Donald Trump may have the media attention, the lead in the national and early-state polls, and increasingly the air of inevitability as the Iowa caucuses approach. But one thing he doesn’t have, says a top advisor for Ted Cruz, is the ability to get enough supporters to caucus on February 1, many for the very first time.
“Senator Cruz will have met personally more people in Iowa than have seen Donald Trump at his events combined,” said Rick Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, in an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD Tuesday. That personal connection with the state’s regular GOP caucusgoers, he argues, is the key to winning Iowa’s quirky presidential nominating contest.
Tyler spoke confidently about the campaign’s position vis-à-vis Trump—”I’d much rather be in that position than his,” he said—but also played down expectations for the Hawkeye state. One campaign official suggested to TWS last week that Cruz didn’t have to come in first in Iowa, and Tyler concurred.
“I want to dispense with the idea that he was going to win,” Tyler said, pointing to a long list of political opponents, from establishment-aligned Iowa governor Terry Branstad to Trump himself, who has gone hard after Cruz over his birth to an American mother in Canada and for being “nasty” and unpopular on Capitol Hill.
Tyler argued Cruz is best positioned among the other Republican candidates for a long-term primary fight against Trump. “It would be tough to sustain losses in the early states, but we’re the only campaign that is built to last,” he said. “We will be down to a two-person race by South Carolina.”
But before South Carolina and New Hampshire is Iowa. Even if the Cruz campaign isn’t thumping their chests about winning, Tyler does say Trump’s good poll numbers don’t predict who will come out to vote.
“If you want to win the people who have never voted before, Donald Trump wins that,” Tyler said. “Our people are far more likely to show up.” Tyler emphasized that winning over regular caucusgoers is the most important factor in what is essentially a statewide straw poll. The Cruz campaign, he says, has a strong hold on these reliable caucusgoers. Trump’s strategy, on the other hand, will rely on getting a healthy chunk of first-time Republican caucus participants.
“If it were true that Donald Trump is attracting new voters to the Republican Party who have not caucused before, the first place you would expect them to show up is on Republican party registration,” said Tyler.
That, he added, hasn’t happened. The number of active voters registered as Republicans has actually dropped in Iowa by 11,000 since January 2015 (shortly after a competitive Senate race in 2014). The uptick has been minimal in the months leading up to next week’s caucuses, with just over 2,600 new Republican registrations between September and the beginning of January. In order to participate in a caucus, an Iowan must be registered to vote as a Republican. Voters can do that on caucus night, but Tyler says the trends aren’t good for the type of new-voter wave Trump would need.
There’s a case-study for this: the 2008 Democratic caucuses. That year, the state party reported nearly 230,000 participants, a record for Iowa. The high turnout has been considered a key part of Barack Obama’s victory there, with the Obama campaign’s focus on turning out first-time voters or caucusgoers. In the three months leading up to December 2008, more than 8,000 new Democratic voters were registered—better than this year for the GOP, but not that much better. But in the final days before the caucuses, which occurred on January 3, another 58,000 (you read that correctly) registered as Democrats.
Trump is counting on a similar phenomenon occurring this time around. His campaign has been educating first-timers on how and where to caucus on YouTube. And Trump’s decision not to participate in Thursday’s Fox News debate in Des Moines, just four days before the caucuses, will be covered endlessly by cable news. That could generate excitement and rally the Trump troops to come out on Caucus Night. In 2012, more than 121,000 Republicans caucused, a new record for the Iowa GOP. One Republican source who is familiar with the caucus suggested to TWS that if turnout hits 140,000 next week, that’s a good sign Trump has turned out enough new caucusgoers to claim victory.
The Cruz campaign says that relying on would-be first-timers won’t be enough for the Donald. “What they have is hope,” Tyler said. “But we actually have names and numbers and addresses, and we’re getting those people to turn out.”
