WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — “Thank youuuuuu!” Ron DeSantis thundered into the microphone, producing a harsh static feedback. “Are you ready to make some history on Monday night?”
The Florida governor asked this question of his supporters on Saturday as a blizzard whipped outside the West Des Moines headquarters of Never Back Down, the super PAC responsible for organizing much of his ground game here over the past nine months.
“They can throw a blizzard at us, and we are gonna fight! They can throw a windchill at us, and we are gonna fight! They can throw media narratives at us, and we are gonna fight! They can throw fake polls at us, and we are gonna fight!” the Floridian shouted at the crowd, their applause not quite matching his screeching decibel.
DeSantis did make history in Monday’s caucuses, but not for the reasons he or his allies had envisioned at the onset of this race for the Republican nomination.
In early 2023, the pugnacious Florida governor was seen as the next coming of Donald Trump — a Republican who shares the former president’s increasingly authoritarian vision for the country but not his 91 criminal charges.
But that promise for DeSantis diminished Monday with a distant second-place finish in the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, where he came in well behind Trump and just ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, according to unofficial projections. And though candidates don’t necessarily need to win the caucuses to become their party’s eventual nominee (see: Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, for starters), it’s hard to imagine how this gets any better for DeSantis as more votes are cast in the coming weeks. Haley is poised for a strong second-place finish next week in New Hampshire, where DeSantis is polling in single digits.
It was never supposed to be like this for DeSantis, not here at least. His operation has dumped more than $150 million into this primary (much of it in Iowa), knocked on thousands of doors and scored some of the most coveted endorsements from Iowa leaders. He visited all 99 Iowa counties, flipped a pork burger at the Iowa State Fair in the 100-degree heat and trudged around in a snowstorm in the minus-10 cold. He had what one Iowa operative called a “gold standard” operation here, checking all the boxes and then some. So why couldn’t he win?
“It’s probably the question of the campaign,” said David Kochel, Iowa’s go-to GOP consultant on all things caucus (Kochel has been quoted on the race nearly as much as, if not more than, the candidates themselves). “He started with good numbers and high hopes. He’s a very good fit for the Iowa caucuses. His record looks almost exactly like [Iowa Gov.] Kim Reynolds, who is wildly popular here among Republicans. But I think it’s Trump attacking him for the first six months of the campaign and almost no response out of DeSantis, that’s part of it. I think his voters are more likely to be with Trump, and once the indictments started coming down, you had the rally-round-the flag effect.”
“The problem is Donald Trump’s been organizing here for eight years,” said Jimmy Centers, another GOP operative, “and he is, of course, the former president of the United States and the two-time Republican nominee, and with that comes all sorts of institutional organizational advantages.”
A college student from Texas, one of the many political tourists who flock to Iowa during the caucuses, had this to say after seeing Trump for the first time in Indianola, his only in-person event last weekend: “The only other person who can entertain like that is Taylor Swift.”
Interviews with nearly two dozen voters and insiders over several days here reveal this same thinking regarding the inescapable force of Trump (who did not campaign here as much as DeSantis or Haley), as well as the general sense that DeSantis doesn’t possess whatever nebulous quality — charisma? earnestness? likability? an easy smile? a sense that he’s actually enjoying this? — that makes governors, former vice presidents and reality TV stars presidential nominees.
“He’s probably not the most charming, charismatic motivator, but I don’t care. Once he gets in the White House, he’ll be more of a dog fighter. I’d rather have somebody like that than somebody who’s fluffy,” said Carrie Fitzpatrick, a 64-year-old home health care worker who planned to caucus for DeSantis. Fitzpatrick traveled Sunday to the Chrome Horse Saloon in Cedar Rapids, not far from her home, to see DeSantis in a chilly dining hall where people stayed bundled up under several layers.
DeSantis, Haley, Trump and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy all had full campaign schedules over the weekend, despite advisories on Iowa’s I-80 warning of dangerous travel conditions in eastern Iowa and jackknifed semis littering the shoulder and median.
Rachael Frigo, a 46-year-old paralegal from Aurora, Illinois, who volunteered as an Iowa precinct captain for Haley’s campaign, used Gen Z slang to describe DeSantis’ lack of swagger at a Haley campaign stop in Davenport. “Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that it factor. He doesn’t have that overall charisma or, as the kids are saying nowadays,” Frigo said, turning to her 12-year-old son, “he doesn’t have the rizz for it. Did I use that right?
“And I was so excited for his Twitter launch,” she went on. “I thought, this is going to be groundbreaking. This is going to be amazing. What the hell?”
Frigo said she’s a former Democrat who volunteered for Barack Obama and voted for Biden (“the poor guy needs to retire,” she said). And though she can’t vote in the caucuses because she’s not a registered Iowa voter, she’s representative of the segment of GOP voters who seem to have powered her momentum — half of her support in a final poll of likely caucus-goers came from independents and Democrats. “I consider myself to be an independent more than anything else,” Frigo told HuffPost, “but the Democrat party has really just gone too far for me.”
James Mercer, also at the Davenport event, said he was caucusing for Haley, adding that DeSantis just wasn’t able to connect with Iowa voters.
“I think he’s a great man who has been a good governor in Florida. But he doesn’t seem to be resonating, or the polls don’t seem to reflect that. And I don’t know why. What is the magic for people who have that?” said Mercer, a 76-year-old who works in car sales. “Obviously, Nikki is an attractive person, she speaks well, she enunciates well, she makes her point clearly.”
Virginia Lors, a retired Iowan who caused for Haley in West Des Moines, said DeSantis was “faltering” in the race’s final stretch. “Especially in the last debate, he just wasn’t very strong.”
DeSantis on Monday seemed to be in what one reporter observed as the final stage of losing an election to Trump — attacking him with a candor that many wish he had shown at any point prior to the first votes being cast.
“You could be the lousiest Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring, he likes you,” DeSantis, who shunned mainstream media throughout much of his campaign, told an ABC News reporter Monday. “You could be the best Republican in America, if you don’t kiss that ring, then he’ll trash you.”
DeSantis spoke for less than five minutes at a packed ballroom at the Sheraton West Des Moines Hotel on Monday night, spinning his loss into a victory and altogether ignoring the declared winner of the caucuses.
“You helped us get a ticket punched out of the Hawkeye State,” he told supporters. “We have a lot of work to do.”