The NPR Politics Podcast - Some Roads To The White House Still Go Through Iowa

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Republicans set Jan. 15, 2024, as the date for their Iowa caucuses, but candidates have already been camping out in the Hawkeye State trying to win hearts and minds. What messages are they sending, and are they resonating with the state's voters?This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, politics correspondent Susan Davis, and Iowa Public Radio lead political reporter Clay Masters.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. 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, this is Kim from Missoula, Montana, where a river does run through it. I just finished my 35-mile commute along the beautiful Blackfoot River, where I will be continuing my new job as a personal chef for a bunch of out-of-town glampers. This podcast was recorded at 2.23 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, July 11th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. I will still be making huckleberry pancakes, French toast, and steak hash. Enjoy the show. Glamping with a personal chef is my kind of camping.

That is truly glamping. That is like a step above an inflatable mattress in the back of your car. Wow. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And my fellow political nerds, it is time to get your calendars out. It is that time of year.

We have a date for the first in the nation for Republicans, Iowa caucuses, January 15th. Of course, with a little more than six months to go, candidates are already spending lots of quality time in the Hawkeye State. So we have brought in our friend Clay Masters from Iowa Public Radio to tell us what's going on. Hey, Clay. Hello. So glad to have you back. And let us start with those candidates. Who is really leaving it all on the field in Iowa? There is just a laundry list of candidates who are really starting to barnstorm the state. Things kind of got off a little slow,

if you remember, at the beginning of this year, when Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring, people were a little apprehensive about getting into the race. But we've seen a little bit of action over the 4th of July, and it's just really going to pick up when we get to this weekend and into the summer heat of July and into August with the, of course, Iowa State Fair. But, you know, Mike Pence was here over the 4th of July holiday, marching in a parade, talking with a bunch of voters in western Iowa. Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, is here as well as, of course, Donald Trump was just here. Ron DeSantis is spending a lot of time here. I will say we have not seen New Jersey Governor Chris Christie come to the state of Iowa yet, though. Clay, I'm curious about what it's like to be in the room with these candidates.

That's when you sort of get a sense of who might be catching fire with voters or who has a certain buzz about them. Are the polls a reflection of reality there? course, the former president is running again and has, you know, wonderful name identification within the party and has quite a hold over the base of voters in the Republican Party. So it's, you know, I was in a room recently in Pottawatomie County out in western Iowa where Mike Pence was talking to a small group of voters. And you're seeing these voters in Iowa do what we've become accustomed to as political reporters and what they do here and, you know, kicking the tires on these candidates. And people are still trying to make up their minds this early. You know, you said at the outset of this conversation that there has been a date set for the Republican caucuses. And so voters here are very accustomed to trying these different candidates out. But of course, when you look at the slice of support that the former president does

have, that carries a lot of weight and weight that we haven't seen before in a Republican presidential primary or any presidential primary in the past. He is also doing a thing that he has done throughout his political career, which is picking fights with people that make you scratch your head and say, why would you pick a fight with that person? And in this case, this week, he has had a lot of words on his social media platform about the governor of Iowa, who is quite popular. That's right. So Governor Kim Reynolds is the governor of Iowa, and she became the governor in 2017 when former President Trump tapped then governor of Iowa Terry Branstad to become his U.S. ambassador to China. And Reynolds was the lieutenant governor, and so she assumed that role.

And in 2018, she actually had a very close race. And I'm kind of seeing echoes of what Trump says about Ron DeSantis a lot. You know, you see Trump on the stump talk about how Ron DeSantis was nobody before I got behind him and got behind his candidacy. And he's kind of saying the same thing about Governor Reynolds here in Iowa. But Governor Reynolds was able to eke out that win when Iowa was seen a little more as a purple state. And so it was a three-point win that Reynolds had. But her midterm election in 2022, she just ran away with the vote. And so it is very peculiar, another one of those head scratchers to have former President Trump talking

about a governor who remains very popular within the state of Iowa. And she is officially unaligned, but spending lots of quality time with the DeSantis's. Is that the situation? Yeah. I mean, Governor Reynolds, from the outset, you know, early on was offering herself to any candidate who was coming to Iowa. And she was following in the footsteps of what former Governor Terry Branstad has regularly said here is he wants everybody to feel welcome. He wants them to come here early and often. Branstad is regularly said here as he wants everybody to feel welcome. He wants them to come here early and often. Branstad said many times, and Reynolds has assumed that role. And she introduced Donald Trump when he first came to Iowa on this bid for the White House that he launched back in March. She was there to introduce him.

She was also there to introduce Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who's running, and Ron DeSantis. She sat down with him and had a conversation when he first came here and was on a book tour before he had officially announced that he was running. But you see kind of a parallel between these two governors, and we're starting to see that that relationship that the two of them have, especially during the COVID era when both of them were pushing back against mask mandates and these kinds of issues within the COVID era, that he sees that closeness that the two seem to share. And you can tell that it's bothering him. It's interesting to see how the key early state governors are positioning around Trump because it does seem to be the positions Republicans have around him. You have Kim Reynolds in Iowa who's saying, I'm not going to take a

position, let the voters decide. You have Sununu in New Hampshire saying, it can't be Trump, it shouldn't be Trump, it will lose if it's Trump. And then you have McMaster in South Carolina who's already endorsed Trump and wants to campaign for him and is not taking a neutral position at all. And that's basically what you find when you talk to other key people in the Republican Party. Right. It is sort of reflective of the divide. So I do want to ask you, Iowa is known for having an influential evangelical population when it comes to the caucuses on the Republican side. And it seems that the theory that at least some of these Republican candidates have who are spending a lot of time there is, well, maybe we could win in Iowa because, you know,

maybe we could convince the evangelicals that Trump isn't actually right for them. I mean, I think that's the only path in Iowa for anybody who wants to beat Trump. You have to be able to win over some critical mass of the evangelical vote, which is very well organized, very political, and so far has largely stayed behind the former president. Trump, the most unlikely hero of the evangelical movement, still continues to have a lot of political support, if not from necessarily always the leaders or the political activists in the evangelical movement, but evangelicals themselves. You talk to evangelical voters, you go to evangelical events, they still love him.

And I think that connection between him and the voters needs to be, you know, we need to be mindful of that, even if leaders of the movement might be saying, hey, let's look for someone else. Speaking of which, Clay, this week, there is one of these big cattle calls led by an evangelical leader in Iowa who has been a kingmaker in the past and the former president isn't attending. That's right. So you're talking about Bob Vander Plaats. He's the head of the family leader. And this event that is happening on Friday is a chance for people to just hear from these candidates. And

Bob Vander Plaats had invited the former president to attend. And on Monday, close of business, found out that he would not be attending. Now, this event eight years ago, Tamara, I think you and I were both in the room when this happened. And this was when the former president said that he liked people that weren't captured and were referencing John McCain. And he talked about how, you know, he doesn't always ask forgiveness from the Lord. And he talked about the sacrament in a very unfamiliar way. Let's put it that way. And so that was kind of a put off for many people that were in the room. This was a much different climate eight years ago. And then Bob Vanderplotts endorsed Ted Cruz ahead candidate that wins the Iowa caucuses, but then eventually is not the nominee. And Bob Vander Plaats would tell you, well, our job is not to pick the nominee in Iowa.

It is to winnow the field, which we have heard campaigning like a frontrunner, if you're being treated like a frontrunner, losing Iowa would be a very dynamic shift in what this race has looked like so far. A DeSantis victory. I mean, he seems to be the only one that has any real momentum right now, but things could change. We're a far way out. Iowa could change the entire narrative of the race. If Trump walks away with it, I think it would cement a frontrunner status. If anybody else wins Iowa, it's like, boom, we're off to New Hampshire. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more on Iowa and how its politics are shaping the presidential race. And we're back. And Clay, there is some statewide political news in Iowa that you are reporting on, a special legislative session to try to pass an abortion ban. It's a little bit convoluted, but catch us up on this. All right. I will do this as succinctly as possible.

So it's almost exactly the same as the one that Governor Reynolds signed back in 2018 that was blocked in the courts because, in part, Roe v. Wade was still in place. And then last year, of course, there was the Dobbs decision. But also, just before that decision, the Iowa Supreme Court overturned its own previous ruling that protected abortion rights in the state. Those two rulings cleared the way for new stricter laws on abortion here. That's kind of the cliff notes. And this is happening, too, in this state that has shifted very right over the years. And it comes as a statewide poll, or the most recent statewide poll by the Des Moines Register in March found that 61% of Iowans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. So we've got this legislation that's moving through very fast in this special session. And it's motivating people to pay attention more to,

I think, some of the rights in this state that Democrats would argue are being taken away. This is a six-week ban. Are there exceptions? What does this look like? This is a six-week ban. There are exceptions in the bill for rape, incest, the life of the mother, and if there are lethal abnormalities. It is something that is motivating a lot of people to show up in opposition and in support of the legislation. There are more people that registered for the subcommittee this morning in opposition to it. And the Capitol rotunda this morning was just packed with clashing protesters. Yeah. And of course, most women don't know they're pregnant before six weeks of pregnancy. So oftentimes a six week ban is seen as a near total ban on abortion.

Clay mentioned exceptions for rape and incest. But within this law, as I've read it, it would have to be rape or incest that was reported to legal authorities within limited periods of time, which would also further restrict abortion access. This isn't a near total ban, but it's as close as you can get by still saying you have some exceptions within the law. That's absolutely true. And there are a lot of supporters and opponents of what's being discussed at the special session in the Capitol Rotunda this morning. Marie Fitch was there. I kind of went into a quiet part of the Rotunda where we talked about the special session, and she said abortion is her number one issue. Protecting life is my top priority. People say, oh, you can't her number one issue. Protecting life is my top priority. People say, oh, you can't be a one issue voter. Oh, yeah, you can. Who does she support?

Because the Republican field is actually a little confusing on where they stand on this issue. Well, she, like many Iowans, are used to saying to reporters like you and me, they're still trying to figure out who they want to support. There's still a lot of time. And I'm hearing that time and time again. And a lot of these cultural issues are the things that people are talking about, aside from inflation. So, Sue, I want to go back to the abortion issue, because it has become a real motivating factor for voters, particularly on the left, since the Dobbs decision. And recently, some Republican leaders like Ronna McDaniel of the RNC have tried to get candidates to coalesce behind a 15-week abortion ban, saying that that is more acceptable to more voters than these

six-week bans like Iowa is trying to pass or in Florida. Could Iowa going for this six-week ban then create difficulty for Republican candidates campaigning in Iowa? Because they're going to be asked whether they support this law. Sure. I mean, there is also a tremendous amount of pressure right now from evangelical leaders like Bob Vander Plaats to get these candidates to go on the record in support of things like federal abortion restrictions. To varying degrees, the candidates have been supportive or said nothing about it. And I think on this issue, it is quite fascinating to watch where Donald Trump goes and how he positions on this. In the field of Republican candidates, he's actually tried to take the most moderate position. He hasn't really embraced further

federal restrictions on it. It's hard to nail down on how he feels about abortion, even though he will often take credit for putting the justices on the court that delivered the Dobbs decision. I think Donald Trump has very good political instincts. I think he is already running like a frontrunner who is looking at a general election and doesn't want to be nailed down by an abortion position. Can that win in Iowa? Can he continue to do that and win in places like Iowa and South Carolina, where you hear that voter, this is my number one issue? They don't want wishy-washy in a Republican primary? I don't know, but that's going to be one of the great tests of how he maneuvers this race and how people try to outmaneuver him.

Yeah, I mean, Clay, you cite the 61% number of people who support abortion rights or don't want limitations. And yet, what is the number among Iowa caucus goers on the Republican side? I mean, we don't really know how things are going to shake out in those rooms across the state of Iowa on caucus night on January 15th for the Republicans. But I will say too, you know, I talked to a lot of people who are kicking the tires on these candidates. And they all say one thing as they're trying to make up their minds. They're very engaged voters. And they say they appreciate everything that Donald Trump did for them, especially the three Supreme Court justices who are on the bench that helped overturn Roe v. Wade. So, you know, Donald Trump's support is still baked into a lot of these people's decisions that they're going to be making. Well, Clay Masters, thank you so much, as always. I look forward to seeing you in Iowa next week when we are going to be riding our bikes.

Look forward to that, too. Thank you to both of you. All right. And we will be back tomorrow. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.