Two days before Iowa's Republican caucuses, Donald Trump's team canceled in-person events due of his Florida stay. As snow blew in cold gusts outside, volunteers at his campaign's Iowa headquarters in a drab brick building northwest of Des Moines were working the phones to get out the vote for Monday's contest.
“He has sacrificed so much for our country and I need to do my part to support his efforts to save America because America is dying,” said Melissa Davis, 56, a Windsor Heights small-business owner who has spent months phone-banking, knocking on doors, and encouraging voters in her district to vote for Trump. Davis, who will captain the Trump caucus on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, feels the connection.
I couldn’t love him any more,” she added. “He’s like family.” She said her father died in 2012, “so I think he’s kind of taken the role in my life as a father figure.”
People like Davis are giving Trump's team hope that his supporters will show out, even as Iowa prepares for the coldest caucus night in history, with temperatures expected to drop below minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
While much of the attention has been on the race for second and whether former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will finish ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump's campaign hopes for a blowout to counter his rivals' momentum and secure the nomination and pivot to the general election.
Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller told reporters at a Bloomberg News event that “the enthusiasm level for the (former) president's supporters is so much higher”. He and other advisers refer to the numerous people who wait hours and often overnight for Trump rallies. The campaign expects these people to attend the caucuses, even if they haven't.
DeSantis and Haley have been organizing to use Iowa as a launch for the remainder of the campaign. Never Back Down, a pro-DeSantis super PAC, claims it had gathered 40,000 commitment-to-caucus cards, signed up 1,699 precinct captains, and knocked on over 921,000 doors in Iowa.
Drew Klein, AFP Action senior adviser, was one. He drove a black GMC Sierra truck through snowbanks as high as mailboxes to find Haley supporters. Klein said face-to-face communication is “vitally important,” despite his little success that outing. He discovered one lady choosing between DeSantis and Haley, numerous undecided voters, and a male who said, “I’m a Trump guy. Go Trump!
Trump has dominated Iowa surveys for two months. The penultimate Des Moines Register/NBC News survey before the caucuses revealed over half of prospective caucusgoers supporting him, compared to 20% for Haley and 16% for DeSantis.