Trump and DeSantis battle for Iowa voters. And also for the governor.
When Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, stopped by a donor retreat held last year by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, no one paid much attention.
When she sat on stage with Mr. DeSantis earlier this year, at another donor meeting just down the street from Donald J. Trump’s residence, people started taking notice. When she showed up glowing with Mr. DeSantis, not once, not twice, but on all three of his first visits to her state this year, eyebrows were raised. And by the time Ms. Reynolds appeared next to Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, on Thursday, alarms were sounding at Trump’s headquarters.
Ms. Reynolds has said that — also privately, to Mr. Trump she has no intention to formally endorse a candidate in the presidential race, in keeping with the tradition of the Iowa governor standing on the sidelines, leveling the playing field for the first GOP nominating contest. But through her words and actions, Ms. Reynolds seems to be softening the ground in Iowa for Mr. DeSantis, and seems to be trying to create the conditions for an opening for him to take on Mr. Trump.
For Mr. DeSantis, Iowa is where his allies recognize that he must first stop Mr. Trump’s momentum in order to prevent him working his way to a third straight GOP nomination. For Mr. Trump, he hopes to knock out his challengers’ candidacies here and win where he failed to do in 2016.
And there is no politician in Iowa more influential than Ms. Reynolds, 63, who has overseen her party’s swelling legislative majorities with an approval rating among Republicans almost 90 percent. Republicans say she can turn heads and shape the landscape even without giving a formal endorsement.
Ms. Reynolds has appeared alongside other candidates — including Mr. Trump, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — but the warmth of her embrace of Mr. DeSantis has become striking. It has been the subject of internal Trump campaign discussions — they have not failed to notice that one of her senior political advisers, Ryan Koopmans, is also a top DeSantis super PAC adviser — and even public fulminations from the former president.
“I hate to say it, without me, you know, she wouldn’t win, you know that, right?” Mr. Trump said about Ms. Reynolds when he campaigned in Iowa in June.
The Republican crowd, in particular, did not applaud that bogus remark, which came just months after Mrs. Reynolds ran for re-election, winning 95 of the state’s 99 counties. But the allegation spoke to the former president’s egocentric view of the world: that it was his appointment of her predecessor, Terry Branstad, as his ambassador to China that paved the way for Ms Reynolds, then Mr Branstad’s lieutenant governor , to take the top job in the state.
Ms. Reynolds was said to be tired of Mr. Trump, and she responded with disbelief to his comment that she owed him her governorship, according to people familiar with her thinking and reaction. Yet she sided with Mr. Trump after his most recent indictment, lashing out at the Biden administration, saying it was a “sad day for America.”
The two do have a shared history: Ms. Reynolds narrowly won a full term in 2018 with just 50.3 percent of the vote after Mr. Trump held a late rally for her and hailed her as “someone who has become a real star in the Republican side. Party.” More recently, however, Mr. Trump has complained privately about Ms. Reynolds and other prominent Republicans, who he says owe him their support because of his past support.
Before Mr. Trump’s final visit to Iowa on Friday, a backstage deadlock played out for days over whether Ms. Reynolds would join him. Ms. Reynolds has said she will do her best to appear with whoever invites her, but an aide said she was not actually invited. The Trump team sees her as a standing invitation. In the end she didn’t go.
The relationship with Mr. DeSantis, who has been privately courting Mrs. Reynolds for months, is strikingly different.
He calls her Kim.
She calls him Ron.
They banter with a degree of familiarity and friendship that Mr. DeSantis rarely flashes with other politicians. People who know them say they bonded during the coronavirus pandemic, as two governors pushed for their states to open up over the warnings of some public health officials. They sat down for a private dinner in March, on his first visit to Iowa this year, according to two people briefed on the meal, and in 2022, Mr. DeSantis called Ms. Reynolds to encourage him ahead of her State of the Union address. reaction .
When Mr. DeSantis was asked by a local television interviewer during his first trip to Iowa as a presidential candidate if he would consider Ms. Reynolds for a potential cabinet post, he offered a surprisingly comprehensive answersuggestive of something even loftier: “I mean, I think Kim qualifies for just about anything a president would choose.”
At times she has had the appearance of a running mate.
Mrs. Reynolds performed with Mr. DeSantis on three of his four visits to Iowa this year, and now with his wife. Mrs. Reynolds praised Florida’s achievements under his leadership and linked his state’s successes to Iowa’s. The two lavishly compliment each other, and their topics of conversation echo in perfect harmony.
He says Florida is “the Iowa of the Southeast.” She says Iowa is “the Florida of the North.”
In her introduction to his kickoff event, she made it a point to specifically praise Mr. DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban, which Mr. Trump has criticized.
“He proudly signed a law that makes it illegal to stop a baby’s beating heart — the same heartbeat law that I proudly signed,” she said of Mr. DeSantis.
Some Republicans in Iowa said Ms. Reynolds is just a gracious host.
“She’s very popular, but I don’t think she plays for favorites,” said Steve Scheffler, one of the members of the state’s Republican National Committee and the chairman of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. “People read way too much into this.”
But Trump advisers have secretly chuckled that she is neutral in name only. “She’s neutral,” said a person close to Mr. Trump, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the team’s thinking, which is that Ms. Reynolds will do whatever she can to help Mr. DeSantis, without him to endorse.
Matthew Boyle, the Washington bureau chief of Breitbart News, who is known for his close relationship with the former president, blatantly left out Ms. Reynolds. recent list of 14 Republicans could choose Mr. Trump as his running mate for 2024.
Mr. Trump has some well-placed allies in Iowa — the state party chairman’s son, who sits in the legislature, is one of his paid advisers — and he’s looking for more. During his June visit to the state, he invited a small group of prominent Republican officials whose approval is still up for grabs to dinner at a steakhouse in downtown Des Moines, including the state’s attorney general , according to people who attended the meal.
In an interview, Mr. Branstad, the former governor of Iowa, described the relationship between Trump and Reynolds as “cordial,” praised Ms. Reynolds as a popular and effective governor, and said her formal neutrality was good for all Iowans. He urged the former president to overcome his irritation.
“Trump has to get over it,” Branstad said. “He has to overcome the jealousy and resentment and focus on the future. You win elections by focusing on the future and not on the past.”
There have been no recent independent polls in Iowa. In national investigations, Mr. Trump has led Mr. DeSantis by a wide margin.
Ms. Reynolds is not only the governor of Iowa: she also chairs the Republican Governors Association, the national campaign arm for Republicans seeking governor. Both of her elected GOP counterparts who lead the Senate and House campaign arms have already endorsed Mr. Trump.
But like other prominent Iowa elected officials, Ms. Reynolds made it clear that its primary goal is to ensure that Iowa maintains its “first in the nation” status. At a college football game in Iowa last fall, Ms. Reynolds sat in a VIP box mingling with members of the state’s congressional delegation as they discussed the importance of remaining “neutral” to keep Iowa’s enviable position at the top of the Republican voting calendar. protect, according to one person who was present at the call (Democrats took away the state’s starting position in 2024).
“We’re not going to get involved in campaigns because we want everyone to feel welcome in Iowa,” Senator Chuck Grassley, the 89-year-old Republican senior statesman, said in an interview. “And if the governor were to support someone, it could discourage other people from coming. Same way for me.”
But there is bubbling frustration about Mr. Trump within the delegation.
Last month, Mr. Trump skipped the signature “Roast and Ride” event hosted by Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. His campaign had expressed interest in sending videotaped remarks, and Ms. Ernst’s operation subsequently rented large screens to show them, but he never sent a video – leaving Ms. Ernst’s team without a recording and the cost of to cover the equipment. , said five people who were briefed on the incident.
Mrs. Ernst’s team planned to use the chance to win a motorcycle helmet signed by all Republican candidates to sell tickets to the “Roast and Ride.” They sent the helmet to Mr. Trump, who returned it later than expected and added the numbers “45” and “47”, indicating that he would become the 47th president, the role everyone is looking for, according to two people with knowledge of the delivery. They never used the helmet.
In March of this year, Ms. Reynolds introduced Mr. Trump at an event. At a private meeting during that same trip, Ms. Reynolds stressed to Trump that her focus was on preserving Iowa’s place as the first state in the country on the campaign calendar, according to a person who was familiar with what happened but was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Mr. Trump responded by telling her that he was the one who had protected the primaries’ leadership position, as president. (The Iowa caucuses have begun the nomination process since the 1970s.)
At their joint event on Thursday, Ms. Reynolds and Ms. DeSantis bantered onstage and even exchanged a high-five.
“I’m a woman on a mission,” Mrs. Reynolds said at one point, “and I think you’re a woman on a mission, too.”
Lisa Lerer reporting contributed.