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      Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis Battle for Iowa

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      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

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

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      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

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      Trump to Skip CNN Debate in Iowa to Attend Fox News Town Hall

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      Donald J. Trump is expected to participate in a Fox News town hall on the same day, the network announced Tuesday.A Republican presidential primary debate that CNN plans to host in Des Moines next week will be a one-on-one showdown between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are fighting to emerge from the state’s caucuses as the definitive alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Both Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, are long shots to win the caucuses, given that they are trailing Mr. Trump in polls of Iowans by more than 30 points on average. But if either one is to have even a small chance of claiming the nomination, that person needs to drive the other out of the race, which they could do — or at least take a first step toward doing — by beating them for second place in Iowa.Mr. Trump did not participate in the official debates sponsored by the Republican National Committee last year, and he will not participate in the CNN debate in Iowa either. (The Iowa event will be followed by a similar one in New Hampshire.) And no other candidate qualified by the deadline on Tuesday.Participants needed at least 10 percent support in three national or Iowa polls that met CNN’s criteria, including at least one poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has largely ignored Iowa in favor of campaigning in New Hampshire; and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas did not meet that mark.In a post on X saying he wouldn’t participate even if he qualified, Mr. Ramaswamy expressed anger at CNN over the network’s fact-checking of the conspiracy theories he advanced during a town-hall event last month and about CNN anchors’ and commentators’ criticism of him. He also faulted the network for rejecting some polls that the Republican National Committee accepted to qualify candidates for its debates.He said he would instead do a live show with the right-wing commentator Tim Pool on Jan. 10, the night of the debate. Mr. Trump is scheduled to participate in his own counterprogramming: a town-hall event that Fox News announced on Tuesday.Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley both criticized Mr. Trump’s refusal to participate.“With only three candidates qualifying, it’s time for Donald Trump to show up,” Ms. Haley said in a statement. “As the debate stage continues to shrink, it’s getting harder for Donald Trump to hide.”A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, Andrew Romeo, said Mr. Trump was “scared” to defend his record and said mockingly, “If it would make the debate more inviting, we would gladly agree to make it a seated format where the former president would be more comfortable.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Trump Team, Burned in 2016, Looks to Close Out Iowa

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      The former president is leading by impressive margins in the state, but his campaign wants to make sure his supporters turn out.As former President Donald J. Trump campaigned in Iowa in the fall, he projected the utmost confidence. He told his supporters during speeches that his advisers had constantly warned him not to take the state for granted. Buoyed by his dominance in state polls, Mr. Trump insisted he had no reason to worry.“We’re going to win the Iowa caucuses in a historic landslide,” Mr. Trump predicted in speeches in September and October.But as he returned to Iowa last month, with the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15 fast approaching, Mr. Trump injected a note of concern. Though he retained his confidence, he warned his supporters of a rising threat: complacency.“The poll numbers are scary, because we’re leading by so much,” Mr. Trump said on Dec. 19 in Waterloo during his final trip to Iowa of 2023. “The key is, you have to get out and vote.”“Don’t sit home and say, ‘I think we’ll take it easy, darling. It’s a wonderful day, beautiful. Let’s just take it easy, watch television and watch the results,’” Mr. Trump later added. “No, because crazy things can happen.”With just two weeks until Iowa’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest, Mr. Trump’s campaign is dedicated to meeting high expectations and avoiding a repeat of 2016, when Mr. Trump narrowly came in second in Iowa despite being ahead in polls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Nikki Haley’s Bold Strategy to Beat Trump: Play It Safe

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      Ms. Haley still trails far behind the former president in polls. Yet she is not deviating from the cautious approach that has led her this far.At a packed community center in southwestern Iowa, Nikki Haley broke from her usual remarks this month to offer a warning to her top Republican presidential rivals, Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis, deploying a favorite line: “If they punch me, I punch back — and I punch back harder.”But in that Dec. 18 appearance and over the next few days, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, did not exactly pummel her opponents as promised. Her jabs were instead surgical, dry and policy-driven.“He went into D.C. saying that he was going to stop the spending and instead, he voted to raise the debt limit,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. DeSantis, a former congressman, in Treynor, near the Nebraska border. At that same stop, she also defended herself against his attack ads and criticized Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, over offshore drilling and fracking, and questioned his choice of a political surrogate in Iowa.She was even more careful about going after Mr. Trump, continuing to draw only indirect contrasts and noting pointedly that his allied super PAC had begun running anti-Haley ads.“He said two days ago I wasn’t surging,” she said, but now had “attack ads going up against me.”With under three weeks left until the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley is treading cautiously as she enters the crucial final stretch of her campaign to shake the Republican Party loose from the clutches of Mr. Trump. Even as the former president maintains a vast lead in polls, Ms. Haley has insistently played it safe, betting that an approach that has left her as the only non-Trump candidate with any sort of momentum can eventually prevail as primary season unfolds.On the trail, she rarely takes questions from reporters. She hardly deviates from her stump speech or generates headlines. And she keeps walking a fine line on her greatest obstacle to the Republican nomination — Mr. Trump.“Anti-Trumpers don’t think I hate him enough,” she told reporters this month in New Hampshire, where she picked up the endorsement of Chris Sununu, the state’s popular Republican governor. “Pro-Trumpers don’t think I love him enough.”Ms. Haley’s consistent strategy has enabled her team to build a reputation as lean and stable where other campaigns have faltered: As Mr. DeSantis’s support has dipped and turmoil has overtaken his allied super PAC, even some of his advisers are privately signaling they believe hope is lost.“I keep coming back to the word ‘disciplined,’” said Jim Merrill, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire who served on Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign and Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 bids. “She has run an extraordinarily disciplined campaign.”This month, Ms. Haley secured the endorsement of Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, right. Sophie Park/Getty ImagesYet Mr. Trump remains the heavy favorite for the nomination despite facing dozens of criminal charges, as well as legal challenges that aim to kick him off the ballot in several states.Ms. Haley’s apparent reluctance to attack her rival even in the face of what would seem to be political setbacks for him has raised questions from voters and other Republican competitors — most notably, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — about whether she can win while passing up crucial opportunities to derail her most significant opponent.“A lot of the people in this field are running against Trump without doing very much to take him on,” said Adolphus Belk, a political analyst and professor of political science at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., Ms. Haley’s home state. “If you are running to be president of the United States, it seems like it would be an imperative to take on the person who has the biggest lead.”A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College found Mr. Trump leading his Republican rivals by more than 50 percentage points nationally, a staggering margin.The poll offered a sliver of hope for Ms. Haley: Nearly a quarter of Mr. Trump’s supporters said he should not be the Republican nominee if he were found guilty of a crime. But 62 percent of Republicans said that if the former president won the primary, he should remain the nominee — even if subsequently convicted.The challenge for Ms. Haley is peeling away more of his support from the Republican Party’s white, working-class base. The Times/Siena poll found that she garnered 28 percent support from white voters with a bachelor’s degree or higher, but just 3 percent from those without a degree.As she barnstorms through Iowa and New Hampshire, Ms. Haley has remained committed to a calibrated approach that aims to speak to all factions of the Republican Party.Her stump speech highlights her background as the daughter of immigrants and her upbringing in a small and rural South Carolina town, but in generic terms. She nods to her status as the only woman in the Republican primary field and the potentially historic nature of her bid, but only in subtle ways.Even as she has risen in the polls and consolidated significant anti-Trump support among donors and prominent Republicans, she has continued to cast herself as an underestimated underdog, with a message tightly focused on debt and spending, national security and the crisis at the border.And she has not strayed from her broad calls for a “consensus” on abortion, even though some conservatives say she is not going far enough in backing new restrictions. At the same time, Democrats are looking to hit her from the other direction: The Democratic National Committee last week put up billboards in Davenport, Iowa, where she was campaigning, accusing her of wanting “extreme abortion bans.”Still, Ms. Haley has evolved on some fronts. In recent weeks, she has more aggressively made the case that she is the most electable Republican candidate — an argument that polls show has some merit — and ramped up her critiques of what she describes as a dysfunctional Washington.This month, after Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund support for Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in return, she accused both President Biden and some Republicans of creating a false choice among those priorities, as well as aid to Israel, which the legislation also included.“And now what are you hearing coming out of D.C. — do we support Ukraine or do we support Israel?” she said at an event in Burlington, Iowa. “Do we support Israel or do we secure the border? Don’t let them lie to you like that.”Ms. Haley has kept her message tightly focused on debt and spending, national security and the crisis at the border.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesShe has ramped up her criticism of Mr. Trump on his tone, leadership style and what she describes as his lack of follow-through on policy, hitting him for increasing the national debt, proposing to raise the federal gasoline tax and “praising dictators.”But when confronted with tougher questions from voters over Mr. Trump’s potential danger to the nation’s democracy or why she indicated at the first debate that she would support him as the nominee even if he were convicted of criminal charges, she tends to fall back on a familiar response. She says she thinks that “he was the right president for the right time” but that “rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him.”“The thing is, normal people aren’t obsessed with Trump like you guys are,” she told Jonathan Karl of ABC News this month, taking a swipe at the news media when asked for her thoughts on how Mr. Trump is campaigning on the idea of “retribution” against his political enemies.Such attempts to avoid alienating Trump supporters have helped generate interest, if not always commitment.Before her event in Treynor, Iowa, Keith Denton, 77, a retired farmer and longtime Republican, said he stood with Mr. Trump “100 percent,” and had come to watch Ms. Haley only because his wife was debating whether to support her. But after Ms. Haley wrapped up, he tracked down a reporter to acknowledge that he was now seriously considering her.“I have to eat my words,” he said, adding that Ms. Haley had said “some things that changed my mind.” For one, he said, “I thought she was more of a warmonger, but now I can see she is against war.”But at an Osceola distilling company the next day, Jim Kimball, 84, a retired doctor, veteran and anti-Trump Republican, elicited nervous laughter from the audience when he asked Ms. Haley a couple of bold questions regarding the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021: “Did Mr. Trump trample or defend the Constitution? And is he running for president or emperor?”As usual, Ms. Haley weighed her words. She said that the courts would “decide whether President Trump did something wrong” and that he had a right to defend himself against the legal charges he faces, but she expressed disappointment that when he had the chance to stop the Capitol attack, he did not.“My goal is not to worry about him being president forever — that is why I’m going to win,” she finished to loud applause.But afterward, Mr. Kimball said that he wished she would have said that Mr. Trump is unfit to be president and that he was still deliberating whether to caucus for her or for Mr. Christie.“I wish she had the courage of Liz Cheney,” he said, referring to the congresswoman pushed out of Republican leadership in Congress and then her Wyoming seat by pro-Trump forces in the party. “But she doesn’t want to end up like Liz Cheney, so you get the answer you get.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Stops TV Ad Spending

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      The campaign’s abrupt shift, focusing on other voter outreach efforts, reflects a significant change in strategy less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has stopped spending money on cable television ads, a campaign representative said on Tuesday.With just weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses kick off the voting for the nomination, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign is maintaining its total advertising outlays, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said. However, it is shifting away from traditional television toward other methods of voter outreach for a “higher return on investment,” she added. NBC News first reported the campaign’s halt in TV ad spending.“We’re just following the data,” Ms. McLaughlin said in a statement, adding that “we are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified — best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters.”She pointed out the huge sums that have already been sunk into the presidential campaign, saying that “$190 million in traditional advertising has been spent in this race nationally. Polls have barely changed.”It is nevertheless an abrupt shift in strategy for Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign, which has spent millions on advertising. The Ramaswamy campaign reserved about $1 million in television ads in Iowa last month — nearly double what his campaign and an allied super PAC spent in the prior month.But Mr. Ramaswamy has struggled to make headway in Iowa, despite the intense spending and a packed schedule of campaign appearances. He estimated to reporters last month that he had spent around $20 million on his run to that point.He maintains a distant fourth place in state polls, with less than 10 percent support. His approval ratings among Republicans nationally have also steadily declined since September, and his disapproval ratings among all Americans hit a new peak in national polls.He has recently pushed right-wing conspiracy theories in campaign appearances. He has called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “inside job,” claimed that the 2020 election was stolen by “big tech” and suggested that the “great replacement theory” was Democratic policy.Ms. McLaughlin noted that the Ramaswamy campaign would continue to field some ads through digital television providers — for example, YouTube TV. More

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      With an Influx of Cash, Haley Looks to Challenge DeSantis in Iowa

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      A super PAC backing the former governor of South Carolina plans to knock on 100,000 doors in Iowa before the caucuses, but it’s running out of time to spread her message.Tyler Raygor rapped on the door of a gray, one-story house in a neighborhood in northern Ames, Iowa, and waited until a man in a hoodie and jeans appeared before launching into his pitch.The man, Mike Morton, said he was leaning toward voting for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or former President Donald J. Trump in next month’s caucuses. But had Mr. Morton considered Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina? No, Mr. Morton admitted, he hadn’t given her much thought.Mr. Raygor, the state director for Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC supporting Ms. Haley, pointed to a recent poll showing Ms. Haley with a large lead over President Biden in a general election matchup, and highlighted her time serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He then handed Mr. Morton a Haley campaign flier. The pitch had an effect: Mr. Morton, 54, said he “definitely will look closer at Haley.”“If you didn’t come to my house,” he added, “I probably would overlook her a little bit more.”With just under a month to go before January’s caucuses, Ms. Haley’s campaign — along with Americans for Prosperity Action — aims to capitalize on the momentum that her presidential bid has gained in recent months by reaching persuadable voters and firmly establishing her as the chief alternative to Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination.And while her campaign’s efforts have yielded better polling results in other early voting states, including New Hampshire and South Carolina, she now sees a chance to secure a better-than-expected finish in Iowa.“It’s ground game,” she told The Des Moines Register last week. “We’re making sure that every area is covered.”Ms. Haley received an 11th-hour boost last month with the endorsement of Americans for Prosperity Action, a deep-pocketed organization founded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. That backing unlocked access to donors and infused her bare-bones campaign with funds for television spots and mail advertisements. (Under federal law, Ms. Haley’s campaign and the organization cannot coordinate, but the super PAC can support her with advertising, messaging and voter engagement.)In Iowa, where Ms. Haley had ceded ground to her better-funded rivals for most of the race, the A.F.P. Action apparatus has whirred to life, deploying its network of volunteers and staff members like Mr. Raygor across the state to knock on doors and change minds.The super PAC has enlisted about 150 volunteer and part-time staff members to canvass the state, and it aims to knock on 100,000 doors before the caucuses, said Drew Klein, a senior adviser with A.F.P. Action. It has spent more than $5.7 million on pro-Haley advertisements and canvassing efforts nationwide since endorsing her, and it had more than $74 million on hand as of July, according to the most recent financial filings with the Federal Election Commission.Nikki Haley in Agency, Iowa, last week. One Republican strategist said the support of A.F.P. Action could be the “missing link” for Ms. Haley. Christian Monterrosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBoth Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are fighting for a pool of undecided voters that could be dwindling as Mr. Trump maintains his dominant lead. A Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll this month found that Mr. Trump was the top choice for 51 percent of Republicans likely to caucus, up from 43 percent in October. Mr. DeSantis’s support in the state increased slightly, to 19 percent, while Ms. Haley’s did not change, remaining at 16 percent. Another Emerson College poll in the state last week found Mr. Trump had support from half of Republican caucus voters, while Ms. Haley had 17 percent and Mr. DeSantis had 15 percent. But the reinforcements may be too late to overtake Mr. DeSantis in the state, where he and the groups supporting him have spent considerably more time and money.The Florida governor has visited all Iowa’s 99 counties, and his well-funded ground operation, run almost entirely by Never Back Down, an affiliated super PAC, has been active in the state for months. It says it has already knocked on more than 801,000 doors.Despite recent turmoil at that group — including the departure of its top strategist, Jeff Roe, just over a week ago — Never Back Down has established a foothold in Iowa, with a new emphasis on its turnout operation. Mr. DeSantis also has been endorsed by key figures there, including Kim Reynolds, the popular Republican governor, and Bob Vander Plaats, the influential evangelical leader.“Nikki Haley’s 11th-hour rent-a-campaign gambit won’t work,” Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said in a statement. “Only the Washington establishment,” he added, “would try to pitch that grass-roots success can be bought.”Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa who is unaligned in the race, said A.F.P. Action’s endorsement, and its boots-on-the-ground operation, could be the “missing link” for Ms. Haley. But he added that the group was up against a ticking clock.“The open question here in Iowa is: Did Ambassador Haley peak about 30 days too soon, where she is already taking arrows and A.F.P. doesn’t have time to catch up?” Mr. Centers said.The super PAC argues its push is arriving at the right time because many people are just beginning to pay attention to the race for the Republican nomination. Mr. Raygor recalled criticism from the Trump campaign that wondered if A.F.P. Action would knock on doors on Christmas, given its late start.“Maybe not on Christmas, but we’ll be knocking on the 23rd. We’ll be knocking on the 26th,” Mr. Raygor said. “My team’s knocked in negative-30-degree wind chills before. Winter does not scare us.”But his recent swing through Ames illustrated the difficulty of a last-minute push. Of the six Republican voters who spoke with Mr. Raygor, one was already a Haley supporter and two said they were persuadable. The other three were firmly caucusing for either Mr. Trump or Vivek Ramaswamy and could not be swayed.“You’re not going to get me off of Trump, ever,” said Barbara Novak, dismissing Mr. Raygor’s best efforts as her bulldog barked at him from the window. “He did everything he said he was going to.”The reaction from Wanda Bauer, 72, suggested that the attacks lobbed at Ms. Haley by her rivals had shaped perceptions among at least some voters. Ms. Bauer said Ms. Haley was “big government” and “pro-giving money to Ukraine.”“Just read the things she supports,” she said, “and you won’t be walking around passing out her brochures afterward, I guarantee you.”A recent trek through a neighborhood in Cedar Rapids was even less fruitful. Cheryl Jontz, 60, and Kyla Higgins, 18, two part-time A.F.P. Action staff members, split up to proselytize Ms. Haley. But few people seemed interested in answering their doors in the freezing morning temperatures, and those who did mostly said they would be backing Mr. Trump.Cheryl Jontz, left, and Kyla Higgins were among the pro-Haley door-knockers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last week. “If Trump is in an orange jumpsuit, you have to make a different decision,” one resident told Ms. Higgins.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMs. Higgins did reach one somewhat open-minded voter: Lisa Andersen, 52, who said that she was leaning toward Mr. DeSantis or Mr. Trump, but that she would be willing to consider Ms. Haley if the former president’s legal troubles caught up to him.“If Trump is in an orange jumpsuit, you have to make a different decision,” Ms. Andersen said.A Haley campaign spokeswoman said that the support of A.F.P. Action had not changed the campaign’s calculus for strategy and a ground game in Iowa, where her team has been trying to reach all corners of the state.In recent days, the campaign has been gearing up for its final push before the caucuses. Ms. Haley finished a five-day swing through the state last week and is bringing on more staff members, including Pat Garrett, a former adviser to the Iowa governor who will lead her Iowa press team.David Oman, a Republican strategist and Haley supporter, said Ms. Haley was spending time where it most mattered: the six to eight metro areas where a majority of Iowa’s voters live.“They are running a nimble campaign,” Mr. Oman said, pointing to a small group of core staff members and an assembly of volunteers working long hours. “They are making a fight out of it — that’s for sure.” More

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      New DeSantis Super PAC Revives Old Casey DeSantis Ad

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      The group emerged as Mr. DeSantis’s original super PAC began canceling its planned TV advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire.A new super PAC that popped up in support of Gov. Ron DeSantis this week is preparing to air an ad that features Casey DeSantis, his wife, talking about her experience with cancer. The ad is nearly identical to one that was broadcast during his re-election campaign for governor last year, a video of the new spot shows. The group, Good Fight, was formed on Wednesday and soon began shipping copies of the ad to television stations. The Times obtained the ad from a person who received a copy of it, but who requested anonymity in order to share it. The narration of the ad is virtually the same as in the 2022 ad, but the new version features some new images and clips — of his children playing at the Field of Dreams in Iowa, for example — briefly spliced into the middle.Such a move could be considered “republication” of an ad, which the Federal Election Commission has regulations against. For instance, the super PAC supporting the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, later paid a fine related to republishing an ad from Mr. Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. It is unclear whether those regulations would apply here, since the original spot is from a state campaign and not a federal one. The DeSantis ad features Ms. DeSantis trying to humanize her husband — who is often described as stiff on the campaign trail — as a father and a supportive husband when she faced breast cancer. The version that aired in 2022 had a logo that read “Ron DeSantis Florida Governor” in the upper-right corner; that logo is blurred out in the new spot sent to stations, which ends with a disclaimer that it was paid for by Good Fight.Craig Mareno, an accountant with Crosby Ottenhoff, a firm based in Birmingham, Ala., is listed on documents creating the group that were filed with the F.E.C. Reached by phone, Mr. Mareno declined to answer questions about the group or the ad, and asked for an email that he could forward to another official he said could answer questions. The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Adav Noti of Campaign Legal Center said it was unclear how the F.E.C. would view the use of the old DeSantis ad, since Mr. DeSantis was not a federal candidate at the time. “The entire DeSantis operation, including the campaign and all of the super PACs, have been pushing the legal envelope since the beginning, and this use of prior campaign material to put out presidential campaign ads is another example,” said Mr. Noti, whose group has already filed an F.E.C. complaint accusing Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign of coordinating illegally with the original DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down.Good Fight emerged as Never Back Down, a deep-pocketed but embattled organization, began canceling $2.5 million in planned television advertisements in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.Campaigns are not allowed to coordinate directly with super PACs, but the move appears to align with the strategy suggested by the DeSantis campaign in a memo in late November.James Uthmeier, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, wrote in the memo that a new super PAC formed to aid the governor, Fight Right, would air television ads, and Never Back Down would focus on its “field operation and ground game.”Never Back Down has poured millions into an ambitious door-knocking operation in early states, especially in Iowa. But that ground game has sputtered, with Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers stagnating as former President Donald J. Trump remains far ahead both in Iowa and nationally. And the super PAC itself has been embroiled in turmoil, with a series of top executives and strategists departing over the past month.Fight Right, formed by people with ties to Mr. DeSantis, originated amid internal disagreements over strategy at Never Back Down, which struggled to meld veteran political strategists from a consulting firm with DeSantis loyalists. Mr. DeSantis had also been troubled by the group’s advertising strategy, as The Times previously reported. Fight Right began airing ads in late November attacking former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.In a statement, Scott Wagner, the chairman of Never Back Down, said the group was “laser focused on its core mission — running the most advanced grass-roots and political caucus operation in this race and helping deliver the G.O.P. nomination for Governor DeSantis.”“We are thrilled to have Fight Right and others covering the air for Governor DeSantis while we work the ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond,” Mr. Wagner added.Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for Fight Right, said the group was placing an advertising buy of more than $2.5 million starting Sunday, with $1.3 million behind an anti-Haley ad that is slated to start running in Iowa that day.Never Back Down previously transferred $1 million to Fight Right, which helped precipitate a major leadership shake-up at the original super PAC, where some officials questioned the move. Officials with Never Back Down and Fight Right would not directly answer questions about whether the canceled $2.5 million was being used to fund the new Fight Right ads. Both Fight Right and Good Fight are using the same firm, Digital Media Placement Services, to purchase airtime, according to AdImpact’s records. More