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DES MOINES, IOWA – On the eve of former President Trump’s return to Iowa for the first time since last year’s election, Eric Branstad and his team were busy putting the finishing touches to the site of the the Iowa State Fairgrounds where Trump will host a rally on Saturday.
“The president loves Iowa. I think he loves Iowa more than any other state,” said Branstad, who led Trump’s campaign efforts in Hawkeye state in the 2016 presidential election and 2020.
The former president made political headlines in August when his Save America political action committee hired Branstad, a campaign veteran who also worked in the Trump administration and who is the son of the former Longtime Republican Governor of Iowa Terry Branstad (who served as ambassador to China during the Trump administration), as senior adviser. Alex Latcham, a native of Iowa, Trump’s political director in Iowa during the 2016 election campaign and Trump’s deputy White House political director, also joined the PAC in the same capacity.
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Hires in the state whose caucuses for half a century kicked off the presidential appointment schedule have obviously sparked more speculation that Trump is gearing up for another White House run.
But young Branstad told Fox News that the 2022 midterms rather than the 2024 presidential election are high on his agenda. He said he and the rest of the former Iowa president’s team “are focused on electing Republicans from top to bottom. That’s where we are focusing.”
And while they don’t just focus on Iowa – they give advice on races across the country – there’s no denying that Hawkeye State will grab the campaign’s attention next year, when the GOP aims to regain a majority in the House of Representatives and Senate. Republicans need a net gain of one seat to regain control in the 100-member Senate and a net gain of five seats in the 435-member House.
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Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and longtime GOP Senator Chuck Grassley, who are running for re-election next year, will speak at Saturday’s rally ahead of Trump. The same will be true for the three members of the State GOP House. Two of them – Reps Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks – won their seats by very slim margins last November and will likely face tough re-elections. And the GOP is targeting the state’s only Democrat in the House, Rep. Cindy Axne, who was narrowly re-elected last year.
“Governor Reynolds is going to be here. Senator Grassley is going to be here. We have a star cast. Our entire Republican delegation to Congress,” said Branstad. “We are delighted to welcome thousands and thousands of people to see President Trump.”
While Trump may make a few endorsements in 2022 at his rally at the fairgrounds, it will be difficult to escape the story of 2024.
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Trump has repeatedly teased to run another presidential race to try to get back to the White House, telling Fox News in an interview last month that “I don’t think we’ll have a choice.”
The former president said in an email to supporters earlier this week that “IOWA is absolutely essential to our efforts to take over the House and Senate in 2022 and then the White House in 2024.”
Workers at the site of former President Trump’s rally in Iowa finalized the Iowa State Fairgrounds site on the eve of the event on October 8, 2021 in Des Moines, Iowa
(Fox News)
And Trump’s hires of Branstad and Latcham have sparked more speculation.
“If he’s going to run, there aren’t two better people to hire than these two,” said David Kochel, longtime Iowa-based GOP consultant. “If you’re going to do it, or even if you’re going to send the signal that you can run, that’s the move you’re making.”
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Kochel, a veteran of many Republican presidential campaigns, noted that “they are both very effective agents and a pretty great team and they would be hard to beat.”
Trump remains very popular and influential with Republican voters as he continues to play a kingmaker role in GOP primary politics, and he would clearly be the frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination if he decided to run. . But his repeated flirtations have kept other potential 2024 candidates from traveling to Iowa as well as New Hampshire, which has hosted the first presidential primary for a century, and South Carolina and Nevada, the other two states. at early voting.
Trump’s team in Iowa may be a harbinger for other potential rivals.
Bob Vander Plaats, who for a dozen years was president and CEO of The Family Leader, a leading conservative social organization in Iowa, told Fox News that the hiring of Branstad and Latcham is “definitely a message” that if Trump wants to organize in Iowa, he can do it quickly.
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And he noted that while many other possible GOP hopes in the White House have PACs, they “don’t employ staff in the early states, particularly Iowa.”
When asked if having field staff in Iowa gave the former president a boost, Branstad said “I would definitely like to think so.”
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