Field notes: The 2023 Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition Spring Kickoff
Thoughts from the first cattle call of Iowa Caucus season
I recently attended the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition Spring Kickoff, the first big candidate gathering of the Iowa Republican caucus season, just outside Des Moines. I’m here to offer a few reflections on what I saw, plus dump a few photos.
Candidates who showed up included former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, businessman Perry Johnson, and radio host Larry Elder. Rep. Will Hurd from Texas also joined in, and former President Trump sent a video. The candidates present in the room each had a few minutes to make a pitch to the 1,100 audience members, and were then briefly interviewed by Iowa Republican Party Chair Jeff Kaufmann and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.
I listened to the candidates and had a chance to interview a few of the attendees at my table, as well as touch base with a few of the seasoned journalists in the crowd. Some impressions:
-People are treating the contest as wide-open. That is, they recognize Trump as the likely winner of the nomination. But the Iowa caucus is quirky enough that anything could happen, and Iowans treasure their role in sampling the nation’s presidential candidates and sinking some campaigns while promoting others. Trump has a great deal of support from this crowd, but he came in second in 2016, and the retail politics nature of the contest is such that a candidate who is a good campaigner with significant organization and a bit of luck could win, or at least perform well.
A case in point is the 2012 contest. People figured that Mitt Romney would probably get the nomination, but nearly every candidate had a surge at some point prior to the Iowa caucuses, and Rick Santorum peaked at the right time to eke out a win that year.
-Trump’s video got a more enthusiastic reaction than most candidates’ in-person appearances. To Trump’s credit, it was not boilerplate, but rather very focused on the Iowa Christian Republican audience. He boasted of his appointment of pro-life justices, and he took credit for the Iowa caucuses remaining first in the nation (I’m not clear on him having played a role in this). And while several candidates talked of hating or even shutting down the Department of Education, Trump spoke of investigating all of the department’s employees and identifying and firing all the “radical zealots and Marxists.”
-Vivek Ramaswamy got a very strong response. If you haven’t been following him, he stands to be the Pete Buttigieg of this contest. He’s young (37!), quick on his feet, and aggressive on social media, and he brought a surprisingly large and well organized staff to the event. They made sure he got lots of photos with key Iowans (and me). He even had a bus.
My conversations with several folks in the room suggested that not many people knew much about him beforehand but they were impressed by him. It’s the sort of candidacy that could catch a wave in the caucus environment, even if it’s hard to see him actually defeating Trump.
-No one was booed, but some candidates were applauded with significantly less enthusiasm than others. Asa Hutchinson was treated politely and cooly. He didn’t bring up the fact that he’s campaigning on wanting Trump to drop out of the contest, nor did anyone else.
-Mike Pence worked the room before the event started. He was welcome warmly – it seemed many in the faith community still see him as an important ally – if not enthusiastically. People went to take photos with him, but some of those same people later rued that he did the wrong thing on January 6th.
-A lot of the discussion of “policy” was pretty thin – turns out there’s broad agreement that “woke” is bad, as is Joe Biden and the “radical gender ideology” – but there were hints of some significant disagreements among the candidates. Pence spoke forcefully in defense of Ukraine and warned about the dangers of Russian aggression, while several other candidates spoke against US involvement in the conflict. As the Des Moines Register noted, there were notable disagreements on abortion, as well, with some candidates (Trump, Ramaswamy) saying it’s now a state-level issue, and others (including Pence) calling for a federal ban.
I plan to attend several other candidate events this summer and will have more to report.