Iowa

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Launches Most Forceful Trump Attacks, Just Days Before Iowa Caucuses

      by

      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is finally taking the fight to the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.After months of being pressed by voters to go harder, Mr. DeSantis accused Mr. Trump of not being “pro-life” during a nationally broadcast CNN town hall in Des Moines Thursday night. He pointed out that Mr. Trump had deported fewer undocumented immigrants than Barack Obama did in his presidency. And Mr. DeSantis suggested that Iowans, who will conduct the first voting in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating contest on Jan. 15, would do well to contrast his behavior with that of Mr. Trump.“You’re not going to have to worry about my conduct,” Mr. DeSantis told the audience. “I’ll conduct myself in a way you can be proud of. I’ll conduct myself in a way you can tell your kids: ‘That’s somebody you should emulate.’”Immediately after Mr. DeSantis’s hourlong town hall finished, another began for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, also broadcast on CNN. For her, the evening seemed to go less smoothly. She was consistently placed on her back foot, defending herself over a string of recent gaffes and even receiving boos because of a joke she made a day earlier about the Iowa caucuses. At one point, she used an oft-derided cliché when talking about race, saying that she had “Black friends growing up.”The dueling town halls signaled the start of a sprint to the finish for the Republican candidates still standing in Iowa. For Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, however, that sprint means a race for second place. Polls show they are both trailing Mr. Trump in the state by roughly 30 points. They are set to meet next week in a one-on-one debate — Mr. Trump, confident in his lead, has skipped the debates — and will also appear in separate Fox News town halls.Behind Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is in a distant fourth, despite campaigning vigorously. And former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, the field’s anti-Trump standard-bearer, is not even campaigning in Iowa, preferring to focus on New Hampshire, which votes on Jan. 23.DeSantis speaking during a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, on Wednesday.Scott Morgan/ReutersMr. DeSantis was seen for much of the year as the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump. But Ms. Haley’s more moderate image has appealed to wealthy donors and independent voters, lifting her standing in the race. She is now virtually tied with Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, where he had been favored, and beating him badly in New Hampshire.Although they and their allies have attacked one another for weeks, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley barely mentioned each other on Thursday. Instead, Mr. DeSantis trained most of his fire on Mr. Trump, particularly on abortion, an issue Mr. DeSantis is hoping to use to woo Iowa’s influential evangelical voters.“I mean, when you’re saying that pro-life protections are a terrible thing, by definition you are not pro-life,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to criticisms Mr. Trump had made of six-week abortion bans. He added: “How do you flip-flop on something like the sanctity of life?”Ms. Haley continued to characterize the former president as a force of chaos, criticizing him for raising the national debt, and asserting that, although some of the cases against him are “political in nature” and without basis, “he’s going to have to answer.”“I used to tell him he’s his own worst enemy,” said Ms. Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.For Mr. DeSantis, a confident performance in front of a national audience was a welcome change. He has largely underwhelmed in the G.O.P. debates. Mr. Trump has mocked him mercilessly, including over his sometimes awkward mannerisms and choice of footwear. Chaos in Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and an allied super PAC have often overshadowed his attempts to catch up to Mr. Trump and to fend off Ms. Haley.But Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has argued for weeks that Ms. Haley would stumble as the news media and her rivals focused more attention on her.Indeed, from the moment she took the stage on Thursday, Ms. Haley appeared slightly uncomfortable and on the defensive. Her anecdotes were at times difficult to follow, and she largely relied on canned remarks from her stump speeches, which hardly seemed to make for TV-ready answers.Haley greets people at a Lady Hawkeyes tailgate campaign event in Coralville, Iowa, last week.Rachel Mummey/ReutersMs. Haley has had a series of recent missteps on the campaign trail. Just hours before her CNN town hall, she drew fire from Mr. DeSantis’s campaign surrogates in Iowa for her comments at a New Hampshire town hall, in which she suggested that the state’s voters would “correct” the result of the Iowa caucuses. Last month, she flubbed the name of the Iowa Hawkeyes’ star basketball player Caitlin Clark and failed to mention slavery as the cause of the Civil War.“I should have said slavery right off the bat,” Ms. Haley said on Thursday when asked to respond to criticism of her Civil War response, before contending that she had “Black friends growing up” and that slavery was “a very talked about thing” in her state. “I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward — I shouldn’t have done that.”She seemed to regain some footing as she spoke about her foreign policy stances, her experiences as a mother and her brushes with racism and prejudice in South Carolina as the daughter of the only Indian immigrant family in a small rural town.“We weren’t white enough to be considered white,” she said, deploying a line she often uses. “We weren’t Black enough to be considered Black. They didn’t know who we were, what we were and why we were there.”For once, both candidates largely stuck to their contention that they were running to beat Mr. Trump, not each other.Mr. DeSantis mentioned Ms. Haley most directly in a line that was fast becoming his campaign’s catchphrase: “Donald Trump is running for his issues. Nikki Haley is running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues.”Ms. Haley hardly mentioned Mr. DeSantis by name, even after being directly asked about his policies. When the CNN moderator Erin Burnett asked if Ms. Haley supported the efforts of Mr. DeSantis and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to transport migrants from the Southern border to more liberal areas of the country, she demurred.“Well, I’ll talk about Governor Abbott,” Ms. Haley said. “Because I think he was courageous. He was the first one to do it.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis PAC Makes Donations to Iowa Lawmakers Who Endorsed Him

      by

      A political action committee controlled by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida donated tens of thousands of dollars to Iowa legislators who have endorsed his candidacy for president, according to state campaign finance records.The group, called Great American Comeback, gave a total of $92,500 to 14 legislators between October and December — all of whom had earlier endorsed Mr. DeSantis, the records show. That figure includes $15,000 each to two of Mr. DeSantis’s most prominent legislative endorsers, Amy Sinclair, the Iowa State Senate president, and Matt Windschitl, the Iowa House majority leader.Groups like Great American Comeback — known as leadership committees — are frequently used by candidates to support their allies.Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis, has also hosted fund-raisers for Iowa legislators who endorsed him.Mr. DeSantis has aggressively sought the endorsements of influential Iowans, and has secured the backing of Gov. Kim Reynolds and the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. But polls show he is still trailing well behind the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, and is now roughly tied with former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, said the donations reflected Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to help fellow Republicans.“Rising tides lift all boats — just as Republicans were victorious up and down the ballot in Florida under his leadership, as president he will end the Republican Party’s culture of losing and make winning contagious,” Mr. Romeo said in a statement.Ms. Sinclair and Mr. Windschitl did not immediately reply to requests for comment. More

    • 175 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Haley Jokes That New Hampshire Primary Will ‘Correct’ the Result of the Iowa Caucuses

      by

      Campaigning in New Hampshire on Wednesday, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina said that voters there would “correct” the result of the Iowa caucuses — the night before she was scheduled to appear for events in Iowa.“You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it,” Ms. Haley said, prompting laughter from the crowd of New Hampshire voters. “And then my sweet state of South Carolina brings it home.”Local campaign surrogates for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is vying with Ms. Haley for second place in Iowa polls for the Republican presidential nomination, seized upon the remark as dismissive of the state’s first-in-the-nation balloting, scheduled for Jan. 15.Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said, “I trust Iowans to make their own decisions. No ‘corrections’ needed.” Bob Vander Plaats, the Iowa evangelical leader who has also thrown his support behind Mr. DeSantis, called Ms. Haley’s quip an “admission of getting beat in the Hawkeye State.”Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley are scheduled to participate in back-to-back town halls Thursday night in Iowa. The events, to be broadcast live on CNN, will be among the few remaining opportunities for the two candidates to draw away support from former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Haley’s teasing remark also reflects her dim chances of a victory in Iowa, where Mr. Trump is the overwhelming favorite; he is polling around or slightly below 50 percent support. Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are polling below 20 percent in Iowa in a virtual tie for second place.In contrast, Ms. Haley has decisively risen from the pack of Mr. Trump’s rivals in New Hampshire. Recent polls there have shown her in second place far above other candidates, except for Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley’s quip also reflects the perils of campaigning across state lines in quick succession: Remarks playing to the local crowd in one state can become a liability in the next. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis and Haley Will Appear in Dueling Town Halls Tonight

      by

      It’s another busy day on the presidential campaign trail in Iowa.Eleven days out from the caucuses, two of Donald J. Trump’s rivals, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, will participate Thursday night in back-to-back town halls to be broadcast live on CNN.For Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who have been battling for second place, the town halls will provide prime-time opportunities for them to win over Iowans ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses. Mr. DeSantis will go first at 9 p.m. Eastern time, followed by Ms. Haley an hour later.Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur, is keeping up his fevered sprint across Iowa, aiming to beat the odds on Caucus Day despite his fourth-place position in state polls.The man they are all trying to take down, Mr. Trump, won’t start appearing at Iowa events until Friday, but his surrogates are stumping on his behalf. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right firebrand from Georgia, and Eric Trump, a son of the former president, will hold simultaneous campaign events in different parts of Iowa Thursday night.Mr. Trump, the overwhelming favorite of Republicans in Iowa, is regularly shown in state polls to be around or slightly below 50 percent support, with Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley polling below 20 percent in a virtual tie.But Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis have so far spent far more money attacking each other than they have Mr. Trump, and they have both been very cautious whenever they do venture toward criticizing the former president.Ms. Haley has focused on policy differences between her and Mr. Trump, on attack ads Mr. Trump has put out against her, and on the “chaos” that she says has followed him throughout the years. Although Mr. DeSantis has gone after Mr. Trump for making campaign promises in 2016 that he failed to keep while in office, Mr. DeSantis so far appears more comfortable attacking Ms. Haley. He has called her a liberal, a flip-flopper and the favored candidate of Wall Street, while Ms. Haley has mostly ignored him when speaking on the campaign trail.Mr. DeSantis’s refusal to more directly criticize Mr. Trump is a version of a problem every other candidate in the race faces: Seemingly every approach to talking about Mr. Trump, whether it’s aggressively attacking him or coming to his defense, has failed to draw away significant support.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is not campaigning in Iowa and is instead staking his candidacy on the later New Hampshire primary, has most aggressively gone after Mr. Trump throughout the race. However, Republicans have so far had little appetite for that message.Nicholas Nehamas More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Keeps Getting Asked: Why Won’t He Directly Criticize Trump?

      by

      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida takes questions from voters at every campaign stop, so he often faces variations of the same question — sometimes several times in a single day at different events scattered hundreds of miles apart.And he seems to be growing tired of one frequently asked question in particular: Why doesn’t he more directly attack former President Donald J. Trump?It came up again Wednesday at a community center in Waukee, Iowa, where Christopher Garcia, a 75-year-old retired gas serviceman, pressed Mr. DeSantis in a lengthy back-and-forth.Mr. DeSantis responded that, well, he does criticize Mr. Trump, who is leading the Republican presidential field by a wide margin.“I’ve articulated all the differences time and time again on the campaign trail,” the Florida governor said. He accused the news media of wanting the Republican candidates to “smear” each other with personal attacks. “That’s just not how I roll,” he added.It is true that Mr. DeSantis often enumerates what he says are Mr. Trump’s failures to keep the promises he made as a candidate in 2016 once he got into office. But Mr. Garcia was asking Mr. DeSantis something deeper and more personal: Did he think Mr. Trump’s often vulgar language and crass insults — such as mocking Carly Fiorina’s physical appearance and belittling John McCain’s military service — made him unfit for the White House?“The guy has no class,” argued Mr. Garcia, who said he had nonetheless voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020.Mr. DeSantis declined to offer his own opinion on Mr. Trump’s conduct. But if Mr. Trump were to win the Republican nomination, Mr. DeSantis said, “the whole election will be a referendum on his behavior.” He then returned to listing Mr. Trump’s unfulfilled campaign pledges.Christopher Garcia, of Woodward, Iowa, listens to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, one of the Republican presidential candidates, on Wednesday.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressMr. Garcia, sitting in a plastic chair with his walker leaning against his knees, raised his hand again, hoping to continue the conversation. But Mr. DeSantis did not return to him.How, and even whether, to attack Mr. Trump is a challenge that all of the former president’s rivals have struggled to surmount. As of yet, no approach seems to be working that well.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is attacking Mr. Trump most aggressively, in terms both political and personal. But Republican voters have shown little appetite for his message.Nikki Haley, the former United Nations Ambassador now widely seen as Mr. Trump’s nearest challenger, takes only carefully calibrated shots at the former president. But her recent rise in the polls may have as much to do with her crossover appeal to Democrats and independents as with her cautious approach to Mr. Trump. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur who is quick to attack the rest of the field, has lavished praise on the former president, leading some voters to question why he is running at all.So far, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, and their allied outside groups, have spent far more money attacking each other than Mr. Trump.After the DeSantis event wrapped up, reporters swarmed Mr. Garcia for interviews, reflecting both the heightened attention on the Iowa caucuses, which take place on Jan. 15, and what seems to be one of the core issues confronting Mr. DeSantis’s campaign.Mr. Garcia, who lives outside Des Moines, said he planned to caucus for Mr. DeSantis, although he would vote for Mr. Trump in a general election. He was not impressed with the governor’s critiques of Mr. Trump on Wednesday, calling them “vague.”“Are these people afraid to take Trump head on?” Mr. Garcia said of Mr. DeSantis and the other candidates. “I mean, is that the problem?” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      It’s 2024, and the Candidates Are Campaigning at a Furious Pace

      by

      Twelve days. Not that we’re counting.That’s how much time remains until Caucus Day in Iowa, where the first voting will usher in the 2024 presidential race when Republicans gather on Jan. 15 in school gyms, community centers and churches across the state.The Republican hopefuls seeking to topple former President Donald J. Trump for the party’s nomination have already spent tens of millions of dollars and months campaigning across Iowa. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has at least four events planned on Wednesday, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur running for office, is keeping up a breakneck pace while his poll numbers barely budge. Mr. Trump, with polling leads that seem insurmountable, has faced considerably less pressure to crisscross the state. But even Mr. Trump is headed to Iowa for campaign events this week.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, has barnstormed Iowa and is battling Mr. DeSantis for second place. But she’ll be campaigning on Wednesday in New Hampshire, the next state to vote in the G.O.P. nominating contest and one where she is pinning her hopes.But they are all staring straight up at Mr. Trump, who has maintained daunting double-digit leads in polls in Iowa, despite the 91 felony charges against him and after two states have barred him from their primary ballots after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.His campaign is seeking an overwhelming victory in Iowa to shut out his rivals before most Republicans get a chance to vote in the primaries. Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis, who remain far behind Mr. Trump in Iowa polls, look to be fiercely battling for second place.Mr. Ramaswamy, who has brashly promised a surprise showing in the caucuses, is polling a distant fourth in Iowa, with less than 10 percent support. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the race’s staunchest Trump critic, has not campaigned in Iowa, and is polling in fifth place behind Mr. Ramaswamy, the race’s foremost Trump proponent. Mr. Christie has instead staked his candidacy on the New Hampshire primary.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at the Iowa State Fair last year, when he was viewed as the clear No. 2 to Donald J. Trump.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesIowa is not a particularly valuable state to win in the presidential nomination process. The state awards very few delegates, and the victor there is not assured the party’s nomination. The last non-incumbent Republican presidential nominee to win the Iowa caucuses was George W. Bush in 2000.Still, the state holds symbolic importance as the first votes cast in the nation. The results can point to signs of momentum, of which candidates are rising or falling as the contest moves to larger states.But despite months of intense campaigning and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, the race in Iowa has changed little from the summer, when the hopefuls were roaming the Iowa State Fair: Mr. Trump is still far and away the favorite.One exception has been the rise of Ms. Haley, and the decline of Mr. DeSantis. (On Thursday, they will participate in dueling CNN town halls.) While Mr. DeSantis had been widely viewed as the clear No. 2 when he entered the race, Ms. Haley has caught up to him in the jockeying for second place.That position is still far behind Mr. Trump, but observers are watching closely: A strong performance from either candidate could put pressure on the other to drop out and allow a stronger anti-Trump coalition to emerge. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis Battle for Iowa

      by

      Patrick Healy: Katherine, the Iowa caucuses are 12 days away — the first chance some Americans will have to vote again for Donald Trump or decide if they want to go in a different direction. Trump has a lead of roughly 30 percentage points in several Iowa polls over Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. What do you see driving the race in Iowa right now? Can anything stop Trump?Katherine Miller: This is the part of an election cycle where the stakes and ideas really get tangled up with who voters think has the best shot of winning, polls, money and so forth. If a candidate runs out of money, for instance, it’s hard to campaign for president. If you zoom out and look at polling and the apparatus of support surrounding Donald Trump, it’s really much more likely than not he will be the Republican nominee. He’s polling extremely strongly nationally, but also in Iowa, where his campaign has built what looks like a real operation to make sure he wins.Patrick: He looks like an incumbent president running for re-election, driving the conversation in the party about immigration, security, Biden’s flaws — and treating rivals like protest candidates he wouldn’t deign to debate.Katherine: A lot of Republican voters also just support Trump and what he’s promised: The Des Moines Register published polling before Christmas showing that, on the subject of his grim commentary about immigration or when he compares people to “vermin,” many likely caucusgoers either said that those remarks made them more likely to vote for Trump or that they did not matter.Patrick: A lot of Republicans really like Trump as he is — they already know he will do and say Trumpy things and don’t punish him for it.Katherine: Still: There really is still time for another candidate to seriously challenge Trump. It’s not inevitable. In January of presidential election years, each week starts to feel a lot longer and the result of each caucus or primary can really shape the ones that follow. If you look at national polling, he’s dominating the Republican field. But if you look at New Hampshire’s polling, it’s a much tighter race, and if an “inevitable” front-runner loses one of the first two contests, that can change how voters elsewhere view a race and the choices in front of them.Patrick: It definitely did for Hillary Clinton in 2008 and Howard Dean in 2004.Katherine: There are some people who feel Haley and DeSantis can lose Iowa and the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary and still win the nomination — I am not one of them. The argument I’ve heard around this relates to the possibility that Trump will be convicted in the federal Jan. 6 trial, or that those trials would depress enthusiasm for him as the trials went on. I am a little skeptical that the party would actually switch gears over the summer even if both those things happened. What happened in 2020 with Joe Biden, where he lost the first two contests, was pretty unusual. Nikki Haley, for instance, really needs to prove quickly this is real and she can actually beat Trump.Patrick: The political question I heard most over the holidays was, “can she do it?” — can Haley beat expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire and have a shot to beat Trump for the G.O.P. nomination? But then came her answer about the cause of the Civil War, where she didn’t mention slavery. You’ve been watching her — before we discuss the Civil War, I’m curious how you see Haley’s chances?Katherine: I’ve been wildly wrong before, but I do think Haley needs to win New Hampshire and then somehow hang on in South Carolina. If both of those things happened, that’s a very different race.Patrick: That reminds me of John Kerry in 2004. The Massachusetts senator needed a big combo victory too — more than just winning the next-door New Hampshire primary. Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire, and it gave him momentum he needed to triumph over Dean.Katherine: Right. So with this in mind, I think Haley needs to come in second in Iowa, presumably behind Trump, and she would need that second-place result to be “better than expected.” What does “better than expected” mean? That’s kind of nebulous. She can’t just narrowly beat Ron DeSantis by a point or something, though; she’d want something where she’d be able to get on TV that night and frame the New Hampshire primary to voters and the media as a “Trump vs. Haley” one-on-one race, with an actual choice in vision and approach that she’s offering.Haley has tried to imply contrasts — that she is more temperate, that she is more “electable” against Biden — and some of it is about policy. Her viewpoint involves a much more expansive American foreign policy than Trump wants, and a return to the fiscal austerity of the 2010s, in addition to a more kitchen-table approach. That austerity ended up being pretty unpopular during the 2012 election, and populism on the right and a return to more assertive liberalism about the value of government has really changed that conversation — but perhaps inflation has changed how voters view fiscal matters. She has not been especially critical of Trump beyond a generational or electability critique, versus, for instance, his trying to overturn the 2020 election. How do you see the expectations for her in Iowa?Patrick: I’m a little torn, and this is why: Second place for Haley in Iowa would give her momentum and knock against the image that she has only narrow appeal with moderates and independents. But if DeSantis comes in a humiliating third place in Iowa, I could see him dropping out a day or two later — and a lot of his support in New Hampshire could move to Trump, who is already ahead in the New Hampshire polls. In the final analysis, though, a second-place surprise upset is better for Haley. Can she pull that off, though?Katherine: Her campaign and the affiliated groups have spent a lot of money the last few weeks on TV ads in Iowa and in New Hampshire, and are reserving more; she’s also campaigning a lot.Patrick: Iowa is famous for late surges — Kerry 2004, Obama ’08 and Mike Huckabee ’08, Rick Santorum ’12, Cruz ’16.Katherine: Only two of those people won the nomination, though. But go on…Patrick: True. And right now, the odds are long that Haley will win the nomination. I am curious to see if Republican voters will be affected by Haley’s comments about the Civil War. I doubt that any large numbers of voters will move away from her simply because she didn’t say right away that the cause of the war was slavery — most Republicans aren’t making up their minds on Haley based on one gaffe in an otherwise pretty gaffe-free campaign. Her answer did remind me of the university presidents who couldn’t say that genocide against Jews was bad, unacceptable, wouldn’t be tolerated. What I do know is she has disrupted a good moment for herself with a bad moment. You?Katherine: I don’t know, it was just a depressing, bad answer. The cleanup also had some confusing parts about freedom in it, as well; she should have just stopped at, “By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more.” Maybe it’s partly a reflexive impulse from the days when she was running for governor and people believed she had to say she wouldn’t take the Confederate flag down at the state capitol in order to win, but that’s also depressing in and of itself.Patrick: Then there’s Ron DeSantis, who has really thrown himself into Iowa, visiting all 99 counties. Last spring, he started off in the Iowa polling at around 28 percent, according to the Real Clear Polling average; today, he’s around 19 percent. He seems like the example of, “The more you get to know him, the less you like him.” You’ve been on the trail with him a few times this year — why didn’t he catch fire? Why didn’t he “wear well” with more voters, as they say?Katherine: I think it’s still a little unclear what exactly the problem is. On a pure affect level, he’s definitely intense in person, he speaks at a pretty relentless pace, and he’s not a politician with a natural affinity for mixing it up with voters.Our colleagues in the newsroom mentioned in a story last month how, in Iowa over the summer, he interrupted a 15-year-old who was asking about mental health and the military by making a joke about her age. I was actually there for that exchange. The voter had self-deprecatingly mentioned that maybe her question didn’t matter because she was too young to vote, then he cut in to make a joke that this didn’t stop the Democrats from trying to let her vote, just as she was saying she has depression and anxiety, and started asking a thoughtful question about mental health and military recruitment. Mental health for young people and military recruitment are huge problems! But he started talking about how the military has requirements for a reason, before finally saying that in his experience people were still able to serve well and he’d take a look at the issue. In my notes, I just wrote “BAD ANSWER.”Patrick: All caps. I know you — you’ve seen a lot over the years — that’s bad.Katherine: So I think the persona is probably part of it. But I also really wonder about the policy platform itself. The idea is supposed to be “getting all the meat off the bone,” as DeSantis puts it, and turning all the stuff Trump talks about into a reality. I think there’s a theory of the case that people just don’t like the idea of stuff being banned by the government, whether that’s about abortion or books or choices for their kids — even if a voter, for instance, might disapprove of abortion as a practice. If DeSantis were in this chat, I’m sure he’d dispute the idea that there’s book banning in Florida, but that’s its own kind of issue in campaigns — if you’re explaining and defending in lawyerly ways, that’s not always what a voter wants to hear.Or maybe it’s that people who love Trump love Trump and don’t need an alternative. What do you think?Patrick: DeSantis has a high opinion of himself and started off the race amid great expectations for his candidacy, and I think he’s sort of the classic candidate who doesn’t live up to the billing. He won a big re-election victory in 2022 against a very weak Democratic opponent, and looked like a guy who relished picking fights and winning ruthlessly (Disney, educators, pro-choice people, gay and trans kids). Then he got in the race and quickly showed himself to be stiff and awkward and, perhaps worst of all for his brand, a wimp in the face of Trump’s attacks. He got trolled by that plane at the Iowa State Fair; he would say benign things about Trump while Trump would basically label him as a pedophile in high heels. He kept up that weird grin and little feints as Trump executed brass-knuckles, full-Jeb takedowns.In our most recent Times Opinion focus group, two voters said they were interested in DeSantis early on but found him too conservative and too stilted in the end. Now maybe Iowa Republican caucusgoers will surprise us, but DeSantis came in wanting to beat Trump and now is trying to hang on against Haley.Katherine: With DeSantis, the perception that he’s too conservative, when in many ways he’s promising almost exactly what Trump promises is this weird feature of politics right now — there’s very little daylight between them, for instance, in their actual approaches on foreign policy, or the idea of an administrative/deep state, or immigration, or trans rights. Abortion policy is an exception, and that can’t be discounted as a perception of “conservatism,” but in a lot of ways, DeSantis is offering similar policy to Trump. Maybe it’s purely about those voters just liking Trump.The thing is, there clearly was some space for a challenger to make a run at Trump. Who knows: Maybe we’re about to witness a stunning last-minute surge by DeSantis. The hard part was and is, candidates needed to be critical of Trump in a way that meant something to voters, that also created a choice for them vs. Trump, and for that criticism of Trump to not become their entire political identity. DeSantis clearly wanted to evade Trump’s attacks, but that didn’t really work, and his main criticism of Trump is that he did not live up to his word as president. It’s just not clear that people really feel that Trump didn’t live up to his word, or that if they do think that, they really care.Patrick: See you next week in Iowa, Katherine!Patrick Healy is the deputy Opinion editor. Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.Source photograph by Anna Moneymaker, via Getty Images.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Ramaswamy Is Still Sprinting Across Iowa, While His Polling Barely Moves

      by

      Vivek Ramaswamy tore across eastern Iowa on Tuesday at the breakneck pace that has come to define his long-shot presidential campaign.He stopped just long enough at most of the six restaurants and bars on his itinerary to remind voters he’s still in the race, lingering longer at his final stop of the day. He drew praise for his straightforward, bombastic style. And he made humorous quips, promising to finish Donald J. Trump’s mission of draining the bureaucratic swamp in Washington by “bringing the pesticide” to anything that crawls out.But the day mostly served as a stark reminder of how deeply Mr. Ramaswamy remains mired in a kind of swamp of his own, trailing far behind his rivals for the Republican nomination and stuck in fourth place in most state polls. In Dubuque, a few minutes before Mr. Ramaswamy arrived at a cozy cocktail bar where he was scheduled to speak, one of his campaign’s surrogates asked the 50 attendees how many planned to caucus for him. Only about five raised their hands.Some voters at his six Iowa events Tuesday wondered aloud whether he was simply burnishing his credentials for a 2028 presidential run or for a position in Mr. Trump’s cabinet if the former president were to win back the White House.“I think he’s got a really good chance of that,” said Matt Casey, 49, of a possible role for Mr. Ramaswamy in a Trump administration. “He could probably be the vice president real easy.”Mr. Ramaswamy, who has largely financed his presidential bid with the money he earned from his shrewd pitches to investors in his biotechnology business, can probably afford to remain in the contest as long as he desires. And he has maintained that he will outperform expectations and pull off an underdog victory on caucus night on Jan. 15. He has argued that many of his supporters are young people and other first-time caucusgoers not being counted in the polls.“I think we’re going to deliver a major surprise,” Mr. Ramaswamy told reporters on Tuesday.His tactic of hewing close to Mr. Trump’s policies and heaping praise on the former president has won him accolades and respect from Iowa Republicans. But with under two weeks until the caucuses, voters’ support for Mr. Trump seems as ironclad as ever, leaving Mr. Ramaswamy simply as the second-favorite for many.“I’d like to see a Ramaswamy presidency, but I think he’s got a steep hill to climb,” said Jeremy Nelson, 46, who worried that voting for Mr. Ramaswamy instead of Mr. Trump could help Nikki Haley, who is trying to emerge as the main alternative to the former president. “I don’t want a vote for Vivek in the primary to be a vote for Nikki Haley,” he added.Still, Mr. Ramaswamy’s pointed rhetoric impressed many on Tuesday, and changed at least a few minds. At the dimly lit bar in Dubuque, he eschewed his typical stump speech and launched straight into a question-and-answer session as his wife, Apoorva Ramaswamy, a surgeon and cancer researcher, looked on.Mr. Ramaswamy painted himself as a more sophisticated version of Mr. Trump, quoting former President John Quincy Adams one moment and telling a voter that Democrats were “selling us the rope today they will use to hang us tomorrow” the next.He drew applause when he said that unlike Mr. Trump, he would not be led astray by political advisers who stopped the former president from dissolving various federal agencies, ending birthright citizenship or using local law enforcement to aid in the capture of undocumented immigrants.Sandy Kapparos, 75, said she was “very impressed” with Mr. Ramaswamy’s wide grasp of various issues.“He brought up everything,” she said. “He just seemed to know so much about all of it. I was leaning toward Nikki Haley, but now I’m not sure.”Ben Dickinson, a 32-year-old libertarian from Davenport, who visited a Bettendorf event on Tuesday night with his partner and two children, is planning to caucus for Mr. Ramaswamy. He said he thought the candidate had set himself up well should something happen with Mr. Trump’s candidacy. “If Trump were to drop out, then Vivek would most likely get a lot of Trump’s followers because he hasn’t said anything negative against Trump.”Mr. Ramaswamy is hardly the first presidential long-shot candidate who has lingered in a primary far longer than expected, and staying in a race can increase name recognition and pay other dividends. Some also-rans, like former Representative Ron Paul of Texas, built fervent fan bases even as their presidential chances dwindled to near zero.“I think he’ll get his name out there,” Tom Priebe, 75, said of Mr. Ramaswamy’s goal on caucus night. “I don’t know if he’ll do well this time, but maybe next time.”As his hopes of winning the nomination have faded, Mr. Ramaswamy has resorted to a host of tactics, some of them signaling desperation. He rented an apartment in Des Moines, campaigned through Thanksgiving and has packed so many events into his schedule that he frequently shows up late. His campaign said on Tuesday that he had become the first candidate in history to complete the so-called Full Grassley — a tour through each of Iowa’s 99 counties, so named for the trip the state’s longtime senator Chuck Grassley takes each year — two different times.Mr. Ramaswamy has also delved into the fringes of the far right, promoting conspiracy theories such as the “great replacement theory” — the racist idea that Western elites are trying to replace white Americans with minorities. On Tuesday, he trumpeted a new endorsement from Steve King, the former Iowa congressman who was pushed out of office by a primary challenger after his history of racist comments prompted the Republican Party to strip him of his committee assignments in Congress.On Tuesday morning, Robert Johanningmeier showed up to Mr. Ramaswamy’s event at a bar in Waukon, in northeastern Iowa, with a plan. He had a brown “Vivek 2024” hat cued up in the Amazon cart on his phone. Assuming he liked what he heard, he planned on clicking “buy.”But after hearing Mr. Ramaswamy speak, Mr. Johanningmeier still wasn’t sold, although he said he was wavering. He decided to keep wearing the same hat he had walked in with — a camouflage “Trump 2024” cap. The Ramaswamy hat, though, stayed in his cart. More