Three candidates, three campaign styles
Trump, Haley, and DeSantis in Iowa
I had a chance to observe campaign appearances by several candidates while in Iowa last weekend and was struck by how different the candidates’ approaches were. We have roughly half a century of evidence and folklore about “how to win Iowa,” but the candidates went about this task very differently. I want to briefly run through some of those differences.
Ron DeSantis
I attended a DeSantis rally with my students in Ankeny the night before the caucuses. Of all the appearances, this was the most like a traditional campaign rally. It was an overstuffed hall with seats for observers, standing areas for photojournalists, a stand behind the candidate for camera-ready supporters, etc. There was loud Boomer rock and his fans were dancing. And he made the most of his strong support from party elites in Iowa, with warm up speeches by Sen. Joni Ernst, Gov. Kim Reynolds, and Reps. Thomas Massie and Chip Roy. (These were good speakers, by the way.)
And then DeSantis took to the stage with his wife and kids, who seemed very sweet. His speech was pretty standard fare, but he (and his surrogates) spent a good deal of time criticizing frontrunner Donald Trump. Notably, the main thing they hit Trump on was something that a number of Iowans had complained to us about: Trump disrespected Iowa. That is, DeSantis has been more or less living in Iowa for the past year, while Trump has only made a handful of appearances, and then only giving his big rallies without interacting with many people. DeSantis and the other speakers noted that they’d supported Trump and his agenda previously, but were bothered by his disregard for Iowa’s traditions.
I’d say that DeSantis was a better public speaker than his public reputation would suggest. He had a tight 20-minute pitch with no notes or teleprompter, and his delivery was solid. And he allowed roughly half an hour of Q&A. As I noted here, few of the questions were tough, and his answers were pretty mild, except that he decided to curb-kick a students who challenged him on school shootings. He was successful in riling up his supporters on that, but I was still surprised how needlessly cruel it came off.
Nikki Haley
I did not attend a formal rally for Haley, but rather saw her in a few other venues. She did a visit to the Drake Diner the morning of caucus day. Since her campaign had promoted the appearance, the diner was filled with people and it was very hard to move about. (Let me take a brief moment to praise the staff of the diner, who continued to serve coffee and breakfast to people despite the vast crowds and never complained.)
Haley walked in trailed by roughly a dozen news camera crews, gave a brief statement on camera, then spoke for maybe 2 or 3 minutes to the crowd in the diner. Then she walked to maybe three tables to shake hands and say hi, and then she was gone, presumably to make similar stops around town. Then later she showed up at our caucus meeting at a Junior High School in Des Moines, gave a quick three-minute stump speech, and bolted. There was no Q&A, and very little interaction with people.
This struck me as probably a good way to get in front of a lot of eyeballs in the runup to the caucuses, and probably a good way to rally supporters, although didn’t really develop any connections along the way, for what it’s worth. She didn’t say much about her rival candidates except to briefly put in a pitch for her electability, noting polls showing her beating Joe Biden handily while DeSantis and Trump were roughly tied or trailing him.
Donald Trump
A Donald Trump rally is more like a Grateful Dead show than a standard politician campaign stop, for several reasons:
It is a long experience. You need to be there hours before he hits the stage, and he’s on stage for close to two hours.
It’s held in large venues to accommodate demand. There are sometimes overflow rooms. There are sometimes common spaces where people can wander around, say hi, buy paraphernalia, etc.
Trump’s speeches are about as disciplined as a Dead setlist. He has a teleprompter with bullet points on it, but he wanders around those bullet points, spends 10-15 minutes telling random backstories, and then eventually works his way back to the speech. He spent a good ten minutes telling us about how he came up with the name “Ron DeSanctimonious,” with the punchline being that he just kind of made it up one day. He had some supporters speak before his rally, and others (including Jim Jordan and Doug Burgum) come to the stage during his speech. It seemed fairly chaotic.
He has a lot of repeat fans who are there to cheer for their favorite parts. And he checks in with them about what topics to cover next. “Should I do the short version or the long version?”, he asked the crowd, ultimately deciding to go with the long version because there were no big football games on that afternoon. “Should I do the snake poem now or later”? he asked, ultimately going with later. But a lot of the crowd knew the material and just liked to hear him do it.
It would be more fun high.
I really can’t overemphasize the extent to which a Trump rally is a show. People are there for the entertainment. I genuinely think DeSantis hasn’t gotten a fair shake from the media this cycle, but one legitimate criticism of him is that he thought he could compete with Trump by besting him on policy. That’s not what Trump’s fans are there for. Yes, they feel passionately about border walls, abortion, guns, etc. But it’s the show that gets them in the door.
A topic that has come up in interviews I’ve been doing since 2017 is that Trump just regularly flouts the campaigning traditions of Iowa and New Hampshire. To win in those places, I’m always told, you need to do lots of small events at coffee shops and diners and living rooms. You need to meet with people one-on-one multiple times. You need to submit yourself to the rituals of the state. And Trump has never done those things and he wins anyway — presumably because doing those things is how voters get to know you, and pretty much everyone already thinks they’ve known him for decades.
Commonality
Again, I was surprised by how divergent the campaign styles and the issues mentioned were. Honestly, one of the only issues that came up across all three campaigns, and mentioned in the same way, was the bashing of trans people. All three candidates said some version of the line that they want to keep men out of women’s sports, and everyone in all those audiences knew what that meant. Also everyone agreed that Joe Biden is bad, because reasons.
I should mention that I saw Asa Hutchinson speak several times and wander around the Drake Diner looking for people to talk to. Obviously, his approach was very different because he knew full well his candidacy wasn’t competitive. But he seemed committed to seeing the Iowa campaign through, and he was happy to speak with students and others who were clearly not caucus-goers. I appreciated his congeniality.