An often dour campaigner, DeSantis seemed delighted afterward as he shook hands and sought pledges of support in the state’s Jan. 15 caucuses.
But the excruciating dynamics DeSantis faces were brought to life by two voters in this friendly audience who might be seen as the yin and yang of the GOP contest.
While Rose Ann Paone had very nice things to say about Donald Trump’s time in office, she did not like the former president’s covid policies, and told me she wanted a candidate “who’s going to win” and “attract the independents.” Her bottom line: “I like DeSantis, and I like Haley, too.”
The hopes of DeSantis and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley rest on Republicans such as Paone, but that speaks to the challenge the candidates both face: Neither will win if they split what you might call the Paone Republican vote.
A couple of tables down, Karla Heinrich, a retired school principal, spoke to DeSantis’s deeper problem. “I’m on the Trump train,” she said, “but I think Ron DeSantis definitely has a place in this party.” Heinrich is thinking about DeSantis as a 2028 nominee, but he needs her in 2024.
The good news for DeSantis: He has succeeded in making himself appealing to Trump’s base. The bad news: It’s still Trump’s base.
This speaks to the ways in which the Haley and DeSantis constituencies are very different. DeSantis’s voters are, on the whole, more favorably inclined to Trump, while Haley’s are more critical. DeSantis, said Dave Peterson, director of the Iowa State University-Civiqs poll, “is too close to Trump to have an appeal to Trump’s opponents, but can’t draw on Trump’s loyalists because they’re loyal to Trump.”
No wonder DeSantis’s campaign launched a new website this week charging that Haley’s real objective was to become Trump’s running mate, complete with “Trump/Nikki” bumper stickers bearing the slogan, “Make the Establishment Great Again.” DeSantis recognizes that he needs to win over some of those anti-Trump votes Haley is harvesting, so why not link her to Trump?
The governor needs to do something. Two Iowa polls last week showed Haley even or slightly ahead of DeSantis — even though DeSantis has visited all 99 of Iowa’s counties, has the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds, and once loomed as Trump’s strongest competitor. Another poll, by CBS News, gave DeSantis the advantage for second place, but Haley senses an opportunity to turn Iowa into DeSantis’s political burial ground.
She scheduled 10 events in the state this week, and her super PAC has hit DeSantis hard. One ad mocks him as a Trump imitator — a “phony” who is “too lame to lead, too weak to win.” Others deride his campaign as a “dumpster fire,” and ridicule a widely noticed picture of him wearing white boots. “His attacks on Nikki Haley: as phony as his boots,” the narrator intones.
DeSantis is responding in kind. At the event here, he cast Haley as representing “more of the old Republican establishment, which quite frankly, did not serve this country well and has been rejected time and time again.” He wants to make her, well, Jeb Bush. An ad by his super PAC labeling Haley “Tricky Nikki” tells voters: “Don’t believe a thing Nikki Haley says. She doesn’t.” And DeSantis will not stop reminding Republicans that she committed a grave sin when she said: “The reason I got into politics was because of Hillary Clinton.”
Haley is also making Trump nervous, even though the former president is polling well. His support in Iowa surveys this month ranged from 45 percent to 58 percent; in New Hampshire, three polls put him between 44 and 45 percent. So yes, Republican pollster Whit Ayers said, Trump’s the front-runner, but that’s not the same as being the inevitable nominee.
A poll released on Wednesday showed Haley surging to 30 percent in New Hampshire. With the endorsement of the state’s governor, Chris Sununu, last week, she might have cemented her standing as the only plausible alternative to Trump, especially for independent voters who can cross into the GOP primary. Sununu’s move also increases pressure on former New Jersey governor Chris Christie to drop out, and adding his 12 percent of the Granite State vote in the new survey to Haley’s would bring her very close to the top.
This helps explain a new ad by Trump’s super PAC on Tuesday attacking Haley in taxphobic New Hampshire as “Nikki ‘High Tax’ Haley.” Haley’s super PAC responded with an ad asserting the front-runner was attacking her “because Trump knows Haley’s the only one who can beat him.” For now, that appears to be true.
DeSantis is putting everything he has into Iowa. At his super PAC’s field office on the outskirts of Davenport, an affable operative named Cole Johnson explained that he came to Iowa from South Carolina a week and a half earlier and would stay (except for a break at Christmas) for the duration.
Not much was happening when I visited on a late afternoon. Just Johnson and a colleague held down the fort. The hour and a bitter 25-degree day might have explained the shortage of bustle. But there’s not much time left. DeSantis is fighting for survival. And if Haley maintains her momentum, Trump could face a tougher race than he counted on from an opponent he didn’t see coming.
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