As former Vice President Mike Pence visits the state on Saturday, Iowa has become pivotal for possible Republican presidential contenders, and for Donald Trump in particular.
Donald Trump was in Iowa on Monday. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made his first visit last week. Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina have each made recent trips. And on Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence will be speaking.
Even as Democrats have chosen to snub Iowa in 2024, the state has never loomed so large for Republicans in the presidential nominating race. For one Republican, it has taken on a do-or-die feel — the first real-world test of the strength or vulnerability of Mr. Trump.
No former president has sought to regain the White House in modern times. A loss or even a less-than-convincing win for Mr. Trump in the state’s caucuses, the kickoff contest for Republicans early next year, would signal a near-fatal weakness for his campaign, according to G.O.P. strategists in and out of the state. For that reason, both his challengers and Mr. Trump himself are paying extra attention to Iowa.
“I don’t see a formula where Trump loses Iowa and it doesn’t really wound him and his chances as a candidate,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Even though Mr. Trump easily carried Iowa in the general elections of 2016 and 2020, Republican activists in the state said a 2024 caucus victory was not assured for him, although he remains the front-runner.
Last week, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll found that Mr. Trump’s appeal was eroding: If he is the nominee in 2024, only 47 percent of Iowa Republicans would definitely support him in the general election. That was a double-digit decline from the 69 percent who in 2021 said that they would definitely support him.“For the former president, winning the Iowa caucuses is everything,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential leader of the state’s evangelical voters. “If he loses, it’s ‘game on’ to the nomination” for everyone else, he said. “If he wins the Iowa caucuses, there’s nobody stopping him.”After Democrats decided that Iowa’s nearly all-white, largely rural population was not representative and substituted South Carolina as the kickoff state for their 2024 primaries, Republicans are embracing the state’s traditional role as a proving ground.
The Trump campaign has hired experienced state leaders and plans to build an Iowa caucus infrastructure that signals its wish for a do-over of 2016, when Mr. Trump was shocked to finish second in the caucuses.
Back then, the politically inexperienced reality TV star had believed that big crowds at his rallies would easily translate into a surge of caucusgoers. Instead, he lost to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Mr. Trump was so angry that he flew out of Iowa without thanking his local staff, baselessly tweeting later that Mr. Cruz had won because of “fraud” — a preview of his approach after losing re-election in 2020.
Trump advisers said they did not intend to repeat the mistakes of 2016. “We have a serious political operation in the state of Iowa, run by and coordinated with extraordinarily competent professionals who know what they’re doing,” said Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. “We’re doing that because, one, we’re serious, and two, we’re in it to win it.”
Mr. Trump has hired as his state director Marshall Moreau, who managed the upset victory last year of Iowa’s Republican attorney general. He also hired as his director of early voting states Alex Latchman, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. Mr. Latchman witnessed close-up the bumbling Trump effort in 2016.
“We have the benefit of learning from that lesson,” Mr. Latchman said.
In contrast to a primary election, a caucus is a low-turnout gathering that requires voters to brave a usually cold winter’s night for hours of speeches and voting at their local precincts.
