governor, has given him a jolt of energy and she plans to campaign heavily for him through the caucuses, including next Saturday in Newton, Iowa.A television ad featuring Ms. Reynolds is already running. “He gets things done,” she says in the spot.Mr. DeSantis has also won the backing of Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in the state who has endorsed the last three Iowa caucus winners in contested races — Ted Cruz in 2016, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, all of whom lost the eventual nomination.White evangelical voters are seen as crucial to any potential DeSantis breakthrough, and the Trump campaign has sought to organize support among church leaders, announcing that their total faith leader endorsements topped 150 on the same afternoon that Mr. Vander Plaats made his announcement.Judging from campaign stops, Mr. DeSantis’s 99-county tour does appear to have created some momentum in Iowa. He regularly draws crowds of 50 to 100 people to small-town events at pizza shops, coffee houses and family farms, taking questions and posing for photos.“I’ve been a Trump man all along, but I liked what DeSantis had to say,” said Ev Cherrington, 86, who heard Mr. DeSantis speak at a barbecue restaurant in Ames, Iowa, this month and said he was now considering backing him, largely because of the laundry list of policy ideas that Mr. DeSantis had recited.But outside of the bubble of Mr. DeSantis’s bus tour, a different reality sets in. As Mr. DeSantis visited his 98th Iowa county a week ago after holding around 10 small public events over three days, Mr. Trump appeared at a rally in a high school gym in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He drew roughly 2,000 people, according to The Associated Press — more than all of Mr. DeSantis’s events combined.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis Confront a Ticking Clock

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      The holiday season is upon us. Which means that while Americans are recovering from an orgy of overeating and Black Friday shopping, the political world is easing into the next phase of the presidential election: primary crunchtime.The period between Thanksgiving and the first presidential primaries and caucuses in January and February is typically full of flux and ferment. The contenders sharpen their messages. The campaigns flood Iowa, New Hampshire and other early-going states with additional money and people and ads. So many ads. More voters start paying attention. Watching candidates surge and fizzle, focus and fold, you often can get a sense of how they respond under pressure. And if there’s one thing a president needs to be able to handle, it’s pressure.In a normal election, these early contests can bring all kinds of surprises. In 2000, John McCain’s maverick run upset George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, jolting the Republican nomination race. In 2004, during the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses that January, a floundering John Kerry loosened up, warmed up and crisped up his message (“The real deal”!) in the Democratic race, crushing the dreams of the anti-establishment darling Howard Dean. (Remember the Dean scream? Good times.) In the 2008 election, Team Obama started working Iowa early and just kept turning the heat up as caucus night approached, driving a stake through Hillary Clinton’s aura of inevitability. And so on.This time, obviously, the state of play is different. With Donald Trump, the Republican contest includes a de facto incumbent whose dominance looks all but insurmountable. Some players have already left the field. Others need to leave A.S.A.P. (Looking at you, Asa and Doug.)But this race is not over. In fact, not a single vote has been cast. And for all Mr. Trump’s advantages, he’s lugging around some heavy baggage that gives the primary a tremor of instability.Damon Winter/The New York TimesHe is up to his wattle in criminal indictments, and even if none land him in prison, the grinding stress and his advanced age look to be taking a toll on his mental acuity. Watching his increasingly disjointed rants, one cannot help but think, “Something ain’t right.” He seems as likely as President Biden to suffer a serious health event — maybe more if you factor in all those burgers. As the primaries grind on, any number of developments could convince soft Trump voters that the MAGA king is a bad bet.All of which is to say that the Republican primary fight remains vital. And as we head into this crucial stretch, it is time for the most promising Trump challengers — who at this point appear to be Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley — to hunker down and show us what they are made of.Both of these aspiring Trump slayers have the same core aim: to convince primary voters that the former president is no longer the right man for the job — that he is America’s past, while they are its future. Think of it as this year’s version of Obama’s “change” theme.They are coming at this from dramatically different places. Iowa is make or break for Mr. DeSantis, who has gone all in on the state. This makes it especially unsettling for his team that Ms. Haley has caught up with him there in recent polling. Mr. DeSantis has long benefited from the belief by many in the G.O.P. establishment that he is the party’s most electable option: Trump but competent, as the sales pitch goes. If he places behind both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley, then limps to a second defeat in New Hampshire — where recent polling shows him in fourth place, at best — that electability argument goes splat.The next several weeks are basically Mr. DeSantis’s last shot at breaking through, and it’s increasingly hard to see how he does so. He has tried to walk that fine messaging line of presenting himself as the MAGA choice for a new generation. But selling Trump Lite to a base still drunk on the original has proved difficult. More problematic, early signs are that the recent consolidation of the non-MAGA part of the field, especially Senator Tim Scott’s departure, will benefit Ms. Haley more than Mr. DeSantis. Then there’s the cold reality that Meatball Ron is a lousy retail politician, a real handicap in early-voting states, where people take their face-to-face schmoozing with candidates very seriously.That said, Team DeSantis is determined not to get outworked — which is also something Iowans take very seriously. “In Iowa,” Tom Vilsack, the state’s 40th governor, once observed, “it is not the message; it is the relationship.” In October the campaign announced it was shipping about a third of its Florida-based staff to Iowa until the caucuses. In mid-November, three top players were dispatched: the deputy campaign manager, the national political director and the communications chief, according to Politico. Additional offices are being opened across the state, and more aides are expected to be dispatched in December. He scored the endorsement of Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds. If Mr. DeSantis is smart, he’ll be shaking hands and smooching babies in the state every waking moment between now and caucus night on Jan. 15.Ms. Haley has sought to strike more of a balance between Iowa and New Hampshire. This makes a certain sense, seeing as how the quirky Granite State, with a large number of independents who vote in the primaries, seems more fertile ground for her brand of politics than does Iowa, whose Republican base is heavy on religious conservatives. (White evangelicals do love them some Trump.) She has been toggling between events in both places, and last month her campaign announced that starting in December, it would be running an additional $10 million in ads across the two states. She recently rolled out a list of 72 endorsements from prominent political and business figures in Iowa. Her campaign has not been scrambling to flood the zone with staff members, à la Team DeSantis, perhaps because it isn’t feeling the heat quite as much.Ms. Haley is going hard with the message that she is the face of a new generation, unburdened by Trumpian drama and, unlike Mr. DeSantis, able to unite rather than divide Americans to get things done. (Pragmatism has been a central theme in her strong debate showings.) Playing to the coalition of Trump-skeptical Republicans and independents, she is walking a clearer, cleaner path than Mr. DeSantis.Whether she can get many Republicans to follow her is the billion-dollar question. She too needs to plant herself in Iowa and New Hampshire for the rest of this year and loudly tout her presence there to avoid looking as though she cares less than Mr. DeSantis. (Early state voters are so sensitive.) And she could use a few more breakout moments. She has been a star of the Republican debates, for instance, but she has spent more time carving up Vivek Ramaswamy — which, to be clear, has been glorious to behold — than raising doubts about Mr. Trump or even Mr. DeSantis. In January 2004, Mr. Kerry used a debate to devastating effect against Mr. Dean, confronting him with comments he had made about how he could not prejudge the guilt of Osama bin Laden for Sept. 11. “What in the world were you thinking?” Mr. Kerry asked. Mr. Dean had some lame reply about being “obligated to stand for the rule of law.” Ms. Haley has maybe two debates pre-Iowa to strike a memorable blow. While she has the disadvantage of Mr. Trump not being on the debate stage, she is nimble enough to make the most of lines like “If Donald Trump were here, I would ask him ….”“Pressure. It changes everything,” observed Al Pacino in the deliciously cheesy horror flick “The Devil’s Advocate.” For Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis, the window for disrupting this race and making their mark is closing soon. ’Tis the season to go big or go home.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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      The Head of Ron DeSantis’s Never Back Down Super PAC Resigns

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      Chris Jankowski, the chief executive of the Never Back Down super PAC, stepped down as internal disputes among supporters of Ron DeSantis intensified.Gov. Ron DeSantis’s political orbit confronted fresh upheaval on the eve of Thanksgiving as the chief executive of the super PAC that has effectively taken over his presidential campaign resigned after days of infighting among DeSantis allies over strategy, financing and how to blunt the momentum of one of his rivals, Nikki Haley.That chief executive, Chris Jankowski, sent a resignation note on Wednesday to the board of Never Back Down, which has been the main pro-DeSantis super PAC. The resignation was effective immediately. In a statement from Mr. Jankowski issued by the group, he described his differences with them as “well beyond a difference of strategic opinion.”Never Back Down, which had amassed $130 million over the summer, has played a critical role in supporting Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Jankowski’s departure caps days of internal tensions within the group over the next steps in their Republican primary race against the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, and comes seven weeks before the pivotal Iowa caucuses in January.Presidential campaigns are legally barred from coordinating with super PACs. But the DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down have repeatedly pressed the boundaries of what super PACs usually do.Never Back Down has been paying for some of the candidate’s travel and striving to build a field operation across the country and in three of the early-voting states. Mr. DeSantis, who has lost significant ground in polling against Mr. Trump since before he became a candidate, routinely appears at fund-raisers coordinated by the super PAC and has traveled across Iowa on a super PAC-funded bus attending super PAC events as a “special guest.”Mr. DeSantis has a long history throughout his political career of cycling through different teams, a fact that people who have worked for him have attributed to his micromanaging style.Chris Jankowski, the chief executive of Never Back Down who resigned on Wednesday, in 2014.Steve Helber/Associated PressIn the statement from Mr. Jankowski provided by a Never Back Down spokeswoman, he said, “Never Back Down’s main goal and sole focus has been to elect Gov. Ron DeSantis as president. Given the current environment it has become untenable for me to deliver on the shared goal and that goes well beyond a difference of strategic opinion. For the future of our country I support and pray Ron DeSantis is our 47th president.”In the past several weeks, allies of Mr. DeSantis and his wife have repeatedly complained about ads that Never Back Down ran attacking his closest rival in the primary, Ms. Haley, in connection with China. His allies have questioned the messaging and depth of the ad-buying by the super PAC, according to two people briefed on the matter. A third said some allies believed Mr. DeSantis was being blamed by voters for the negative spots.Since they came into existence nearly 15 years ago, super PACs have traditionally handled negative messaging and advertising against a candidate’s rival. But some DeSantis allies have come to believe that his own super PAC is too closely connected to him in the eyes of voters, and that Never Back Down’s work is a reason he is struggling in the polls. Campaign officials, meanwhile, have privately been critical of the group for running negative ads.Some of the tensions flared last week at a strategy meeting held by Never Back Down at its Atlanta offices. The group’s main strategist, Jeff Roe, and a board member, Scott Wagner, who is a college friend of Mr. DeSantis, had a heated argument during a discussion about money, according to people briefed on the matter.Mr. Roe and Mr. Wagner declined to comment on the dispute, which was first reported by NBC News.One of the issues discussed by Never Back Down last week involved the transfer of $1 million to a new entity, Fight Right, which was set up by close allies of Mr. DeSantis, to broadcast its own spots attacking Ms. Haley.Some members of Never Back Down — including Ken Cuccinelli, one of its original officials — expressed concern about how the group was handling the $1 million transfer. In an email to his colleagues, described by a person familiar with its content, Mr. Cuccinelli wrote, “The manner in which the Haley hit and its funding appears to be proceeding is exceedingly objectionable to me.” In later emails, another Never Back Down official indicated that the group had been given the sign-off to send the $1 million, and it went ahead, the person said.The new Fight Right group was created by three people with close ties to Mr. DeSantis: David Dewhirst, a lawyer who worked in the governor’s office; Scott Ross, a Tallahassee lobbyist close to Mr. DeSantis; and Jeff Aaron, a Florida lawyer and DeSantis appointee.In a statement sent by Fight Right on Tuesday, Mr. Dewhirst said the group would “join the fight with the premier DeSantis Super PAC, Never Back Down, to achieve a DeSantis victory.”With the governor unhappy with some of the old super PAC’s ads, some allies see the new group as more closely aligned with his current campaign manager, James Uthmeier, according to two people briefed on the matter. Mr. DeSantis picked Mr. Uthmeier to replace his original campaign manager, Generra Peck, after a midsummer shake-up.The DeSantis campaign adamantly denied any involvement from Mr. Uthmeier. Coordinating strategy between outside groups and campaigns is not allowed under federal law.“The assertion that James has anything to do with the formulation of or the strategy being pursued by an outside entity is absurd and categorically false,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis.A person familiar with the matter said Never Back Down officials held a previously scheduled briefing call with donors on Wednesday, during which Fight Right was described as analogous to a subsidiary. The person said the group’s officials — including Mr. Cuccinelli — suggested the only money going to Fight Right would be transfers from Never Back Down.But the new entity was welcomed by the DeSantis campaign in general. “We are excited to see even more backers stepping up to support Ron DeSantis’s candidacy,” Mr. Romeo said.Mr. Jankowski — a longtime political adviser to Leonard Leo, one of the most influential conservatives in legal circles in the country — was the architect of a 2010 Republican program known as Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project, which helped conservatives achieve gains in redistricting efforts that lasted a decade.Jonathan Swan More

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      DeSantis Will Pick Up Endorsement by Bob Vander Plaats of Iowa

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      The endorsement by Bob Vander Plaats was long expected, but comes as Gov. Ron DeSantis has tried to build momentum heading into the Iowa caucuses in January.The influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, the second major endorsement Mr. DeSantis has picked up this month in the state.Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular Republican governor, announced her support two weeks ago, giving Mr. DeSantis a key surrogate in a state that will hold the first vote of the Republican primary season with its caucuses on Jan. 15.“We need to find somebody who can win in 2024,” Mr. Vander Plaats said on Tuesday on “Special Report With Bret Baier” on Fox News. “What we saw in 2022, the supposedly red wave really only happened in Florida and in Iowa. Governor DeSantis took a reliable tossup state in Florida and made it complete red.”Mr. Vander Plaats has endorsed the last three Republicans who won contested Iowa caucuses — Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Ted Cruz in 2016 — though none of them went on to win the nomination. But it is far from clear that his support will be enough to bolster Mr. DeSantis, who is trailing former President Donald J. Trump by huge margins in polls in Iowa as well as nationally.As of Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis was more than 25 points behind Mr. Trump in the FiveThirtyEight average of Iowa surveys — an enormous gap to make up in less than two months’ time. And he is barely holding on to second place over Nikki Haley.Mr. Vander Plaats did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Mr. Vander Plaats is well known for his influence among evangelicals, who are a powerful voting bloc in Iowa and have lifted socially conservative candidates there before.He is also a divisive figure. His organization once encouraged Republican candidates to sign a pledge that included a lament that “a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.”The Democratic National Committee highlighted a recent report about that pledge on Friday, as several Republican candidates prepared to appear at an event with Mr. Vander Plaats.On Tuesday, a D.N.C. spokeswoman, Sarafina Chitika, said: “Vander Plaats’ endorsement should come as no surprise — both he and DeSantis share the same desire to ban abortion and rip away freedoms from millions of women. They both promoted the insulting idea that slavery somehow benefited Black families.”At the recent event, a gala on Saturday for the anti-abortion group Pulse Life Advocates, Mr. Vander Plaats said that opposition to abortion was the single most important factor in his support for a candidate.“If they are not crystal clear where they are at on the sanctity of human life, you can’t trust them on anything else,” Mr. Vander Plaats said, adding: “The sanctity of life is not something to be nuanced. It’s not something to be poll-tested. It’s not a thing where the heartbeat bill was too harsh of a thing to be passed at the state level for the state of Florida.”That comment about the “heartbeat” bill, a common conservative name for six-week abortion bans, was a clear criticism of Mr. Trump, though Mr. Vander Plaats did not name him. Mr. Trump has called the six-week ban that Mr. DeSantis signed in Florida “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”Mr. Trump is, more than any other Republican, responsible for the Dobbs ruling that ended Roe v. Wade and allowed such laws to take effect, as he appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who made the ruling.Mr. Trump has not courted Mr. Vander Plaats, and the former president’s supporters have been dismissive about his endorsement’s significance. A statement from the Trump campaign on Tuesday said, “While the DeSantis camp will try and spin that a Vander Plaats endorsement will revive their sputtering and shrinking campaign, cold hard data tells a much different story. These G.O.P. caucus attenders have mixed feelings about Vander Plaats, if they have any opinion at all, and no few if any are moving to vote for DeSantis because of his endorsement.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      A New Group Linked to DeSantis Allies Pops Up in Iowa

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      The group, Fight Right, was registered in recent days as Gov. Ron DeSantis tries to boost his momentum heading into the Iowa caucuses.A new political group with ties to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida began reserving airtime in Iowa on Monday, a surprising new player in the 2024 Republican primary that has emerged with less than two months until the Iowa caucuses.The reservations — more than $700,000 as of early Monday afternoon — were being made by an entity called Fight Right, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking company. A nonprofit by that name, Fight Right Inc., was registered in Florida last week and a super PAC with the same name was also registered with the Federal Election Commission by a Tallahassee-based treasurer, state and federal records show.The ads, which will begin on Thanksgiving, are expected to oppose Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, according to AdImpact. Ms. Haley has steadily risen in the polls, though both she and Mr. DeSantis still trail far behind the front-runner, Donald J. Trump.The emergence of a new pro-DeSantis group at this stage of the race is unusual, in part because Mr. DeSantis has worked so closely with Never Back Down, his primary super PAC, after transferring $82.5 million to the group this year.Since then, however, tensions have flared between Never Back Down and the DeSantis campaign over strategy, including over a publicly posted memo ahead of the first debate that left Mr. DeSantis angry and frustrated. Earlier in the summer, the campaign wrote a memo of its own that appeared to second-guess some of the super PAC’s tactics.The new Florida nonprofit, Fight Right Inc., listed three directors on its state filing, all of whom have ties to Mr. DeSantis, including Jeff Aaron, a Florida lawyer and DeSantis appointee who incorporated the group. The two other listed directors are David Dewhirst, a lawyer whose LinkedIn page described him as a senior adviser in the governor’s office, and Scott Ross, a managing partner at a Tallahassee lobbying firm, Capital City Consulting, which has been closely aligned with Mr. DeSantis.New entities such as Fight Right sometimes spring up in the middle of a campaign to fulfill the strategic wishes of donors, and it was unclear what specifically led to the creation of Fight Right. AdImpact showed that the same firm that has reserved Never Back Down’s advertising, AxMedia, reserved the airtime for the new group.The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Aaron and Mr. Ross did not respond to emails and Mr. Dewhirst could not be reached immediately.Mr. DeSantis has banked much of his candidacy on a strong showing in Iowa, where the most recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll showed Mr. Trump far ahead. Mr. Trump had 43 percent support and Mr. DeSantis was tied with Ms. Haley at 16 percent.Super PACs for Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have spent millions of dollars in recent weeks attacking one another.Candidates and super PACs are legally forbidden from coordinating on strategy in private. But the DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down have worked together exceptionally closely, with the super PAC renting a bus in recent months to take the governor across Iowa and organizing campaign stops to help him fulfill his promise to appear in all of the state’s 99 counties.Over the weekend, Mr. DeSantis visited his 98th county, leaving only one remaining. He also appeared for the first time aboard his own campaign bus. 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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      Trump Focuses on Iowa as He Looks to Close Out the Republican Race

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      The former president has made Iowa his priority, hoping to thin the field and turn his attention to a campaign against President Biden.With just under two months until the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday returned to the state and made explicit a campaign strategy that he had only hinted at for months.Speaking in a crowded high school gym, Mr. Trump made clear that he saw a decisive victory in the first Republican nominating contest as the swiftest path to end the Republican primary and focus on a general election race against President Biden.“You know, we have to send a great signal,” Mr. Trump said. Referring to his Republican rivals, he added, “And then maybe these people say, ‘OK, it’s over now.’”After his speech concluded, Mr. Trump also made a departure from his normal rally routine. The former president, who has largely eschewed the retail politicking characteristic of the state, stuck around for roughly 10 minutes to pose for pictures and shake voters’ hands.Mr. Trump’s speech, which covered issues including energy, foreign policy and criminal justice with an Iowa frame, suggested a subtle shift in his campaign’s approach to the Republican primary. For months Mr. Trump has appeared at small “commit to caucus” events, which his campaign hopes will ensure that his popularity in the state propels him to victory in January, pushing out most of the field.Still, Mr. Trump — who is the front-runner in the Republican primary in both polls and fund-raising — has maintained a fairly light campaign schedule in Iowa.His challengers, who lag far behind, have barnstormed the state, hoping that a strong showing could weaken Mr. Trump’s foothold and give them a path to the Republican nomination.On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has staked his campaign on the state, opened a new Iowa campaign headquarters outside Des Moines. He was joined by Iowa’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, who recently endorsed him.Ms. Reynolds, who previously pledged to stay neutral in the caucuses, praised Mr. DeSantis and said that Iowa caucusgoers “expect you to show up, they expect you to earn their votes,” in an apparent dig at Mr. Trump.But speaking in Fort Dodge, Mr. Trump projected confidence. He relied on a tactic that seemed to reflect his transactional approach to politics: recounting to Iowans what he did for them as president and asking them to return the favor.At one point, he took credit for keeping their caucuses the first presidential nominating contest, in contrast with Democrats, who shifted Iowa later in their nominating calendar.“Look, I kept you first in the nation,” he said. “I’m the one that — will you please give me a good show, at least, out of it? OK? Please.”Mr. Trump reaffirmed his commitment to ethanol, which is important to Iowa’s economy. And as he often does here, he repeatedly touted the $28 billion in aid his administration provided to farmers, money that he has said came from tariffs on China. Mr. Trump suggested that those funds alone should secure him a win in January.“My guys say: ‘Please, sir, don’t take it for granted that you’re going to win Iowa. It doesn’t sound good,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “I say to them, ‘Of course it does. I got them $28 billion. Who the hell else would you vote for?’”But even as he said Iowans’ support in the caucuses was crucial, Mr. Trump made clear that he was already looking ahead to a general election race against President Biden.Citing Mr. Biden’s meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, he accused the president of being corrupted by Chinese influence and too soft on the country.“We have a Manchurian candidate in the Oval Office,” Mr. Trump said, apparently referring to the 1962 film about a Communist sleeper agent in the U.S. government. The reference did not seem to resonate with the crowd.“You know, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’?” Mr. Trump continued. “Go check it out.”In another riff on his usual stump speech, Mr. Trump accused Democrats of conducting a witch hunt with their investigations of him, bringing up the so-called Steele dossier, which contained a salacious claim about his encounters with prostitutes in Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.Mr. Trump lamented that he had to explain to his wife, Melania, accusations that he instructed the prostitutes to urinate on each other and the bed in the hotel, where President Barack Obama had once slept.“Actually, that one she didn’t believe, because she said: ‘He’s a germaphobe. He’s not into that, you know?’” Mr. Trump said. “‘He’s not into golden showers,’ as they say they call that.” He shook his head. “I don’t like that idea. No, I didn’t.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Can Nikki Haley Beat Trump?

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      It’s time to admit that I underestimated Nikki Haley.When she began her presidential campaign, she seemed caught betwixt and between: too much of a throwback to pre-Trump conservatism to challenge Ron DeSantis for the leadership of a Trumpified party, but also too entangled with Trump after her service in his administration to offer the fresh start that anti-Trump Republicans would be seeking.If you wanted someone to attack Trump head-on with relish, Chris Christie was probably your guy. If you wanted someone with pre-Trump Republican politics but without much Trump-era baggage, Tim Scott seemed like the fresher face.But now Scott is gone, Christie has a modest New Hampshire constituency and not much else, and Haley is having her moment. She’s in second place in New Hampshire, tied with DeSantis in the most recent Des Moines Register-led poll in Iowa, and leading Joe Biden by more than either DeSantis or Trump in national polls. Big donors are fluttering her way, and there’s an emerging media narrative about how she’s proving the DeSantis campaign theory wrong and showing that you can thrive as a Republican without surrendering to Trumpism.To be clear, I do not think Haley has proved the DeSantis theory wrong. She is not polling anywhere close to the highs DeSantis hit during his stint as the Trump-slayer, and if you use the Register-led poll to game out a future winnowing, you see that her own voters would mostly go to DeSantis if she were to drop out — but if DeSantis drops out, a lot of his voters would go to Trump.As long as that’s the case, Haley might be able to consolidate 30 or 35 percent of the party, but the path to actually winning would be closed. Which could make her ascent at DeSantis’s expense another study in the political futility of anti-Trump conservatism, its inability to wrestle successfully with the populism that might make Trump the nominee and the president again.But credit where it’s due: Haley has knocked out Scott, passed Christie and challenged DeSantis by succeeding at a core aspect of presidential politics — presenting yourself as an appealing and charismatic leader who can pick public fights and come out the winner (at least when Vivek Ramaswamy is your foil).So in the spirit of not underestimating her, let’s try to imagine a scenario where Haley actually wins the nomination.First, assume that ideological analysis of party politics is overrated, and that a candidate’s contingent success can yield irresistible momentum, stampeding voters in a way that polls alone cannot anticipate.For Haley, the stampede scenario requires winning outright in New Hampshire. The difficulty is that even on the upswing, she still trails Trump 46-19 in the current RealClearPolitics Average. But assume that Christie drops out and his support swings her way, assume that the current polling underestimates how many independents vote in the G.O.P. primary, assume a slight sag for Trump and a little last-moment Nikkimentum, and you can imagine your way to a screaming upset — Haley 42, Trump 40.Then assume that defeat forces Trump to actually debate in the long February lull (broken only by the Nevada caucus) between New Hampshire and the primary in Haley’s own South Carolina. Assume that the front-runner comes across as some combination of rusty and insane, Haley handles him coolly and then wins her home state primary. Assume that polls still show her beating Biden, Fox News has rallied to her fully, endorsements flood in — and finally, finally, enough voters who like Trump because he’s a winner swing her way to clear a path to the nomination.You’ll notice, though, that this story skips over Iowa. That’s because I’m not sure what Haley needs there. Victory seems implausible, but does she want to surge so impressively that it knocks DeSantis out of the race? Or, as the Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio has suggested, does the fact that DeSantis’s voters mostly have Trump as a second choice mean that Haley actually needs DeSantis to stay in the race through the early states, so that Trump can’t consolidate his own potential support? In which case maybe Haley needs an Iowa result where both she and DeSantis overperform their current polling, setting her up for New Hampshire but also giving the Florida governor a reason to hang around.This dilemma connects to my earlier argument that beating Trump requires a joining of the Haley and DeSantis factions, an alliance of the kind contemplated by Trump’s opponents in 2016 but never operationalized. But I doubt Haley is interested in such an alliance at the moment; after all, people are talking about her path to victory — and here I am, doing it myself!Fundamentally, though, I still believe that Haley’s destiny is anticipated by the biting, “congrats, Nikki,” quote from a DeSantis ally in New York Magazine: “You won the Never Trump primary. Your prize is nothing.”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