During a visit to Iowa in March, Senator Lindsey Graham insisted that he wouldn’t be running a merely quixotic campaign for the presidency.

“There’s a pathway forward for a guy like me,” Graham told the Des Moines Register. “Whether I finish first or tenth, at least I had a chance here.”

For Graham, who retired from the Air Force Reserves earlier this month, that chance depends on Iowa’s National Guard and the rest of the state’s retired and active military. Graham’s team hopes that his status as one of only two GOP presidential candidates to have served in the military will help boost his bid to win the Iowa caucuses. He’s built a coalition of retired military supporters that includes a full-time liaison between his campaign and Iowa’s military community.

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“I believe that he’s the best candidate for the job of commander-in-chief,” says retired Iowa Guard Command Sergeant Major Chris Fox, the Graham campaign’s point man on outreach to enlisted service members and veterans. “He’s spent 33 years in uniform, up until now, [making him] current and relevant with soldiers and airmen and the Navy and Marines.”

Graham’s team hopes that his status as one of only two GOP presidential candidates to have served in the military will help boost his bid to win the Iowa caucuses.

That continuous service distinguishes Graham, in Fox’s mind, from former Texas governor Rick Perry, the only other veteran in the race for the Republican nomination, who is also courting the military community in his pitch. “Imagine a president who’s worn the uniform and knows what it’s like to serve,” Perry said Thursday during his presidential announcement, flanked by former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell.

Fox said that there are as many as 8,000 members of the Iowa Army and Air National Guard, in addition to reserve units of the Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Navy. Given the low turnout typical of Iowa caucuses — Rick Santorum won in 2012 with fewer than 30,000 votes, while Perry finished in the top five with just 10,000 votes — Graham’s team hopes that consistent outreach to the military community can boost him into contention.

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To that end, Graham has held at least one event with that community during every trip he’s made to Iowa, an aide from his campaign says. In March, he spoke to the Iowa National Guard Officer’s Association and attended a series of private meetings. And on Saturday, he will speak at the Iowa VFW State Convention.

“The senator is going to speak to the veterans wherever they are,” Fox says.

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.