WASHINGTON (AP) — Ron DeSantis plans to kick off his presidential campaign in Iowa on Tuesday, the start of a busy week that will take him to 12 cities in three states as he makes his case as the former president’s most formidable Republican challenger donald trump
The Florida governor’s two-day trip to the initial caucus state, starting at a suburban Des Moines megachurch and ending at a Cedar Rapids racetrack, comes after a stumbling online announcement last week that formalized the his long-awaited entry into the growing Republican camp. It will be followed by stops in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
DeSantis’ scheduled stop for Tuesday evening at Clive’s Eternity Church is a notable nod to the evangelical Christians who wield outsized influence in Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses. His visit will give voters a chance to get to know the new candidate just as he has ramped up his criticism of Trump.
“He’s got a big hill to climb, and I think everybody would agree, to be able to convince people that he can beat Trump, that he can do as good a job, if not better, than Trump,” Bernie said. Hayes, the Linn County GOP seat where DeSantis plans to finish his Iowa jaunt on Wednesday.
DeSantis, under fire from Trump for months, went from oblique jabs to direct questioning of the former president’s conservative credentials during a round of interviews with friendly media outlets last week, particularly his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his record in criminal justice.
DeSantis called a bipartisan bill Trump signed in 2018 that reduced mandatory minimum federal prison sentences and allowed a path for non-violent offenders to reduce their prison time “a prison break bill.” As a member of Congress, DeSantis voted for an early version of the measure, but had left Congress after being elected governor and before the passage of the final, less stringent bill.
DeSantis also said Trump “handed the country over to Fauci,” referring to Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who helped lead the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 19 in the country.
DeSantis announced his campaign Wednesday night during an online conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. The audio stream crashed repeatedly, making it difficult for most users to hear the ad in real time, a stumble that campaign officials and others quickly dismissed as a minor mishap.
DeSantis was undeterred in laying out his message that conservative legislative victories this year in Florida, mostly on cultural issues such as restricting discussion of sexual orientation in schools, are the antidote for what he calls a nation increasingly controlled by the far left.
“American decline is not inevitable, it’s a choice,” DeSantis said during the failed audio stream. “And we should choose a new direction: a path that will lead to American revitalization.”
DeSantis has a head start in Iowa and other early voting states, thanks to Never Back Down, a super political action committee that uses money the group can receive in unlimited amounts from wealthy contributors to start organizing the your support Campaign finance law requires the group to do its work without coordinating with DeSantis.
Iowans should see staff and volunteers from the group working the perimeter of DeSantis’ church event in Clive on Tuesday, as well as events Wednesday in Sioux City and Council Bluffs in conservative western Iowa and the manufacturing city and Pella University in east-central Iowa before that. the final in Cedar Rapids. By making his candidacy official, DeSantis gives the group a rallying point whose events he can attend, even if he can’t coordinate with DeSantis’ official campaign group.
Membership, unproven and not without risk, aims to maximize super PAC dollars. It’s also a way to help DeSantis compete in Iowa to catch Trump, whose campaign says he has amassed thousands of supporters thanks to a more disciplined and data-driven outreach effort than Trump’s 2016 campaign. That operation placed him in second place, but with thousands of potential followers without contact with the campaign.
And Trump, in addition to his usual social media bashing of DeSantis, has tried to throw shade at her in Iowa to demonstrate his own popularity. In March, Trump headlined an event at a Davenport theater three days after DeSantis spoke to an audience and answered questions from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds during the Florida governor’s tour to promote his memoir.
Two weeks ago, Trump scheduled a rally in Des Moines to take place the same day DeSantis headlined Iowa Republican events in western and eastern Iowa as a guest of Rep. Randy Feenstra and the state GOP. However, Trump scrubbed the outdoor event on the day it was due due to threats of severe weather.
Instead, DeSantis headed to Des Moines that night for an impromptu appearance that helped his campaign create the desired impression of him dancing in the ring with the heavyweight.
Trump is scheduled to return to Iowa on Thursday, the day after DeSantis’ tour, and is expected to hold events in the Des Moines area, meet with influential conservatives and sit down for an interview that night with the Fox News Channel anchor Sean Hannity.
