https://themessenger.com/politics/inside-trumps-iowa-campaign-juggernaut
Inside Trump’s Iowa Campaign ‘Juggernaut’
The former president has one goal as primary season gets going: Win big and win early
This summer, as Donald Trump critics thought he was measuring the Oval Office drapes, he signed off on a plan for his campaign staffers to measure something vastly different: possible voting locations throughout Iowa, and their parking capacities.
His team soon spotted a concern in Muscatine County, east of Des Moines off a bend in the Mississippi River. Campaign data analysis indicated it might have far more voters than adequate caucus sites.
So the Trump campaign started Google mapping and successfully recommended the Muscatine County GOP make a local high school a “super site” for multiple precincts as a convenience to voters. The site, Wilton High School, also has adequate parking close enough to the gymnasium doors, so Iowans shouldn’t freeze in the dead of winter when they caucus on Jan. 15.
This is the Iowa campaign that Trump built.
“The detail about parking might seem insignificant, but it shows you how attentive Trump’s campaign is to the election, and it shows a level of tenacity I’m not seeing anywhere else in Iowa from the other campaigns,” said Jimmy Centers, an Iowa Republican caucus vet who’s unaligned in this year’s race.
From the campaign’s data operation to organizing efforts personally involving Trump to merchandise limned with Trump-gold lettering and perks for top volunteers, the Trump campaign has built “a juggernaut,” Centers said. “Some people aren’t taking the Trump campaign seriously. But Trump is taking Iowa seriously. It’s a real campaign. And that’s why there’s zero chance Trump loses.”
Polls show Trump consistently leading the Republican pack in Iowa, earning about 50% of the vote to about 20% for his nearest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and about 16% for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The other candidates are mired in single digits.
But DeSantis’s allies in Iowa have consistently downplayed the polls as Trump has gained momentum while DeSantis lost it.
Instead, the DeSantis team says his campaign and his well-funded Never Back Down super PAC has a superior “ground game” operation that will help the governor carry Iowa, a must-win for DeSantis where he has invested the most time and money. DeSantis moved much of his campaign to Iowa, including deputy campaign manager David Polyansky, a well-regarded Iowa operative who boasts of a winning caucus record in the state.
“Trump has the polls, DeSantis has the organization,” Steve Deace, an influential pro-DeSantis conservative talk show host and author based in Iowa, wrote earlier this month in a social media post on X. It detailed how candidates with “superior grassroots organizations” have a history of outperforming polling in the state.
Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed DeSantis along with the state’s popular Gov. Kim Reynolds, boosted Deace’s post, adding that “the ground game, the endorsements, and the momentum are an obvious and clear advantage to @RonDeSantis.”
Haley, meanwhile, won the endorsement of the influential Americans for Prosperity conservative group recently, giving her campaign an instant on-the-ground presence it had lacked in Iowa.
By the numbers
DeSantis earlier this month finished visiting all 99 counties in Iowa, a feat called the “Full Grassley” in homage to Iowa senior Sen. Chuck Grassley. He has made 130 stops in the state and counts 42 endorsements from Iowa state legislators – twice as many as Trump – as well as 100 from faith leaders and 26 from sheriffs in the state.
The DeSantis campaign reports having 1,000 captains to represent them at the nearly 1,700 precincts in the state; and 30,000 Iowans have committed to caucus for the governor, compared to the 50,000 that Trump’s campaign says it has. Trump’s campaign reports having 2,000 “Trump Caucus Captains,” double the number for DeSantis, whose campaign has long suggested the Trump camp is just lying about its numbers.
“We welcome those who underestimate us because we know they’re gonna be sorry,” said Alex Latcham, Trump’s early state director who was the former political director of the Iowa GOP.
To the Trump campaign, complacency and high expectations are bigger opponents in some ways than DeSantis and Haley.
No non-incumbent Republican has won the Iowa caucus by more than 12 percentage points, a constant refrain from Trump campaign insiders. Trump is ahead of DeSantis by about 30 points in polls. But with such a big lead, campaign insiders worry a sense of complacency could set in among supporters who may decide to stay home, rather than brave the Iowa cold in one month.
Iowa has about 700,000 active Republican voters, but insiders say the likely caucus electorate won’t exceed 220,000. Turnout, however, could be as low as 150,000.
A complicated dance
Caucuses tend to have relatively low turnout when compared to a regular election. Caucuses are more of a hassle for voters who can’t simply go to their precinct throughout the day, cast a ballot and leave. In an Iowa Republican caucus, voters gather at a night to hear three- to five-minute speeches from each candidate’s representative, and then they cast a private paper ballot that’s tallied publicly at the precinct in the caucus site and transmitted to party headquarters for the final statewide result.
The process, therefore, requires more organization compared to a typical election. Campaigns rely on volunteer armies to help get people to the polls and caucus captains to corral supporters and speak on their candidates’ behalf on caucus night.
For Trump’s opponents, defeating him in Iowa or making his win look like a pyrrhic victory is the only way to stop a domino effect of wins in the early states that would make him virtually unstoppable in the primary.
For Trump, the Iowa win is not just the fastest way to become the Republican presidential nominee, it’s the most efficient way to send the signal that his campaign can overcome ground-game deficiencies in battleground states against President Joe Biden, whose 2020 win exposed organizational deficiencies with Trump’s operation.
“A big Iowa win where Trump out-organizes DeSantis should put to bed and dispel the myth that Trump can’t put a ground game together. And that’s beyond the primary and beyond Iowa and extends into the general election, whether it’s in Arizona or Georgia or Michigan or any other battleground state in the general election,” said Erik Iverson, who polled for South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s presidential campaign before he withdrew last month in the face of Trump’s dominance.
“If you can organize successfully in an Iowa caucus with a sometimes-prickly electorate in 99 counties, you can organize anywhere,” Iverson said.
Iverson said his own internal polling for Scott matched the public polling that showed Trump gaining strength over the months, a sign the former president has an effective ground game. Another Republican operative who works on behalf of a Trump rival and spoke on condition of anonymity, said internal polling shows Trump is winning longtime caucus-goers as well as first-timers.
“But Trump is strongest with the new voters. He’s just blowing everyone away and that indicates he’s reshaping the electorate,” the Republican said. “Now will they show on caucus night? I hope not. But hope is not a strategy.”
Avoiding the 'clown show'
Still, Trump opponents dream that the Trump campaign looks the way it did in 2016. It was such a clown show in Iowa at the time that 10,000 pro-Trump pledge cards were found in his Des Moines headquarters after the caucus. The data was never used; the voters never contacted. Other Trump voters that year had no idea where to go caucus because there was no real organization and they ultimately couldn’t vote. Trump nearly won the caucus anyway and ultimately won the presidency that year.
Trump announced his presidential campaign early – a week after the 2022 midterms – and let his team know early on that there would be no repeats of the 2016 caucus fiasco.
Since summer, Trump’s campaign says it has mined voter information and data for any Iowan who has come into contact with the Trump operation since 2016 – whether it’s a rally, a campaign contribution or a social media interaction – to identify likely voters and supporters, who were then targeted by phone, email, mail or social media outreach.
The campaign is regularly contacting those voters now and plans to do so through Jan. 15, said Lacham. At the same time, the campaign reviewed all the precincts in the state and, along with the state GOP, weighed in with local county Republican parties to make sure their were enough caucus sites, as it did in Muscatine County.
To further attract caucus-goers and captains, the campaign has held nine “commit to caucus” events that feature Trump but are smaller than Trump’s typical rallies. In all, Trump has made 16 trips to Iowa since March and visited 20 cities.
The campaign says it has held 300 hour-long caucus captain trainings online and in person. After the trainings, the captains are handed a guidebook with a personalized message from Trump, tips about the caucus, pointers to help them be Trump “ambassadors” to get voters to the precincts, and a script to read on Trump’s behalf on caucus night.
To identify themselves on caucus night, the captains are also given a credential on a lanyard to be worn on their necks and a hat with gold lettering – so it stands out from the typical red “Make America Great Again” caps.
Fresh blood
About a third of the Trump caucus captains have never caucused before, according to Lacham.
Maci Arjes, a 21-year-old University of Iowa student who was featured onstage Wednesday at a Trump “commit to caucus” event in Coralville, said she decided to become a captain after volunteering and realizing she wanted to help out more.
“I need him to win. We need him to win. I’ve got to help somehow,” she said, adding that there was one other crucial factor in signing up: “Love for Trump.”
Capitalizing on his celebrity and the devotion of his supporters, Trump has made sure to give his top volunteers special attention, including VIP passes and expedited security screenings to get into Trump events.
On Aug. 12, he summoned a team of super-volunteers for a personalized grip-and-grin meet-and-greet on the tarmac at the Des Moines airport where they got their pictures taken with the former president in front of his “Trump Force One” 757 airplane. On Friday, he held a personal conference call with captains before a training re-fresher.
Iowa state Sen. Mike Bousselot, who’s one of the few Republican legislators neutral in the campaign, attended one of the “commit to caucus” events earlier this month in the Des Moines-area city of Ankeny and said he was surprised by the number of first-time caucus-goers signing up to be captains.
“The Trump campaign is doing what others aren’t: identifying new members of the party, bringing people in. And as a Republican in this state, I think this is great,” Bousselot said. “They’re clearly making a bet on turning out first-time caucus-goers, especially in Southeast and Eastern Iowa. And then you have the DeSantis team led by a veteran who has won the Iowa caucus betting heavily on more of a classic groundgame and field work to turn out reliable caucus goers, especially in places like Northwest Iowa.”
Iowa voters are often known for being coy about their choices and some like to see multiple candidates multiple times before making up their minds.
Trump voters are different.
“I was in that room in Ankeny and I’m undecided. But otherwise, it was all Trump voters. There was no doubt in that crowd,” Bousselot said. “Trump’s base is just there. The key question for him is: will they caucus?”
Outside the Ankeny event, at the Whiskey River Bar & Grill, 87-year-old Mary Ellen Silver waited for an hour in the winter cold after driving longer than that from her home in Lamoni near the Missouri border. Her caucus choice was clear.
“Trump and only Trump,” she told The Messenger. “There isn’t anybody else.”
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