Iowa is cattle country, and that applies to presidential candidates as well.
With Democrats having pulled the Hawkeye State from its early voting rotation, Republican presidential candidates are flooding in ahead of the party’s early February 2024 caucuses with the goal of emerging as the GOP nominee and the right to challenge President Joe Biden in November 2024.
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In a crowded GOP field, multicandidate events are becoming the norm. One of the more prominent political “cattle calls” is the Republican Party of Iowa’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner fundraiser. It’s set for Friday, July 28, at the Iowa Events Center, 730 3rd St., in the state capital of Des Moines. Doors open at 5 p.m CDT.
Former President Donald Trump is speaking at the Lincoln Dinner. He’s trying to become the first ex-president to reclaim the White House since Grover Cleveland in 1893.
But Trump hardly has the GOP field to himself, nor the Lincoln Dinner. Trump’s vice president during his 2017-21 administration, Mike Pence, also is set to speak. So are Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (also South Carolina governor from 2011-17), ex-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and radio talk show host Larry Elder.
The event is a party fundraiser. Top contributions can reach $5,000, down to $150 for an individual ticket.
GOP 2024 campaigns run through Nunn
Iowa’s congressional delegation is all Republican for the first time since the 1950s. This makes both GOP senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, sought-after figures for GOP presidential hopefuls seeking support. Same for Iowa’s four House members.
Rep. Randy Feenstra has appeared with several 2024 GOP candidates, though he hasn’t endorsed anyone. Now, freshman GOP Rep. Zach Nunn is getting into the game. Nunn represents the Des Moines and southwestern Iowa 3rd Congressional District. And on Saturday, July 15, he’s hosting “Operation Top Nunn — A Salute to the Troops” from 1-3 p.m. CDT at the Ankeny Airport, 3700 SE Convenience Blvd., in Ankeny in Polk County, north of Des Moines.
DeSantis is Nunn’s “special guest” at the fundraiser, along with Ernst. “Sponsorships” range from $250 to $6,600. But tickets are only $24 a pop, making the event largely accessible to the politically interested.
“I am thrilled to announce that fellow veterans @RonDeSantis and @joniernst will be special guests at the first-ever Operation Top Nunn: Salute to the Troops event,” Nunn tweeted recently on his congressional campaign account.
Ernst, elected to the Senate in 2014, served in the Iowa Army National Guard from 1993 to 2015, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. During the Iraq War, she served as the commanding officer of the 1168th Transportation Company in Kuwait and later commanded the 185th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion at Camp Dodge, the Iowa National Guard’s largest battalion.
DeSantis, considered a leading rival to Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, joined the Navy in 2004 and was promoted to lieutenant before serving as a legal adviser to SEAL Team One. He was stationed at Joint Task Force Guantanamo in 2006 and was deployed to Iraq in 2007. DeSantis was honorably discharged from active military duty in 2010. He went on to win a northern coastal Florida House seat in 2012 and then the Sunshine State’s governorship in 2018.
Nunn, meanwhile, was a member of the Air Force and later the Iowa Air National Guard.
Biden ramps up fundraising efforts
On the Democratic side, Biden, about 16 months out from the general election, is focusing more on fundraising than boisterous political events. Biden faces only token Democratic primary challenges from self-help guru Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son and namesake of the slain attorney general and senator from New York and nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy.
Biden on June 28 will head to Chicago for a fundraiser hosted by billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) and his wife, M.K. Though Illinois is safely Democratic for the general election, Biden’s trip comes two days before June 30, the end of the second fundraising quarter.
In May, the reelection campaign of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris named Pritzker as one of 50 members of its National Advisory Board who, the campaign said, “will take a leadership role in helping deliver President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris’ message and engage voters across the country.”
Outsider candidate plays insider game, too
Vivek Ramaswamy has premised his 2024 Republican presidential campaign on his outsider status. The 37-year-old multimillionaire entrepreneur has never held public office, which he says would bring fresh thinking to the federal government. But Ramaswamy, who became a cable television fixture with his “anti-woke” invective, isn’t forsaking the GOP political establishment entirely.
On Thursday, June 22, at 2 p.m., Ramaswamy is holding a meet-and-greet at the Capitol Hill Club. That’s deep into “swamp” territory, as Trump would say. The restaurant and lounge is in a building connected to the Republican National Committee and other GOP political offices. Republican House members frequent the Capitol Hill Club to make fundraising calls or hold in-person events to scare up campaign cash.
To be sure, Ramaswamy’s campaign schedule mostly consists of meeting would-be GOP voters in key early states. The alum of Harvard College and Yale Law School is spending the week prior in Iowa, meeting voters at local GOP events and holding town halls, among other plans.
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And Ramaswamy is taking pains to avoid appearing as too much of a Beltway insider. On June 11, he tweeted a photo with his two young children in front of the Capitol, not for sightseeing but to express disdain over the federal government’s role in society.
“Just took my two sons to the U.S. Capitol, the place where we *used to* pass laws. Felt more like we were visiting a museum. We skipped the drab buildings of the federal agencies that actually enact laws today. The relative beauty of the buildings creates an odd optical illusion,” Ramaswamy wrote.
