Reporters’ Roundtable

Kay Henderson

We're serving up a heaping helping of presidential politics this Thanksgiving week. Our political reporters take a short break from the campaign trail for a roundtable discussion on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, November 24th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

Kay Henderson

If you are counting down the days to the Iowa caucuses, we have a group of people at this table who are doing the exact same thing. The January 15th caucuses are now less than two months away. And we are going to be talking about what's happening on the caucus campaign trail with a group of Iowa reporters. Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter at The Des Moines Register. Clay Masters is the Morning Edition host and lead political reporter for Iowa Public Radio. Stephen Gruber-Miller is part of the politics team at the Des Moines Register. And Erin Murphy is the Des Moines bureau chief for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. Brianne, let's start with you. Your newspaper does this thing called an Iowa Poll, and the most recent one gave a snapshot of the race in late October. That seems to be kind of where the race still is at this point in November.

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Yeah, it's always really nice when you're out as a reporter kind of doing your doing your interviews, kind of gathering some anecdotal evidence, and then to have data that really backs up what we're seeing on the ground. And this poll really did that. It showed Donald Trump ahead with 43% and it showed Nikki Haley surging. She gained about ten points since the last time we polled coming into to a tied second place with Ron DeSantis at 16%. DeSantis has faltered just a little bit. 3% down from the last time we polled and everyone else really in single digits. Tim Scott, before he dropped out, was at 7%. Vivek Ramaswamy was at 4%, tied with Chris Christie, who has not set foot in Iowa this caucus cycle at 4%, and then a couple of stragglers down in the very low single digits.

 

Kay Henderson

So is that what you all are seeing on the trail?

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah, I think that matches up that it seems to be that Iowa’s doing its job and whittling the field. But I also think that there's time for something to happen. And I was actually going to throw this back to Brianne because I keep saying to people there's still time for something to happen. These candidates have been stuck in the teens. There's still time, as little time as there is left you describe. There's still time for a surge to happen in that race to become tighter, more interesting. And Brianne I think you looked into that, right, in recent Iowa polls.

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Right. I looked into some of our past Iowa Poll data that over the last three competitive GOP cycles and it showed that the eventual winner of the Republican caucuses surged by an average of 20 points from our October Iowa polling to their eventual finish on caucus day.

 

Kay Henderson

Huckabee. Santorum. Cruz.

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Exactly. And so 20 points, you know, it feels like this race has been holding very steady. But in the past, we've seen an enormous amount of movement in these final two months because that's when people are really tuning in. It's when people are starting to make their decisions and go from I'm considering three or four people to one or two people, and then ultimately on caucus day, but you know, a 20 point surge for Haley and DeSantis at this point still would not put them ahead of Donald Trump. If Donald Trump stays at 43%, they would end up being about seven points behind him on caucus day, which, you know, we've talked about on the show, is a second place showing strong enough for these candidates to have some momentum into New Hampshire. But that would be a lot of movement for either of them.

 

Kay Henderson

One person who is not showing up on the Iowa campaign trail anymore is Mike Pence. Stephen, you covered the Pence campaign closely. What can you tell us about its demise?

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, he was really trying sort of an old school like scrappy campaign, scrappy startup. He had some caucus veterans on his staff and, you know, he would go places, you know, sometimes he would go places where there was already a crowd built in. So like a county party fundraiser. I went to the Atlantic Perry High School football game with him, where he did the coin toss. So some things like that where he could get some like earned media attention. So local paper, a local TV station. But it wasn't really breaking through. He didn't really have the fundraising that some of his rivals had. And ultimately, you know, he decided to drop out. But one of the things that I was thinking when you were discussing earlier, part of it, is that the debate stage is really making it do or die for some of these candidates. And Pence was struggling to get enough donors to get onto the third debate stage. And so if he's spending all of his time fundraising and all of his time trying to get these donors, it makes it really hard. Now, I think he also had some unique challenges on top of that. Disliked by many Donald Trump supporters for not being loyal enough to Donald Trump. Perhaps seen as too close to Donald Trump by the other everyone else crew in the Republican Party. So he was sort of in a lose lose position. But I think that, you know, the debate stage made that crunch even harder.

 

Kay Henderson

Clay, we also are missing Tim Scott on the campaign trail these days after he ended his campaign.

 

Clay Masters

Yeah, the South Carolina US senator got in back in May, and I went out and covered him in Sioux City when he was making that announcement. It was also at the time that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was having that kind of botched announcement on Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it these days. Senator Scott had a very much more hopeful message. That's what a lot of people said to me they liked about him, is that he was talking about hope for the country. It wasn't the kind of doom and gloom that you hear from a Donald Trump speech or even from the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. And so, again, Scott really struggled to take off. And we talk about the momentum that these different candidates get or there's a surge in the polls. Well, surging in the polls isn't like it used to be, because many of these candidates that will have some kind of a rise, we're still talking very, very low. And the people that were thinking about Tim Scott, that were thinking about Mike Pence, there weren't a whole lot of people that were doing that. But when you get closer to caucus day, caucus night, you do start to see some kind of a shift. And what's different this time around is that the field is just so much smaller than it's been. It's gotten smaller. And then you have Donald Trump, the figure that he is that is such a dominant force within the Republican Party today.

 

Erin Murphy

Tim Scott was, I'm sorry. He was one of those interesting candidates that for the longest time he was on everybody's list, it felt like. And Brianne talked about, you talk to people and they have five or six people. Everybody had Tim Scott, but hardly anybody had him as their first choice. That was where he struggled to break free from.

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

And we were talking about the poll. Brianne, you looked at, you know, Scott's second choice poll numbers after he dropped out and they split pretty evenly between Trump, DeSantis and Haley. And it didn't doesn't really make a meaningful difference in terms of where the support goes.

 

Kay Henderson

Let's turn to Donald Trump. Erin, what's up with his durable support? I mean, durable. We had a couple of political scientists on this program last week from Grinnell College and from Iowa State University who literally used the word durable.

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah, when you graph the polls results that we've seen so far this year, Donald Trump is a straight line right across the top, right in those in Iowa in the mid to upper forties roughly. And it's been unwavering. And that speaks to again referring to what we see on the ground. You know people who are Trump supporters are pretty much Trump supporters. And look, he you know, he's obviously part of it at this point in time is he's been around forever. People aren't going out to see and try and figure out what opinion they have of Donald Trump, whether or not they like him. You know, that they know who Donald Trump is and they either support him or don't and are looking for another candidate. So that's part of that reason that he's been so steady.

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

And to put some of that into perspective, again, going back to our polling. We asked likely Republican caucus goers how enthusiastic they were about their choice. And overall, across every respondent, 30% said that they were extremely enthusiastic about their first choice for president. It's 47% among Donald Trump supporters, so well above the average there. If you look at, you know, DeSantis supporters, people who name him as their first choice for president, it's 25% and just 19% for Haley. So it kind of charts that, you know exactly that phenomenon you're talking about, that people who are with Donald Trump are with Donald Trump, and they're very excited about it.

 

Kay Henderson

The other thing about this race is that, you know, you have a former president who is not appearing on the same stage with the people who are challenging him for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination. Clay, what impact would it have if there would ever come a point when that would happen?

 

Clay Masters

Well, backing up here and thinking about the way that the last Republican cycle worked eight years ago. Remember, everybody was trying to get on that debate stage so they could be the alternative to Trump, so they could stand on that stage. Trump was very regular to remind that he was increasing the ratings for Republican primary presidential debates. And this time they're trying to get on a debate stage that he's not even a part of. And so it creates this really interesting dynamic where you really have to wonder what kind of an impact those debates are even going to have on the race as a whole. The other thing, too, is that Donald Trump also has a celebrity factor to him. He's a former president. People have known him. Many people grew up watching him on The Apprentice. I've talked to people that just show up to see him and don't even understand that, oh, the caucus is something that I need to show up for on a Monday night. So there's also the celebrity factor that's playing into him. And again, it goes back to whether or not a second place finish is enough to make any kind of a dent on his support in the state.

 

Kay Henderson

We're about halfway through our discussion, and we may spend the rest of the time talking about this. But Erin, Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis earlier this month.

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah, and for people who haven't been following this forever, that's there's some historical context to that. It's the first time since Terry Branstad in 1995, the first time that a sitting Iowa governor endorsed a presidential candidate before the caucuses. So a little bit of a break from tradition there. No immediate bump in the polls that we've seen. And when you talk to political science experts, they'll tell you the vast majority of endorsements don't move the needle. So that bears noting. But the one thing I will add to that as a sort of a caveat and an eye towards the future is, to me, it's not just and it still may not matter, but I am curious to watch. It's not just the endorsement itself. Kim Reynolds is now going around the state and campaigning with and for Ron DeSantis. That could have an impact that could see that swaying some Iowa Republicans because she's a very popular figure within the Iowa Republican Party. So it's not necessarily an endorsement. It's the work that she does in the next six, seven weeks or whatever we're at now that could move the needle.

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

And they're already out with an ad with her featured. So they're going to use her as much as they can between now and then.

 

Kay Henderson

Well, and Kim Reynolds is a person who is, you know, most recently running a campaign in Iowa. So she knows what the lay of the land here is, Brianne.

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Right. That's exactly right. She has been all across the state. She knows very, very well from just having come off this this recent campaign, where to be, what the activists are, what the vibe is in each part of the state. And I think to, you know, it sometimes misses the mark when people say, is this endorsement going to swing people immediately for Ron DeSantis. I think what an endorsement can do, especially from someone as high profile as her, is give cover to other people to get into the race. To start possibly a domino effect of endorsements. If we see big you know, there are still several outstanding big endorsement in this race. Bob Vander Plaats has said that he's likely to endorse before Christmas. Randy Feenstra has said that he intends to endorse in this race. If there is a palpable coalescing around Ron DeSantis versus, say, Nikki Haley as the non-Trump candidate, then I think that that creates some actual movement in this race and could, you know, again, could start getting people off the sidelines and around a single Donald Trump alternative.

 

Erin Murphy

By the way, so just to put a pin on that, the conspiracy theorists might say, look at the timing of that Reynolds endorsement, which came around the same time as Nikki Haley's surge in those polls and say that that might have been why that happened at that time. If Ron DeSantis is going to try to be the the alternative, the Trump alternative and try and fend off a challenger, that might have been why Governor Reynolds endorsed when she did.

 

Kay Henderson

Well, Clay, the other reason she may have endorsed is because Donald Trump gave her a lot of flak for not endorsing.

 

Clay Masters

That's right. Ever since the summer, he was frustrated, very vocally frustrated that Governor Reynolds hadn't endorsed him. And then when she did endorse the Florida governor, he was quick to call her disloyal, took credit for her win in 2018, which he has regularly done with Ron DeSantis as well, calling both of them just disloyal. He was in Fort Dodge recently where he gave a commit to caucus campaign speech, and he didn't really say…he didn't say anything about the governor. He made kind of an offhand comment that made it kind of sound like he was saying that she wasn't loyal, just repeating.

 

Kay Henderson

But didn't say her name.

 

Clay Masters

Didn't say her name, but he did say something many of us have said, like if he wins well enough on the Iowa caucus night, that that maybe could be enough to get other people to drop out so they could focus on the general election.

 

Kay Henderson

Loyalty is a big deal to Donald Trump he has indicated on the campaign trail. He also sort of dinged a couple of U.S. senators from Iowa, Brianne.

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

That's right. He also talked about, you know, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and taking credit for their wins in Iowa as well. And so those are two people who have said that they don't plan to endorse in this race, and they've held very true to that so far. I don't have any indication that we're expecting an endorsement from them. But again, if Donald Trump starts making enemies of people, it perhaps, you know, creates an incentive to get off the sideline, if you were opposed to him.

 

Kay Henderson

One of the interesting points in the Register Iowa poll that I saw was that nearly 80% of people who said they were likely caucus goers indicated that a candidate's stand on abortion is either important or very important to their decision of who to support in the caucuses. So, Erin, how is this playing out on the campaign trail? It seems like DeSantis is trying to tap into that.

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. Well, and what's interesting about this is there is a divide and in how the different candidates are talking about this policy, which is fascinating for me as an observer, because when you get to an issue that's such a central part of a of one political party or the other, usually you get very similar policy views from the field. So to have these differences is and it's going to be fascinating to see how voters respond to this. Donald Trump talked about the beautiful compromise that he's going to come up with that everybody on both political parties is going to love. Ron DeSantis, you mentioned, has leaned into supporting what Governor Reynolds and Iowa Republicans did here with the law that would prohibit abortions once a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected. That's going through the courts right now. He did something very similar in Florida. Nikki Haley has talked about being pro-life, but also wanting to have, you know, she calls it an adult conversation and dealing with the political realities in Washington and passing something at the federal level. So you actually have space between the way these candidates are talking about this issue. And it's fascinating. It's going to be fascinating to see if that lends to what to Iowa Republicans gravitating towards one of them because of that.

 

Kay Henderson

Can anyone actually pinpoint why the Haley surge is happening? Brianne?

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

I think I would put a lot of it on the debates, honestly. You know, it has been…some of these debates have been crowded. They have featured a lot of people talking over each other, a lot of distractions. And I think Haley pretty consistently has been able to deliver strong performances. Again, so much of politics in presidential politics especially is about beating expectations. And I don't think there was a super high expectation for her. People were expecting a lot of Ron DeSantis. And then when Vivek had a strong first debate, they were expecting a lot from him in the second one. And Haley maybe got kind of lost in that mix. So I think she's exceeded the expectations for these debates. And then, you know, we published a story this morning, Stephen wrote about her ability to bring in independents and to bring in people who are not necessarily who you think of as the core base of Republican supporters in Iowa, Republican caucus goers, suburban women. So she's able to create kind of this different coalition than we're used to seeing. And so I think a lot of her positions speak to that.

 

Kay Henderson

And I should mention for our viewers that we are taping this program, to accommodate everyone's schedule, we're taping it on Tuesday morning.

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah. And to that point about the people Haley's bringing in to her events, I was at her some of her campaign stops on Friday, and I was interested in this, like, how is she? What is she seeing as far as interest from people who are maybe not your typical Republican caucus goers? And how is she making that sort of closing pitch to them that you should actually stick with me? Because the poll last month found that their support for her, there's interest in her. But like Brianne said earlier, there's a lower level of people saying I'm extremely excited or I'm ready to commit to her. So, you know, somebody asked her about this, you know, how can you beat Trump? And she went ahead and she gave an entire answer that laid out like, okay, I'm going to be on the debates. People are going to drop out when they can't make the debate stage. I'm going to do well in Iowa. People are going to drop out after that. And then New Hampshire and then in South Carolina, which is her home state, she says that's where we're going to win against Trump. And so she's got this whole like it was like a presentation. She's got like the step by step of how we're going to succeed. So we'll see if that wins people over for her. And the other thing is people just say that she seems like an adult, like she has common sense, like she's a good leader. These are all things people told me this weekend. And they like her foreign policy experience. And that has been maybe another factor in her rise. There's been so much attention on foreign policy with Israel, with Ukraine, that people are taking a look at her because of that.

 

Kay Henderson

Clay, you mentioned the Donald Trump event in Fort Dodge last Saturday, a commit a caucus event. Let's talk about the potential for turnout. The political science professors who were on this program last week said their prediction is turnout will be lower than the record in 2016. Do you have any sense of sort of what's going on in terms of how these respective campaigns are planning for turnout?

 

Clay Masters

I mean, the campaigns are planning for big turnout and they'll tell you all about it. But, you know, you go to these events and they're handing out commit to caucus cards. A big thing about these events, too, is just teaching people how the caucuses work. I was at an event for Ron DeSantis in Council Bluffs, where a couple who have lived in Iowa their whole lives, never caucused before, but they were coming to see Ron DeSantis. And they said to me, well, we've just heard that it's really loud and it's kind of like frustrating to be there. And I had to explain that no, that's how the Democrats have historically done it. Republicans write it down on a secret ballot and hand it in. So there's a level of education that goes on in here. And also the Republican Party of Iowa wants this to go really well and have good turnout, because hanging over all of this is what happened to the Democrats four years ago in Iowa. And I think we're going to talk about that quickly in a moment. We all remember what happened on caucus night in 2020 when there were no results. The Associated Press, to this day, still has not named a winner. And so Republicans here in the state and the campaigns that are here, if they want things to go well for the state in 2028, there has to be really good turnout, I think, for it to continue to go forward.

 

Kay Henderson

Does anyone else see a turnout, have a turnout prediction?

 

Erin Murphy

I wouldn't be surprised that it's not as big as we've seen in recent years either. The other thing you see is this is always the case that a Donald Trump event. Half the people there aren't even from Iowa. And I think Vivek Ramaswamy is another one that Stephen kind of alluded to Nikki Haley drawing in your maybe not typical caucus goers. Vivek Ramaswamy is another one. So as big as his crowds start to get. How many of those people are just there because they're interested in him and versus are they people who are going to stick with this and show up at their local high school on a cold January night in December? So it feels this is nothing scientific. It feels like a slightly lower turnout kind of year.

 

Kay Henderson

Brianne, January 15th, the Iowa Democratic Party will also be turning out to on a cold night in gymnasiums all across the state of Iowa and having in-person caucuses. But they're also having this presidential preference card mail-in system

 

Brianne Pfannenstiel

Right. Very different than the way Democrats have done this in the past. Their casting of presidential preferences will be done entirely by mail. Democrats can already begin requesting those preference cards online. There are several ways to do that. But basically, they will they will write in their preferences. They'll mail them in, and those will be tallied in March, on Super Tuesday. But Democrats will gather in person to conduct party business on January 15th. And I imagine that turnout will be quite lower than in 2020.

 

Kay Henderson

Clay, Is there any benefit to the Iowa Democratic Party sort of playing by the rules?

 

Clay Masters

Well, I mean, there was there Liberty and Justice Celebration that happened a few weeks ago where Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania came and was the kind of hte keynote speaker. And that kind of felt like, okay, you're going to play by the rules that the Rules and Bylaws Committee has put forward. Because New Hampshire is not doing that. But Iowa is playing along. And the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, Rita Hart, has pointed out that the Rules and Bylaws Committee has said that they're going to open up this process in four years, and that's when theoretically there would be a more competitive Democratic primary. So, yeah, some positives for them. I think.

 

Kay Henderson

But we still don't know if they're going to put the names of other candidates who are Democrats like Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman who is running for president on that presidential preference card. That decision will come the next time the Iowa Democratic Party's state Central Committee meets. Now, we just have about 90 seconds left, and I regret to inform you that the legislature will convene in early January. And so we will be covering legislative business and the close down of the 2024 caucus campaign. Stephen, the governor gave us a few niblets this week about what she will be presenting to lawmakers.

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, I've got two countdown clocks in my head going. Three, if you count the time we have left on this show. So the governor has made it clear time and again that she would like to further cut Iowans’ taxes. She hasn't given details for what those plans will look like. But she's previously talked about eventually phasing out entirely the state's personal income tax. So currently there's a law on the books that will ratchet down the income tax to a 3.9% rate. She would like to do away with that entirely. So you might see Republicans trying to speed that up. The other thing she talked about this week with us was education policies. We've seen a lot of attention on education. But it sounds like Governor Reynolds wants to really look at, you know, test scores, standards. How are we helping students with disabilities, students who are learning English as a second language? So again, we didn't get details, but those were things that she indicated she wants to look at next session.

 

Kay Henderson

Well, we can talk about those details on another edition of Iowa Press, because we are done with this conversation. Thanks to you all. And happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

 

Erin Murphy

You too Kay.

 

Kay Henderson

Same to all of our viewers. Happy Thanksgiving. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, we wish you a good day.

 

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