Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds endorses DeSantis, hoping to boost him in 2024 caucuses

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination on Monday, lending her clout to the Florida governor’s flagging campaign in a state that he and his allies believe he needs to perform well in if he hopes to have any chance of beating Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP primary.

The endorsement was an unusual move for a sitting Iowa governor; Reynolds’ predecessors have typically avoided taking a stand ahead of the caucuses , the first-in-the-nation nominating contest for Republicans. Yet it serves as a major boon for DeSantis, who has spent months forging close ties with the massively popular Reynolds in an effort to boost his reputation in the Hawkeye State.

In addition to serving as Iowa’s governor, Reynolds is also the chair of the Republican Governors Association.

Speaking at a DeSantis campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday evening, Reynolds held the Florida governor up as a person of action who had proved that he was capable of managing the chaotic business of governing. She said that while she sought to give every candidate a fair playing field in her state, she felt compelled to endorse DeSantis in the face of “unprecedented times” in the nation’s history.

“As governor, I felt like it was my responsibility to provide all the candidates a platform,” Reynolds said. “But I also believe that, as a mom and as a grandma and as an American, I could not and cannot sit on the sidelines anymore.”

The endorsement, which came just two days before the third Republican presidential debate in Miami, also gives DeSantis’ campaign something to tout after a weekend in which he was upstaged by Trump in the two candidates’ shared home state.

Trump largely dominated a Florida Republican Party summit in Kissimmee on Saturday when he announced that roughly half-a-dozen GOP state lawmakers who had previously endorsed DeSantis had thrown their support behind him instead.

But DeSantis and his allies see Iowa — not Florida — as his key to winning the GOP nomination, believing that a victory in the first-in-the-nation caucus state will demonstrate that he’s capable of beating Trump and empower Republican voters in other states to abandon their support for the former president.

DeSantis has spent more time in Iowa than any of the other early-voting states, like New Hampshire or South Carolina, and his campaign recently moved about a third of its staff from his Tallahassee headquarters to the Hawkeye State.

At the same time, Never Back Down, the main super PAC supporting DeSantis’ White House bid, has poured millions of dollars on advertising and organizing efforts in Iowa, and has hosted campaign-style tours of the state featuring the Florida governor.

DeSantis’ allies said that they had little doubt Reynolds would come down on his side, given their shared experience as sitting Republican governors and her difficult relationship with Trump. The former president has attacked her personally on multiple occasions, especially over the summer as Reynolds made a series of public appearances with DeSantis.

After several news outlets reported on Sunday that Reynolds was expected to endorse DeSantis, Trump’s campaign blasted out a scathing email to reporters proclaiming that Reynolds “apparently has begun her retirement tour early as she clearly does not have any ambition for higher office.”

DeSantis defended Reynolds in the face of those attacks, telling reporters at the Iowa State Fair in August that Trump’s remarks about the Iowa governor were “totally out of bounds.”

“She’s done really nothing but do a great job,” DeSantis said. “She’s never done anything to him. But that’s just how he operates.”

While Reynolds’ endorsement gave DeSantis’ campaign some good news to tout heading into Wednesday’s debate, it comes amid deeper troubles for the Florida governor’s White House bid. National and early-state polling – including surveys out of Iowa – shows DeSantis trailing Trump by double-digit margins, while former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has begun to pose a serious threat to DeSantis’ second-place standing.

A Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll released late last month showed Trump leading the primary field with 43% support, while DeSantis and Haley tied for second at just 16% each.

Still, the Iowa caucuses have historically been volatile affairs with the potential to produce surprising results. It was in Iowa almost 16 years ago that then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama notched an unexpected caucus win that ultimately put him on track to win the 2008 Democratic nomination.

For Republicans, however, the caucuses have hardly been a reliable indicator of who will win the eventual nomination. The last non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate to win both the Iowa caucus and the GOP nomination was former President George W. Bush in 2000. Trump notably lost the caucuses in 2016 to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

DeSantis’ Republican rivals see his focus on winning Iowa as a weakness. In a memo sent out over the weekend, Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney argued that a solid performance in the caucuses would be “as good as it’s going to get” for DeSantis, given polling that shows him running behind both Trump and Haley in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the second and third states to vote in the primary, respectively.

“Even if DeSantis were to do well in Iowa, which is a big ‘if’ given his current decline, he is in such a weak position in New Hampshire and South Carolina that it doesn’t matter,” Ankney wrote. “He has no end game.”

McClatchyDC staff writer David Catanese contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.

This story was originally published November 6, 2023 at 7:36 PM.