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      DeSantis Finishes His Iowa 99, Hoping for a Bump Against Trump

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      The Florida governor said his tour of all the state’s counties was evidence of his commitment to Iowa voters, even as he remained far behind Donald Trump in state polls.Ron DeSantis took the stage in Jasper County in Iowa on Saturday, heralding his appearance as the culmination of his tour of the state’s 99 counties, and hoping to inject enthusiasm into his well-funded but struggling presidential campaign.The Florida governor, who is running well behind the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, said he was fulfilling his campaign’s promise to complete the “Full Grassley” — so named because the state’s long-serving senator, Chuck Grassley, visits every Iowa county each year — and positioned himself as the candidate of humility, willing to travel the state and meet voters, in contrast to Mr. Trump, who has largely eschewed the retail politics of the state. “That should show you that I consider myself a servant, not a ruler,” Mr. DeSantis said, speaking to a crowd of several hundred voters inside the Thunderdome, a spacious restaurant and entertainment venue in Newton, about 30 miles east of Des Moines. “You’re not any better than the people that you are elected by.”The DeSantis campaign, which hung signs around the venue proclaiming a “Full DeSantis,” pointed out that each of the past three Republican winners of a contested Iowa caucus — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor — had also completed the 99-county circuit (though none of them ultimately won the Republican nomination).Iowa voters have more than a month to deliver an upset win to Mr. DeSantis, and many in attendance on Saturday said it mattered to them that he had made the effort.“I think that’s kind of neat, when a candidate is willing to get out of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, the big cities, get out and see people across the state,” said Richard Roorda, 62. “I think that is a big deal.”But the fanfare belied a difficult truth for Mr. DeSantis: Despite checking all the boxes of a successful Iowa campaign, including racking up endorsements from prominent state figures, he still trails Mr. Trump by a significant margin in state polls, and he has even lost ground in recent months to Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina.Mr. DeSantis spoke at small venues throughout the state in an effort to convince Iowans that he was more connected to them than Mr. Trump.Vincent Alban/Reuters“Mechanically, he’s doing it all the way you need to do it,” said Doug Gross, a longtime Republican strategist and former nominee for Iowa governor who has endorsed Ms. Haley. “The trouble is, he’s just not a very good candidate.”Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump held dueling events on Saturday, with Mr. Trump speaking at a rally less than 100 miles away in Cedar Rapids.Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader who endorsed Mr. DeSantis last month, painted a contrast between the Florida governor and Mr. Trump.“We need somebody who fears God, they don’t believe they are God,” Mr. Vander Plaats told the crowd in Newton.The Iowa tour was largely managed by Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, which has faced setbacks in recent weeks, including the departure of both its chairman and its chief executive. But Mr. DeSantis’s Iowa barnstorm has generated sizable crowds in small-town venues. At each stop, he has made a point of telling his audience how many counties he has visited so far.Many Iowans who have shown up for his events have said that they expected presidential candidates to present themselves in person to win their votes — and praised Mr. DeSantis for doing so.On Saturday, he recounted a few of his family’s favorite stops, like playing baseball at the Field of Dreams in Dubuque County, and visiting a statue of Albert, the world’s largest bull, a tourist attraction in Audubon County.But a few of Mr. DeSantis’s Iowa county visits have seemed perfunctory. In August, the governor stopped at a train depot in Manly, in Worth County, where about a dozen people watched as his young children clambered aboard the trains and blared the horn of a truck before the governor, his family and their entourage boarded the bus for their next destination.And past caucus winners like Mr. Santorum and Mr. Huckabee were seen as anti-establishment candidates who mustered support from evangelical communities to upset more mainstream Republicans. Mr. DeSantis has the unenviable task of running against a popular former president who comes across as anything but establishment, yet maintains a strong lead in the state.Voters also said they were encouraged by Mr. DeSantis receiving the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who is popular in the state. Ms. Reynolds appeared onstage Saturday, praising Mr. DeSantis for visiting each county.“Iowans want the opportunity to look you in the eye, they want the opportunity to size that candidate up a little bit,” she said.The DeSantis campaign has highlighted his effort to meet with Iowa caucusgoers in a state that values in-person encounters with presidential candidates. Vincent Alban/ReutersMr. DeSantis also made a new commitment during his remarks: He said that, if he were elected president, he would move the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Iowa as part of an effort to decrease the influence of government agencies in Washington. “You guys will have first dibs on the Department of Agriculture,” he said.Mr. DeSantis also tried to convince voters who backed Mr. Trump that he would push for similar policies, but without the drama. One key difference, he told the crowd, was that he could serve for two consecutive terms if elected.“Two terms is critical,” said Tom Turner, 70, adding that he came to the event with some reservations about Mr. DeSantis, but that the governor had allayed them.“I was a little concerned about whether he was personally warm — he is,” Mr. Turner said.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Trump’s Defense to Charge That He’s Anti-Democratic? Accuse Biden of It

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      Indicted over a plot to overturn an election and campaigning on promises to shatter democratic norms in a second term, Donald Trump wants voters to see Joe Biden as the bigger threat.Former President Donald J. Trump, who has been indicted by federal prosecutors for conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with a plot to overturn the 2020 election, repeatedly claimed to supporters in Iowa on Saturday that it was President Biden who posed a severe threat to American democracy.While Mr. Trump shattered democratic norms throughout his presidency and has faced voter concerns that he would do so again in a second term, the former president in his speech repeatedly accused Mr. Biden of corrupting politics and waging a repressive “all-out war” on America.”Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy,” he said. “Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”Mr. Trump has made similar attacks on Mr. Biden a staple of his speeches in Iowa and elsewhere. He frequently accuses the president broadly of corruption and of weaponizing the Justice Department to influence the 2024 election.But in his second of two Iowa speeches on Saturday, held at a community college gym in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Trump sharpened that line of attack, suggesting a more concerted effort by his campaign to defend against accusations that Mr. Trump has an anti-democratic bent — by going on offense.Polls have shown that significant percentages of voters in both parties are concerned about threats to democracy. During the midterm elections, candidates who embraced Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him were defeated, even in races in which voters did not rank “democracy” as a top concern.Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign has frequently attacked Mr. Trump along those lines. In recent weeks, Biden aides and allies have called attention to news reports about plans being made by Mr. Trump and his allies that would undermine central elements of American democracy, governing and the rule of law.Mr. Trump and his campaign have sought to dismiss such concerns as a concoction to scare voters. But on Saturday, they tried to turn the Biden campaign’s arguments back against the president.At the Cedar Rapids event, aides and volunteers left placards with bold black-and-white lettering reading “Biden attacks democracy” on the seats and bleachers. At the start of Mr. Trump’s speech, that message was broadcast on a screen above the stage.Mr. Trump has a history of accusing his opponents of behavior that he himself is guilty of, the political equivalent of a “No, you are” playground retort. In a 2016 debate, when Hillary Clinton accused Mr. Trump of being a Russian puppet, Mr. Trump fired back with “You’re the puppet,” a comment he never explained.Mr. Trump’s accusations against Mr. Biden, which he referenced repeatedly throughout his speech, veered toward the conspiratorial. He claimed the president and his allies were seeking to control Americans’ speech, their behavior on social media and their purchases of cars and dishwashers.Without evidence, he accused Mr. Biden of being behind a nationwide effort to get Mr. Trump removed from the ballot in several states. And, as he has before, he claimed, again without evidence, that Mr. Biden was the mastermind behind the four criminal cases against him.Here, too, Mr. Trump conjured a nefarious-sounding presidential conspiracy, one with dark ramifications for ordinary Americans, not just for the former president being prosecuted. Mr. Biden and his allies “think they can do whatever they want,” Mr. Trump said — “break any law, tell any lie, ruin any life, trash any norm, and get away with anything they want. Anything they want.”Democrats suggested that the former president was projecting again.“Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, said in a statement. “You don’t have to take our word for it — Trump has admitted it himself.”Even as he was insisting that Mr. Biden threatens democracy, Mr. Trump underscored his most antidemocratic campaign themes.Having said that he would use the Justice Department to “go after” the Biden family, on Saturday, he swore that he would “investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”Mr. Trump has frequently decried the cases brought him against by Black prosecutors in New York and Atlanta as racist. (He does not apply that charge to the white special counsel in his two federal criminal cases, who he instead calls “deranged.”)Yet Mr. Trump himself has a history of racist statements.At an earlier event on Saturday, where he sought to undermine confidence in election integrity well before the 2024 election, he urged supporters in Ankeny, a predominantly white suburb of Des Moines, to take a closer look at election results next year in Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta, three cities with large Black populations in swing states that he lost in 2020.“You should go into some of these places, and we’ve got to watch those votes when they come in,” Mr. Trump said. “When they’re being, you know, shoved around in wheelbarrows and dumped on the floor and everyone’s saying, ‘What’s going on?’“We’re like a third-world nation,” he added.Mr. Trump’s speeches on Saturday reflected how sharply he is focused on the general election rather than the Republican primary contest, in which he holds a commanding lead.With just over six weeks until the Iowa caucus, Mr. Trump dismissed his Republican rivals, mocking them for polling well behind him and denouncing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as disloyal for deciding to run against him.He also attacked Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for endorsing Mr. DeSantis and suggested her popularity had tumbled after she had spurned Mr. Trump.“You know, with your governor we had an issue,” Mr. Trump said, prompting a chorus of boos.Ann Hinga Klein More

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      Nikki Haley’s First TV Ad Calls to Move Beyond ‘the Chaos of the Past’

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      The 30-second spot, part of a $10 million advertising effort in Iowa and New Hampshire, does not mention her front-running rival, Donald Trump, or President Biden.Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign released its first ad of the Republican primary race on Thursday, a spot that calls for “a new generation of conservative leadership” and presents her as a steady hand in the face of domestic and international threats.The ad, titled “Moral Clarity,” comes as Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, aims to build on her momentum in the polls ahead of the first nominating contests in January. Former President Donald J. Trump, however, maintains a wide lead in surveys.The 30-second ad, part of a $10 million purchase in Iowa and New Hampshire, will air on broadcast and cable TV starting Friday. A super PAC backing Ms. Haley, SFA Fund Inc., has spent more than $20 million on television advertising time, including reserved spots well into January.Ms. Haley narrates the ad, and she does not mention Mr. Trump or President Biden. She twice refers to “chaos” — “chaos on our streets and college campuses,” and a need to leave behind “the chaos of the past,” reflecting concerns about Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump that have animated centrist Republicans.To drive home the point, the ad shows security-camera footage of hooded figures shooting guns on a street as well as images of pro-Palestinian protests and American flags being burned.Buoyed by strong debate performances, Ms. Haley has emerged in recent weeks as a challenger to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for the No. 2 spot in the primary field as both seek to dislodge Mr. Trump. She has largely sought to stake out nuanced positions on domestic issues like abortion (which she does not mention in the ad), while taking a hard-line stance on foreign policy, particularly China, Russia and Iran (which she does mention).Mr. Trump’s campaign has told supporters it expects to air its first broadcast TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire starting on Friday. He has previously focused on national ads attacking Mr. Biden. More

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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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      Beside Ramaswamy, a Doctor Who Listens More and Debates Less

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      Apoorva Ramaswamy, a surgeon and cancer researcher, has balanced weekdays in hospitals with weekends on the trail, with their young sons in tow.Vivek Ramaswamy was holding court before a crowd at a New Hampshire fair, the second of five stops on a typically busy day of barnstorming, when he did something rare: He yielded the spotlight.A nurse had asked Mr. Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur-turned-author-turned-presidential candidate, about nurse staffing shortages at hospitals. But before addressing the question himself, he turned to the doctor nodding emphatically at his side — his wife, Apoorva Tewari Ramaswamy — and handed her the microphone.“Trust me, I’ve been in his ear. He’s heard that from me, too,” Dr. Ramaswamy said reassuringly, both to the nurse and to hundreds of others listening. “We need so many people who are actually interacting with other humans and seeing what is going on.”New to the public eye, Dr. Ramaswamy, 34, holds many titles: Yale-educated surgeon, cancer researcher and professor, mother of two.Yet since her husband, 38, transitioned from making frequent appearances on Fox News to stumping in early primary states, Dr. Ramaswamy has balanced weekdays making hospital rounds with weekends on the trail, adapting to an everywhere-all-the-time campaign that puts their family — including their sons Karthik, 3, and Arjun, 1 — front and center. (One of her husband’s “commandments” reads: “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”)Dr. Ramaswamy on the campaign bus with her family between stops in New Hampshire in September.Sophie Park for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Trump called Iowa evangelicals ‘so-called Christians’ and ‘pieces of shit’, book says

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      In the heat of the Republican primary of 2016, Donald Trump called evangelical supporters of his rival Ted Cruz “so-called Christians” and “real pieces of shit”, a new book says.The news lands as the 2024 Republican primary heats up, two months out from the Iowa caucus and a day after Trump’s closest rival this time, the hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was endorsed by Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa.The new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta, an influential reporter and staff writer for the Atlantic, will be published on 5 December. The Guardian obtained a copy.Early in the book, Alberta describes fallout from an event at Liberty University, the evangelical college in Virginia, shortly before the Iowa vote in January 2016.As candidates jockeyed for support from evangelicals, a powerful bloc in any Republican election, Trump was asked to name his favourite Bible verse.Attempting to follow the advice of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, the thrice-married, not noticeably church-going New York billionaire and reality TV star introduced it as “Two Corinthians”, rather than “Second Corinthians”, as would have been correct.“The laughter and ridicule were embarrassing enough for Trump,” Alberta writes. “But the news of Perkins endorsing Ted Cruz, just a few days later, sent him into a spiral. He began to speculate that there was a conspiracy among powerful evangelicals to deny him the GOP nomination.“When Cruz’s allies began using the ‘Two Corinthians’ line to attack him in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, Trump told one Iowa Republican official, ‘You know, these so-called Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of shit.’”Alberta adds that “in private over the coming years”, Trump “would use even more colourful language to describe the evangelical community”.Cruz won Iowa but Trump took the second primary contest, in New Hampshire, and won the nomination with ease. After beating Hillary Clinton and spending four chaotic years in the White House, he was beaten by Joe Biden in 2020.Pursuing the lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud, Trump refused to concede defeat. He has continued to dominate Republican politics, now as the clear frontrunner to be the nominee again.Trump has maintained that status despite having been impeached twice (the second for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress) and despite facing 91 criminal charges (34 for hush-money payments to a porn star) and civil threats including a case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Evangelicals remain the dominant bloc in Iowa, 55% of respondents to an NBC News/Des Moines Register poll in August identifying as “devoutly religious”. But despite his lengthy rap sheet, Trump’s hold on such voters appears to remain strong.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn October, the Register put him at 43% support overall in Iowa, with DeSantis and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley 27 points behind. The same poll said 44% of evangelicals planned to make Trump their first choice, with DeSantis at 22% and Haley seven points back.Evangelicals have also stayed with Trump nationwide. According to exit polls, in the 2020 presidential election he was supported by 76% of white evangelical voters.DeSantis and Haley must attempt to catch Trump in Iowa. Vander Plaats’ endorsement was thus a sought-after prize, if one Trump did not pursue, declining to attend a Thanksgiving Family Forum Vander Plaats hosted in Des Moines last week.On Monday, announcing his decision to endorse DeSantis, the president of the Family Leader, which seeks to “inspire the church to engage government for the advance of God’s kingdom and the strengthening of family”, pointed to the conclusion he hoped his followers would reach.Speaking to Fox News, Vander Plaats said: “I don’t think America is going to elect [Trump] president again. I think America would be well served to have a choice, and I really believe Ron DeSantis should be that guy. And I think Iowa is tailor-made for him to win this.”Trump’s rivals may yet take encouragement from Register polling, should evangelicals begin to doubt Trump. In the October poll, 76% of Iowa evangelicals said they had a positive view of DeSantis, while 62% said they liked Haley. More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Struggles to Win Over Iowans, Even With Free Meals

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      The political newcomer’s surge over the summer has fizzled. But Vivek Ramaswamy is still spending freely to keep up a breakneck pace in Iowa and New Hampshire.While many people were heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday, the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was making a new, if temporary, one in Iowa.He has rented an apartment in Des Moines, the state’s capitol, and plans to participate in the city’s annual Turkey Trot, a Thanksgiving morning run. In the five days before the holiday, Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, hosted over two dozen events, many offering free breakfast, lunch or dinner, eager to answer voter questions.At recent stops, Mr. Ramaswamy, a political newcomer and millionaire entrepreneur, has made a bold proclamation about his 2024 bid: “If I win Iowa, I’m your next president.”But his odds on either front appear to be growing more remote. He’s campaigning and spending like there’s no tomorrow, buying meals and filling Pizza Ranches with crowds willing to hear him out — but not necessarily winning them over. Stagnation has set in after a fleeting summer spike in popularity, with national polls consistently showing him bogged in the middling single digits. Aggressive debate tactics appear to have hurt him, with his disapproval numbers ticking up after each performance, though he started with little name recognition.In Iowa, he doesn’t fare much better. A recent Des Moines Register survey shows former President Donald J. Trump maintaining a dominant lead and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, battling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place.And yet Mr. Ramaswamy, who has campaigned in the image of Mr. Trump, says he will hold over 200 events in Iowa between now and the caucuses on Jan. 15 after abandoning his Ohio headquarters and moving staff to Iowa and New Hampshire, as Politico reported this month. He suggests the polls don’t accurately reflect his support.“If what we are seeing in our events translates into the broader caucus-going population, we’re going to have an outstanding result here in Iowa,” he told reporters on Tuesday after speaking to a packed crowd at a Cedar Rapids restaurant.“People really dial in and start talking about this as the caucus date approaches, and so our bet is that’s going to be a bottom-up lift that we get. I truly think we’re going to end up delivering a surprise,” he added.The intensity of his schedule — several states a week, with up to six events each day, not counting frequent media appearances — is coming at what he says is great personal expense. His campaign has picked up the tab for dozens of meals at recent events. At stops attended by a New York Times reporter, representatives for the host restaurants declined to give specifics on the cost. One restaurant in Toledo, Iowa, reached by phone, put the cost at $1,000.Mr. Ramaswamy estimated to reporters Tuesday that he had spent around $20 million on his run so far. As of the end of September, his campaign had spent more than $22 million, and he had contributed more than $17 million, according to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission.Interviews with voters who heard him speak suggested that while many were intrigued by Mr. Ramaswamy’s proposals, and liked what they heard, they weren’t quite sold with two months to go before the caucuses. Many likened him to Mr. Trump — describing him as “sharper,” “more polite” or having “less baggage.”“He’s another Trump, only a little bit younger,” said Diane Lyphout, a voter from Vinton, Iowa, who is also considering Mr. DeSantis. “He’s going to do really well. The only thing I thought he was maybe just a little bit young yet to have that seasoning and wisdom.”But aspects of Mr. Ramaswamy’s strategy — including his steadfast bolstering of Mr. Trump, who is accused of committing dozens of felonies in four criminal indictments — have baffled some voters and veterans of the Iowa caucuses.His campaign has reserved about $1 million in television ads in Iowa for November — nearly double what his campaign and a super PAC backing him spent in October, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. But as of Tuesday evening, neither his campaign nor the super PAC had made buys for subsequent months. Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis, between their campaigns and super PACs backing them, have reserved millions more in Iowa TV ads through January.The hectic travel schedule has often caused delays and, at times, canceled events — alienating potential supporters.“If he can’t show up on time, he can’t be president,” said one man at a diner in Vinton, Iowa, who left before Mr. Ramaswamy, who was 30 minutes late, arrived. At that same event, a woman walked out midway through his stump speech, saying, “Hogwash,” to a campaign staff member on her way out.He has retooled his stump speech to make central his discontent with the Republican National Committee, which he has claimed doesn’t want him in the race, and has recently been prompting crowds to ask him about his foreign policy vision, an area in which his inexperience has been highlighted by Ms. Haley and other rivals. He has used those questions to highlight his closeness to Mr. Trump, while his criticism of the “R.N.C. establishment” offers echoes of Mr. Trump’s own criticisms of the party apparatus.That message resonated with Kristine Pfab, a 57-year-old from Bernard, Iowa, who said Republicans had become “just as swampy” as Democrats. But asked who she would caucus for, she said, “Probably DeSantis.” “But if I could roll Vivek and DeSantis into one person, that would be great,” she added.Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa, said Mr. Ramaswamy’s decision to run as a “Trump lite” candidate, in addition to the backlash for invoking Ms. Haley’s daughter recently on the debate stage, were two factors that could hurt Mr. Ramaswamy. Voters, seeing little daylight between Mr. Trump and Mr. Ramaswamy, frequently ask why he would run against the man he proclaims was the “best president of the 21st century.”“Iowans kick the tires on just about every candidate up until the very last second. Vivek enjoyed a really nice moment in late summer, early fall, and that’s not to say he can’t get it back,” Mr. Centers said. “But for right now, I think it’s really down to two races: How much will Trump win by, and will DeSantis or Haley come in second?”Mr. Ramaswamy tells voters and reporters alike that his path to victory lies in “bringing people along” — meaning potential voters who have not traditionally supported Republicans or skip elections altogether, especially younger voices.The audiences at many of his events, however, are often older and whiter. In Grinnell, Iowa, home to Grinnell College, five students at a town hall on Monday said they were Democrats who came for the spectacle of meeting a presidential candidate for the first time.Seeing Mr. Ramaswamy, they all said, had solidified their support for President Biden.“I feel like a lot of his policies are just kind of identical to a lot of Trump’s policies — he seems just kind of Trump-lite, even with how he speaks,” said Che Glenn, a 19-year-old student from New York. “I just want to know why he thinks anyone would ever consider voting for him over Trump.”Even those whom Mr. Ramaswamy has won over have expressed doubts about his ability to succeed in the Hawkeye State.“I feel that the Republican Party has gone off the rails, and he’s got the message that the party needs to return to,” said Chris Kardos, a 71-year-old from Center Point, Iowa, who plans to caucus for Mr. Ramaswamy. “Unfortunately, I face the reality that his chances of winning the nomination are not great.” 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