The DeSantis Campaign Is Already Lowering Iowa Expectations: “A Strong Second-Place Showing”

A floundering Ron DeSantis campaign is managing expectations for the Iowa caucuses set for January 2024. As polls continue to show former president Donald Trump as the first choice for most GOP primary voters in the Hawkeye State, a top DeSantis campaign official told Politico that the campaign is hoping for a “strong second-place finish.”

“Our goal is to get this down to a two-person race on the ballot, especially as we head into South Carolina and beyond into March,” the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the campaign’s strategy, said. “A strong second-place showing gives us an opportunity to go in[to] New Hampshire and show success.”

The comments come as the Florida governor is more than halfway through a tour of Iowa’s 99 counties. The itinerary has come to be known as the “full Grassley,” named for one of the state’s two senators, who has visited each of Iowa’s counties every year for four decades. DeSantis has reportedly recruited organizing chairs in every county. Trump, meanwhile, has visited the state a grand total of six times. Both candidates are in Des Moines for Saturday’s Iowa-Iowa State college football game.

The DeSantis official’s expectation-setting lowers the bar from just a few weeks ago, when the head of DeSantis’s mammoth super PAC, Never Back Down, was predicting a big win in the first GOP primary. “Iowa is a real state for us because of its education — it’s a highly educated state — because of income, because of Bible reading,” Never Back Down lead strategist Jeff Roe told a gathering of donors before the August 23 GOP debate in Milwaukee. “[Donald Trump is] going to lose the first two states. We’re going to beat him in Iowa.” A post-debate poll of Iowa caucus-goers found a slight increase in DeSantis’s favorability, but still showed him 20 points behind the former president.

As the campaign continues to fail to close the gap, Roe and the official DeSantis campaign are playing the blame game, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported Friday. “Ron is telling everyone that the biggest mistake he ever made was hiring Jeff Roe,” a prominent Republican close to the campaign told Sherman.

But Never Back Down is still blanketing Iowa, and is hosting DeSantis this weekend on a bus tour through the state. The PAC, which has set up five offices that employ 20 people in the state, is also sponsoring an air-wave blitz and door-knocking operation.

DeSantis’s deputy campaign manager, David Polyansky, told Politico that the amount of DeSantis facetime Iowa voters will have gotten by January will pay dividends. “On caucus night, every Republican caucus goer will have had the chance to meet the governor and probably the first lady at least once, and that’s a big advantage,” he said.

The campaign also hopes that Trump’s relative lack of presence in the state and his multi-tentacled state and federal legal issues will help close the gap by January. “I think that former President Trump is not coming and mobilizing the people who support him,” Iowa state Senate President Amy Sinclair, a DeSantis supporter, told NBC News on Friday. “Will they even show up to a caucus? I think he’s making a bad choice.”