The NPR Politics Podcast - Cattle Call: Republican Hopefuls Flock To Iowa State Fair

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

The Iowa State Fair regularly draws more than a million people to Des Moines to revel in fried delights and livestock shows — that includes presidential hopefuls. But the mood this year is different than it has been in past presidential election cycles.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Don Gonyea, and Iowa Public Radio reporter Clay Masters.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm one of the many band teachers outside this week teaching marching band camp. This podcast was recorded at 107 p.m. Eastern on Monday, August 14th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but the doctor beat will still be ticking and these kids will still be awesome. All right, here's the show. Ready for that back to school time. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. I'm Don Gagné, national political correspondent. And Clay Masters of Iowa Public Radio is here, too. Hi, Clay. Happy to be here. So we should note you two are both together right now at the Iowa State Fair. The fair, of course, is one of the most enduring traditions in politics if you want to be president of the United States. But politics isn't so

traditional anymore. I think that's my understatement for the day. The leading candidate for the Republican nomination is facing three and possibly four indictments for a range of alleged crimes. Clay, how big of a shadow did Donald Trump cast at the fair this year? Well, first off, I should say that people largely come to the Iowa State Fair to go see concerts, see the livestock, get all kinds of fried food. And so the politics of it all is kind of a sideshow. I mean, it's not like this is drawing thousands of people to just want to come see what politicians are saying ahead of an election. And with that aside, the election itself did cast a big shadow on the state fair on Saturday when the former president, Donald Trump,

was here. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who's seen as his main rival, was also here. And people were largely just observing the spectacle of the former president being here. And, you know, people that I was talking to in the crowd were more focused on just wanting to get a look at him rather than talking about the criminal indictments that he's facing. Don, Iowa doesn't mean as much politically to Democrats anymore. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. But this is still an event that is a must appearance for Republican presidential hopefuls, particularly the ones that are trying to make a name for themselves in the state, even if the folks there would rather be checking out the butter cow. That's right. Even if the fair and what it means in American politics is changing a little bit, even if it is a long way from being the kind of personal interaction

between a candidate and voters that you saw maybe when Jimmy Carter came to the fair back in 1976. Those days are long gone, but to not show up at the fair would also send a message to Iowa voters. Clay? Yeah, that's right. And Iowa is so important to all these other candidates that are looking for a breakthrough moment because the Iowa caucuses, we're going to have a lot of, potentially a lot of candidates running again, much like we did in 2016, and they're looking for a breakthrough moment. Traditionally, it's been said that there are three tickets out of Iowa, meaning the top

three finishers of the Iowa caucuses maybe have a path going forward. This time, I think it's maybe just two tickets out of Iowa, the former president and somebody that could be viable to take him on. So if you want to show the rest of the country that you can win in an early state like Iowa, you got to be at the Iowa State Fair. And that's why we're seeing all these Republican presidential candidates descend on the state fair, because Iowa, for the Republicans, is just so important to try to take on the front runner. The fair is obviously ongoing, but I wonder so far if there's any candidate moments or voters you've talked to or moments you've had at the fair that have resonated with you so far. Well, certainly Saturday I brought up, it was kind of reminiscent to eight years ago in 2015 when the former president was seen as kind of just a celebrity where they didn't know how far he would actually go. He brought his helicopter and flew it

over the fairgrounds while Bernie Sanders was giving a speech on the Des Moines Register political soapbox. This year, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, was giving a speech, a conversation actually, with Iowa's Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, who is somebody that everybody wants to be on stage with. She's hosting these, what she's called, fair side chats. He was there speaking. There were some liberal protesters that were there that were blowing whistles and banging on cowbells that had to be silenced at one point.

Governor Reynolds said something about, you know, we want to hear from all the candidates. Let's please be respectful. They just kept going on. Two of them were removed by the state troopers. And then he went over to flip pork burgers later with Governor Reynolds and Senator Joni Ernst at the pork tent, which is also kind of one of these must-do things for candidates when they're here. And he was actually scheduled to be there at noon.

And they wound up moving it up because the former president was coming in on that same day and he was going to be at the pork tent at noon. So DeSantis had to go early. And so you were just having these throngs of people trying to get a look at the former president while you had the governor of Florida just, you know, walk in the concourse with his wife and his three kids. Certainly there were people interested in seeing him there, but not like the way they were to see the former president, who also brought a number of U.S. House members from Florida who have endorsed him. So another way of kind of trying to troll the governor of Florida. Don, give or take, how many Iowa Fairs do you think you've been to?

Ballpark. I tend to come every four years for election cycles, and I think I've been coming since 2000. The vibe this time around is so different than any previous trip I've ever taken to the Iowa State Fair. I like to point to a moment in 2011 when Mitt Romney was on his way to become the Republican nominee in 2012. So the Iowa caucuses are always in January or February. This coming cycle, they're on January 15th. So the fair is like five months before the caucuses. So that also adds a level of urgency to the campaigns and to what happens here. But Romney, not yet the nominee, was speaking at that soapbox where candidates speak. And the key and the thing about the soapbox is that the candidate has no control over who is in the audience.

If somebody is determined to be there and they stake out a seat two or three or four hours early, and believe me, they do giving him a hard time about his business background and corporate taxes and corporate bonuses and all that stuff and romney responded with a line that kind of haunted him the rest of the campaign he said corporations are people too my friend and it even showed up on a t-shirt you know uh. But so it was a moment where Romney got heckled. Romney had a difficult moment. It was an important moment in the campaign. And I was covering it. But I will tell you that as soon as Romney got off the stage, I walked over to the place where they're selling all of the deep fried food.

And the food of the year that year was a deep fried stick of butter. And I am going to admit to our podcast audience that I ordered one and ate one. And it was awful. You're trying to get canceled in Iowa, Doug? Yeah, exactly. But my story that day had Mitt Romney on the soapbox. It had Mitt Romney making this kind of gaffe. And then, like, the next scene, there's me on the radio eating a stick of deep-fried butter.

And it was kind of, like, all appropriate and all part of the scene at the fair. And I can tell you, to juxtapose such things this year would be utterly inappropriate, utterly tone deaf, given. Yeah. And the one question that I saw on the Des Moines Register political soapbox, certainly some folks aren't even doing it. Ron DeSantis is skipping it. Senator Tim Scott's skipping the soapbox this year. But former Vice President Mike Pence was on the stage, and he was asked a question about January 6th and why he did what he did. And he said what he has commonly been saying about it. I stood by the Constitution and defended what he did on January 6th. But that is a much different tone that's coming from the soapbox. At least that moment with Pence, it is still a real moment and an unscripted moment and one that the candidate can't completely control. So those

things are still good, but those moments are far fewer than they once were at this place. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back. Hey there, I'm Casey Murrell, a producer on the NPR Politics Podcast with a quick We'll talk more about getting names and numbers right. What was a goat doing at the rodeo in the first place? Apparently, like, goats are a pretty, like, standard part of a rodeo event. All that and more in our latest bonus episode for NPR Politics Plus listeners, whose support helps make this show possible. Subscribe now. Plus.npr.org slash politics. And we're back. And Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who you mentioned, Clay, has been interviewing these candidates.

What kind of role is she playing in the state in terms of the presidential politics? And I'm thinking about her because I know that Donald Trump least, seems to have a fraught relationship with her because she has not gone all in on his candidacy. There's a long history of the person in charge of the state saying we want candidates to come early and often to Iowa, visit all of the counties of the state, which if you're paying attention to politics, you already know that that's 99 counties. I talked to the governor ahead of the Iowa State Fair to kind of talk to her about the frustration that the former president has expressed for her remaining neutral at this juncture. And here's what she said to me. If you pick a side, especially early on, you know, maybe down the road, things could be different. But early on, when candidates, when I'm inviting them here and asking them to go to all 99 counties, get out in the state, talk to Iowans, they're not going to do that if they feel like, you know, they don't have a fair shot at it. And so Governor Reynolds is actually hosting these, what she's dubbed fair side chats, where she is interviewing the candidates in front of a crowd. And I went to DeSantis's,

I saw Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador, give a speech as well. And there are interviews in format, but a lot of it is them introducing themselves to people who might not know who they are. The Iowa State Fair is historically a bipartisan affair, especially when there's an open field for the presidency. But the Democratic caucus meltdown back in 2020, and then also the Democratic Party rewriting their election calendar to end Iowa's first in the nation status, has changed that party's relationship with the state. Clay, I wonder how locals in Iowa feel about this change, especially as we get closer and closer to the caucus. There's still a lot of people within the Iowa Democratic Party who think that the way that they've rewritten the presidential preference cards that you mail in might still get them a chance early in the calendar.

I think Iowa is kind of alone in thinking that at this point. So the party is still kind of holding out hope. We did see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, two Democrats who are challenging Joe Biden, who spoke on the stump speech here. There are people in the state, Democrats who I've talked to, who think maybe it is time to just move on. But this has traditionally been a very big party building opportunity for the Iowa Democratic Party and the Republican Party of Iowa. And there is a real rift that is very evident in the way that people are talking about politics who function within the political world here. It's hard to believe, if you didn't live through it, that Barack Obama won Iowa in 2008,

that it used to be a swing state. I think it's fair to say that at least Democrats don't consider it a swing state anymore. So why bother, right? It's fascinating to look back at 2008. And I was in that ballroom when Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses. And again, the people who knew better all knew Hillary Clinton was going to win the Iowa caucuses. And when Obama won, it was in this place that literally it was the first time I ever thought, and I think the first time a lot of people thought that, oh, this guy could be president.

You know, I mean, it was, and again, it was because of Iowa. But this state feels redder than red now. A number of states have gone that way. Ohio put it in the same category. But Don, isn't there a sort of political irony worth noting here in that the Iowa caucuses have historically not been a very good predictor of who ultimately wins the Republican nomination. But it's actually been pretty good at determining the Democratic nomination and creating a pathway for a candidate like Barack Obama. And I think it says that Iowa Democrats are more representative of Democrats nationally, somewhat. I'm not saying they are absolutely representative, but they're more representative and more in line with the thinking of the national party than Iowa

Republicans have been when it comes to picking these early candidates. Jimmy Carter launched his presidential, successful presidential run by doing well in Iowa. John Kerry won here. Barack Obama won here. Biden has never done well here. So we have to throw that in. But if I go back to the winners of the Republican Iowa caucuses that I've seen, where is President Ted Cruz? Where is President Rick Santoro? So Clay, where do you see Iowa in 2024? You mentioned that you think there's two tickets out of Iowa. I would say that people that I talked to in Washington seem to think that Iowa will be hugely consequential for Republicans

in that if anybody beats Donald Trump in Iowa, it really could be a two-way race. And if Trump routes in Iowa, maybe it was his all along. So the way that I'm looking at that question right now, based on the people that I've talked to at the Iowa State Fair who are just kind of paying attention to the politics that's playing out, is you see the people who are in the Trump and MAGA clothes. They were following Mike Pence around saying you're a traitor. And there's certainly the diehards that are here. But then you'll find people who are just kind of watching. And I went up and talked with a woman, Jill Crane, who was kind of watching Mike Pence at the soapbox. She caught the end of the speech. And I went up and she was a little reluctant to talk to me. But she said she was

looking around, but she just wants a candidate who can end the divisiveness that they're seeing in the Republican Party right now. I grew up in a Republican household. I thought it was a great party, but I can't stand it right now, to be honest. So I'm kind of like, eh. Are you leaning towards a handful of candidates or are you? Not so much. Not yet. So there's a lot of people who are just still kicking the tires. There's certainly an appetite for somebody else aside from Donald Trump. And everybody's spending a lot of time here hoping that they can kind of catch those ears and be

that person. All right, let's leave it there for today. Clay Masters, as always, thank you for being on the podcast. You're welcome. Thank you. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Don Garnier, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.