Iowa’s RNC Committeeman Steve Scheffler predicts that the Colorado supreme court ruling will boost Trump in the caucus.
Ankeny, Iowa—On a cold afternoon in early December, former President Donald Trump took the stage in the back of a small-town bar in central Iowa to rail against his GOP rivals, the “grossly incompetent” President Joe Biden, and the four criminal indictments that, politically speaking, have not hurt his standing among Republican primary voters.
“Al Capone got indicted once, they got me four times because I protested an election,” he said in a roughly hour-long speech at a commit to caucus event last month. “These people are sick and they’re bad.”
Weeks after Trump’s early December trip to Iowa, the Colorado supreme court delivered another political gift to the former president in the Republican presidential primary. In a 4-3 decision, the court barred him from appearing on the state’s 2024 presidential ballot, ruling that the former president’s behavior surrounding the storming of the U.S. Capitol three years ago makes him ineligible for the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Days later, Maine’s secretary of state declared that Trump will be disqualified from the state’s primary ballot this year on the same grounds.
Iowa’s RNC Committeeman Steve Scheffler predicts the political fallout from these stunning legal developments will only play to the former president’s favor in the January 15 caucuses. “This is what happens in communist countries when they decide who’s going to be on the ballot, who’s not gonna be on the ballot, who’s gonna win, who’s not going to win,” he tells NR.
Even GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said in a late-December interview that Trump’s legal troubles — which include 91 felony charges — have “distorted” the contest. “I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” the Florida governor told CBN News. “It’s sucked out a lot of oxygen.”
The lead-up to the Iowa caucuses have been especially grueling for the Florida governor. His sputtering campaign has lagged in the polls and recently found itself at war with an unlikely rival: the pr0-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. Once hailed as the key to DeSantis’ Iowa-focused campaign, Never Back Down’s weeks-long infighting over the group’s management, multi-million-dollar ad strategy, and legal compliance issues prompted a number of firings and resignations that have become a distraction from the governor’s underdog campaign at a key point in the race.
As the caucuses draw near, DeSantis and his closest advisers have no choice but to ignore the headlines and project optimism that the Florida governor’s robust ground game will vault him to a surprise upset on January 15. They insist that Trump’s lead in the polls will not automatically translate to victory in this month’s caucuses.
Meanwhile, former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley continues to level expectations in the Hawkeye State as she struggles to recover from a late-December gaffe — declining to say that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War during a New Hampshire town hall. She’s hoping she can ride the momentum of a stronger-than-expected performance in Iowa to victory one week later in the Granite State, where she has centered her campaign and has cemented a second place standing behind Trump.
“New Hampshire voters break late,” says state GOP chairman Chris Ager. “The week after Iowa, they’ll all be here.”
As Trump’s Republican rivals brace for the first nominating contests, Democrats project optimism that another general election cycle focused on abortion and the chaos surrounding Trump — presuming he’s the GOP nominee — will redound to Biden’s benefit in November.
But privately, Democratic lawmakers are no doubt panicking about the reality that their extremely unpopular, 81-year-old president is losing many head-to-head polling matchups against his 2020 rival less than a year out from the general election.
They have cause for concern. More than half of the voters surveyed in a recent Wall Street Journal poll said Biden’s policies hurt them personally, a damning indictment of a president who pledged to unify the country and make Americans better off than they were under his predecessor who may soon sail to victory in the GOP primary.
“This will be the most important election in the history of our country because our country is going to hell,” Trump told a crowd of supporters last month in Iowa, the state he lost eight years ago to Ted Cruz. “Jimmy Carter’s in his latter years — 99 — in his latter years, he’s got to be a happy man because his administration was brilliant compared to what we have.”