Iowa residents’ support for Trump may be showing signs of shrinking

Des Moines: It’s just before lunchtime in Iowa – the midwest state that kicks off the US presidential cycle – and Stephanie Becker is at the local fair with her two children when she spots a familiar face.

Shaking hands and greeting fair-goers is US senator Tim Scott, one of 13 Republican challengers hoping to beat Donald Trump for the party’s presidential nomination next year.

Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott greets audience members before speaking at the Iowa Fair.Credit: AP

“Can we take a picture with you?” Becker asks politely, as Scott, the only black Republican in the US Senate, happily obliges.

“We are so excited to have you,” she adds. “Good luck! We need you in the White House.”

It’s the kind of message that Republican candidates long to hear as they make their way through Iowa’s rolling plains, cornfields and counties, wooing voters for the 2024 Republican primaries that will determine which candidate will run for office against President Joe Biden in November 2024.

Iowa, after all, has traditionally been the first state to hold its presidential nominating contest, otherwise known as the Iowa caucuses, making it a critical early benchmark of success. Do well here and you’re likely to build momentum in later states; do poorly and it could be debilitating.

Iowa resident Stephanie Becker and her children at the Iowa State Fair.Credit: Farrah Tomazin

But with five months before the first votes take place on January 15, Trump retains a commanding lead, despite being charged in four separate criminal cases, and despite doing very little retail politics compared to his rivals.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for instance, announced his candidacy months after Trump but has visited about 32 Iowan counties and expects to have done all 99 by the end of October.

Trump, on the other hand, has visited the state less than a handful of times, opting instead to rely on his name and the network he built in 2016 and 2020 to maintain enthusiasm among supporters.

His latest whirlwind trip took place on Saturday at the Iowa State Fair – a political rite of passage where candidates try to impress unpredictable voters, navigate their way through animal pavilions and endless food stalls, and deliver stump speeches that appeal to the region’s predominantly white and religious working-class masses.

Former president Donald Trump campaigning in Iowa on the weekend.Credit: AP

In 2015, Trump, then a reality TV star who had set his sights on the highest office in America, arrived at the fair in his helicopter.

This time, his goal was to once again steal the show from his main rivals – and troll DeSantis. He entered the venue with a bevy of Florida House members who had endorsed him over DeSantis; delivered remarks to a sweaty audience in a beer barn; and he posed for photos with Iowa’s signature dish: pork chop on a stick.

Yet, despite Trump’s ability to pull a crowd, there are signs that many Iowans, such as Becker, are growing weary of the former president and want the party to move on.

The nurse says she and her farmer husband do their best to raise their two children, aged 7 and 4, but “trying to afford food, daycare, education needs and gas is tough”.

“We need somebody to just change the direction we’re going in financially,” she tells me, the day after Trump was indicted over election subversion in Georgia.

“We voted for Mr Trump previously, and we liked the direction he was taking, but unfortunately the chaos of everything is not what America needs right now. It just seems more like a vendetta between Democrats and Republicans.”

Elsewhere, past the food stalls spruiking culinary delights such as double-bacon corn dogs and deep-fried pickles, Earle Driscoll has a nuanced view.

US Senator and presidential hopeful Tim Scott with cattle farmer Erle Driscoll.Credit: Farrah Tomazin

Dressed in a cowboy hat and green shirt, the cattle farmer and self-described “hillbilly” says Trump remains in his top three Republican picks for president: the other two being Scott and “that Indian fellow” – a reference to entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who impressed the audience at the fair last week with a performance of Eminem’s Lose Yourself.

But like many other conservatives, Driscoll fears Trump is his own worst enemy, which he believes won’t bode well if he ends up in court to fight the four cases against him.

“I like Donald Trump. He says what he means and he does what he says. He just needs to stay off social media and keep his mouth shut.”

Similar views were shared across the fair, which attracts about 1 million people over 11 days and is America’s biggest and oldest agricultural exhibition.

“He causes too much turmoil and he just bad-mouths people,” said one woman from the state capital of Des Moines.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sings at the end of a Fair-Side Chat with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.Credit: AP

“It’s time to stop looking in the rearview mirror,” said another. “We need to focus on Joe Biden.”

The challenge for candidates is confronting Trump, whose momentum keeps building with every indictment.

There are now four: alleged hush money paid to a porn star; claims that he mishandled classified documents; an alleged plot to stop Biden becoming president; and an alleged racketeering scheme to subvert the presidential election results in Georgia.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll released this month, 44 per cent of Republican voters in Iowa say they would choose Trump as their Republican nominee, followed by DeSantis at 20 per cent.

Republican presidential candidate Senator Tim Scott works the grill at the Iowa Pork Producers Tent.Credit: AP

Scott, whose positive story about going from “Cotton to Congress” is at odds with the grievance politics of the former president– comes in third, with about 9 per cent of the vote.

But if the South Carolina senator is worried, he’s certainly not showing it – at least not in front of the cameras as he flips pork burgers and chops at the fair’s famous pork tent, before handing out samples of his freshly cooked BBQ to the assembled media.

Asked about Trump’s latest indictment, Scott did what most Republican candidates have done: stay neutral rather than directly attack him for fear of upsetting his base.

He suggested the legal system was “being weaponised against political opponents”, a development he described as “un-American”.

As for how he plans to build momentum against the overwhelming Republican frontrunner?

“Our poll numbers continue to go up and more importantly, people are showing up in large numbers and my crowds continue to increase,” says Scott.

“It is refreshing, people tell me, to have an actual conversation about the substantive issues … and staying focused on what the average person in this state is talking about.

“And frankly, the average person in this state is more concerned about Bidenomics or their kids than presidential candidates. So I’ll continue focusing on what they want.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.