With apologies to Cedar Rapids-based Janda Motor Services’ old TV commercial, make no mistake: this week is a big one for GOP presidential contenders in the Hawkeye State.
Almost all of the candidates seeking the GOP nomination – the long shots and the lions – are scheduled to attend the Republican Party of Iowa’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner Fundraiser on Friday evening in Des Moines.
The political cattle call is rightly billed as “the biggest political event of the year.”
Jeff Kaufmann, Chairman of the Iowa GOP, says the Lincoln Dinner is the party’s “pinnacle” of an action-packed campaign summer in the first-in-the-nation-caucus state. And the excitement is palpable.
“For the first time in my nine and a half years as chair we are truly sold out,” Kaufmann told The Iowa Star last week on the Simon Conway Show on NewsRadio 1040-WHO.
He said Iowa Republicans are “every bit as enthusiastic” as they were in a 2015-2016 presidential election cycle that ended with business mogul Donald Trump’s 2016 nomination as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. Trump beat out a packed field of GOP candidates more than seven years ago. The former president is now the lead candidate in another crowded arena of Republican presidential contenders.
While Trump eschewed the Christian conservative Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago for his own town hall in Cedar Rapids with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the former president is confirmed to attend the Lincoln Dinner fundraiser Friday at Des Moines’ Iowa Events Center.
So is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest competitor in many Iowa and national polls. But DeSantis has seen some erosion in support since launching his campaign in May, with political upstart Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) eating into his strength.
A new Fox Business poll, released Sunday, found Trump, again, well ahead of the field at 46 percent among Iowa caucus-goers, with DeSantis (16%) in second, and Scott (11%) in third but gaining on the Florida governor. Next up are Ramaswamy, at 6 percent, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (5%) and former Vice President Mike Pence (4%), who is continuing to slip following his rough showing of late.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum are each riding at 3 percent, with former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez tied at 1 percent in the Fox Business poll.
As the news outlet reported, “Pence gets the unwelcome distinction of having the largest number, nearly 4 in 10, saying they couldn’t support him. Roughly 2 in 10 feel that way about Trump, Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy.”
Fox Business reports that Scott has the most opportunity to grow, with the fewest, just 12 percent of Iowa voters, saying they could never back him.
“Scott has a decent hand in Iowa,” said Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, whose company Beacon Research conducts the Fox Business survey along with Republican Daron Shaw,”Nearly 9 in 10 caucus-goers are open to him, and he is drawing about equally from moderate Republicans as from the most conservative, meaning different types of voters are seeing things they like in him.”
DeSantis has promised a campaign reboot amid his flagging poll numbers. The Florida governor rolls into Iowa on Thursday for a 154-mile bus tour with the DeSantis-backed super PAC Never Back Down. DeSantis plans to make three stops — at a bar and grill in Chariton, a town hall at an Osceola distillery and a meet-and-greet in Oskaloosa — before Friday’s culminating Lincoln Dinner.
The only GOP presidential candidate of note who apparently will not be anywhere near Iowa is Christie, who has all but turned his large back on Iowa.
“We don’t have an Iowa operation and we don’t have any plans to have an Iowa operation, nor do we have any immediate plans to go there,” Christie spokesman Karl Rickett told German-owned Politico. The former New Jersey governor and outspoken Trump hater is putting his resources into what his campaign sees to be the more winnable first primary state of New Hampshire. Christie finished 10th in Iowa in his unsuccessful 2016 presidential run.
But Kaufmann, arguably among the most high-energy political party chairman in the country, said Iowa Republicans are pumped to have 13 GOP presidential candidates together for the first time all under one roof — even as the campaign sparring heats up a hot Hawkeye State July.
“It’s exciting to see elbows, the back and forth. That’s politics. That’s great. That’s just arguing around the Thanksgiving table, as long as we come together after the grassroots choose their nominee,” Kaufmann said.
Consider the Lincoln Dinner a warm-up. The candidates flock to Des Moines less than a month before the first nationally televised Republican Primary debate, scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photos “Donald Trump” by Donald Trump, “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy and “Ron DeSantis” is by Ron DeSantis. Iowa GOP Lincoln Dinner is by the Iowa Republican Party.
