JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Iowa caucuses are less than two weeks away and there have been multiple developments in the GOP Primary in recent weeks including successful attempts to boot former President Donald Trump from the ballot in certain states to a battle on the airwaves between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
DeSantis, Haley and other candidates in the mix like Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie are attempting to overcome what seems to be a wide gap in the polls and beat Trump.
Daniel Cronrath, who teaches political science at FSCJ, said Iowa is critical for the DeSantis campaign.
“Gov. DeSantis can not finish second place in the caucus,” he said. “He and his supporters must feel his campaign is functionally at an end. He has put all his eggs in the Iowa race. He has been to all the 99 counties which is what a candidate has to do.”
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And a lot of candidates are struggling for national airtime, but in Iowa that’s not the case as the campaigns have dumped considerable resources into the state, and campaign ads that aren’t seen in Florida are flooding TVs there. Political messages were seen on TV during the Citrus Bowl, which featured the University of Iowa, as super PACs bought multiple attack ads that played during the game.
Cronrath said meeting voters face to face is also critical in Iowa.
Trump hasn’t been quite as visible in Iowa as other candidates, but Cronarth said he still has made a lot of trips to Iowa relative to a lot of the states he’s campaigned in.
There’s also the issue of how unique Iowa is. It does a caucus rather than a primary where voters gather in a neighborhood location at the same time, listen to speeches and cast a ballot.
The history of Iowa has bucked political trends on the GOP side.
“And I think Senator Cruz won the Iowa caucus. In Iowa it’s a battle of who can be the most socially conservative, which is why we saw former Senator Santorum from Pennsylvania, very conservative Catholic, former Governor Mike Huckabee from Arkansas, very conservative Baptist, they really are ideologically conservative there,” Cronarth said.
There’s also the issue of what’s happening in Colorado and Maine where those states have moved to keep Trump off the ballot.
Cronrath said that could impact voter sentiment in Iowa kind of like when Trump was indicted and Republicans became more inclined to vote for him. And the final word on whether he can be kept off a ballot is likely to come from the U.S. Supreme Court at some point.