On New Year’s Eve, DeSantis urges crowd to defy odds and help him ‘win the Iowa caucuses’

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa. Underscoring how much Iowa means to Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor was unwilling to suspend his campaign there even in the final hours of 2023.

At a New Year’s Eve event in the ballroom of the Sheraton hotel in West Des Moines, jeans and cowboy boots outnumbered tuxedos and cocktail dresses, and Miller Lite seemed more popular than champagne.

But the modesty of the event, where roughly 200 people attended the final campaign event of Iowa’s busy year, belies its importance to the host, who has staked the future of his Republican presidential bid on Iowa’s first caucuses alone. two weeks away.

“Are you ready to work hard over the next two weeks and win the Iowa caucuses?” DeSantis asked his supporters who came to the suburban hotel on Sunday night.

As Donald Trump prepares to return this week for a series of rallies, DeSantis didn’t leave Iowa alone during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. He campaigned in the suburbs of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, revisiting places he had gone in 2023 as part of his campaign to touch all 99 Iowa counties as a gesture of commitment to the early nominating contests. .

But Trump has a big lead in the Iowa polls, as well as a sophisticated campaign organization in the state, threatening to deny DeSantis the victory he needs to justify his claim to be the leading alternative to the former president.

Appearing Sunday night with his wife, Casey, and young children, DeSantis urged his audience to defy the odds. “I think we have an opportunity to make a statement that in this country we are the ones who ultimately decide these things,” he said. “Because I think you have a lot of media, they don’t even think you matter.”

DeSantis was not alone in Iowa between Christmas and New Year’s, a period typically free of politics. The earlier-than-usual spot on the Jan. 15 election calendar drew former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to stops in eastern Iowa on Friday and Saturday as she competes with DeSantis as an alternative to Trump.

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy also stormed the state, trying to remain part of the conversation despite having cut his advertising spend. Ramaswamy held more than two dozen events in Iowa last week and over the weekend.

No one has more at stake in Iowa than DeSantis, who reorganized a campaign that was initially considered national in scope after summer staff shakeups prompted by overspending and internal disagreements. He took the stage Sunday night in West Des Moines with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical Christian leader Bob Vander Plaats, both of whom have risked his own influence by endorsing DeSantis.

DeSantis and his supporters asked audiences Sunday to ignore polls that show him far behind Trump.

“Everywhere I go, the polls don’t match reality,” Vander Plaats told the crowd. “Going to northwest Iowa, a lot of Trump country, everyone tells me the same thing. They like what he did, but it is time to turn the page.”

DeSantis has a relentless schedule in Iowa ahead of him starting early this week. Trump, who has drawn hundreds, even thousands, from more to fewer events, has been planning his own campaign over the past two weeks, including in deeply conservative northwest Iowa.