Donald Trump earlier this month popped into a Council Bluffs Dairy Queen where, apparently confused by the product, he passed out Blizzards to customers.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
A “Women for Nikki” initiative that Haley launched in Iowa is part of the team’s grassroots program that will ultimately also become a caucusing operation, Soloveichik said.
A super PAC supporting Haley, SFA Fund, has been using texts and digital advertisements to drive turnout to Haley’s events here, and will later expand to buying up other forms of advertising to help her, according to a person involved in the effort.
The super PAC late last week began buying television ad time to run throughout August and into early September, so far roughly $1.6 million in Iowa, AdImpact shows.
Haley’s leadership team in the state includes state Rep. Austin Harris, state Sen. Chris Cournoyer, Dawn Roberts — the former Polk County GOP chair and wife of the late Steve Roberts, a longtime Iowa Republican operative and state party chair — and Emily Sukup-Schmitt, whom the campaign describes as a “millennial business leader, mother and community leader,” and whose family owns a farm manufacturing equipment company in the state.
Chris Christie: Iowa, where?
“This is probably going to be your shortest section,” joked Karl Rickett, Christie’s spokesperson.
The former New Jersey governor and chief Trump antagonist of the Republican field has made no secret about seeing New Hampshire — a state better made for a more moderate-minded Republican — as his top priority.
“We don’t have an Iowa operation and we don’t have any plans to have an Iowa operation, nor do we have any immediate plans to go there,” Rickett said, noting Christie is holding events in New Hampshire, and as of this past Friday, South Carolina.
He’s not kidding. Christie, who flipped pork chops and surveyed cows before taking the soapbox stage at the Iowa State Fair in August 2015, won’t be returning this year. He sat out the recent Family Leader summit and will do the same for this week’s Lincoln Dinner.
Kaufmann said it was a “ridiculous decision” by Christie to be “ignoring Iowa.”
But let’s be honest: Christie probably wasn’t going to win over many Iowans, anyway. He finished 10th here in 2016.
Asa Hutchinson: Asking Iowans, ‘Can you spare $1?’
Hutchinson, the mild-mannered former governor of Arkansas, has traveled more to Iowa than any of the other early states, believing voters here are most likely to connect with his own upbringing of conservative Christianity and farming in rural Arkansas.
It almost certainly won’t be enough. Hutchinson has yet to rise above 1 percent in the polls. But he is not without something of an operation.
While Taylor Mattox, Hutchinson’s Iowa state director, is the campaign’s only paid staff member in the state, a super PAC supporting Hutchinson has a door-knocking effort underway. America Strong & Free Action, which is being advised by Republican strategist Austin Barbour, the nephew of former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, intends to reach 100,000 doors in the next six weeks, Barbour said. The group began its work in Iowa a couple months ago.
Asa Hutchinson walks on stage before speaking at the Family Leadership Summit on July 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa.