When is a picture not just a picture? It’s when five presidential candidates — including one who has won the past two Iowa general elections — insert their political ambitions into the state’s cherished college football rivalry and the governor chooses to sit with one throughout the game. Hint: she wasn’t with the guy who carried the state handily in those previous two presidential elections.
As if the football game wasn’t exciting enough!
Yes, political observers, Kim Reynolds and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may be a thing to watch until caucus night on January 15th, 2024.
What happened Saturday in Ames didn’t happen by accident. It happened by design.
Donald Trump stopped by a frat house on the Ames campus before the Iowa State Cyclones hosted the Iowa Hawkeyes for the annual rivalry. Trump held up a hamburger and tossed out a football before heading to a private suite at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames for the game on sunny afternoon and a temperature around 80 degrees.
The event was typical of a Trump 2024 campaign day in Iowa: one and done. Other candidates routinely hold multiple events in multiple Iowa cities. Trump does not.
DeSantis sat outside in the crowd with fans, along with Reynolds.
So is Reynolds stiff-arming Trump and blocking for DeSantis as he tries to up his game in the final five months before the caucuses? An appearance like Saturday’s will make politicos wonder that possibility even more.
Reynolds still hasn’t publicly endorsed DeSantis (or anyone else for that matter.) But after maintaining for months that she would remain neutral during the caucus campaign, she recently said that she might endorse a candidate after all.
Hmmm…
That’s not a guarantee that she will, of course. But for her to say that she might…and to say it publicly…makes me think that she likely will if there is someone she feels could win the caucuses. And right now, at least, it doesn’t seem like an endorsement of Trump is likely. Not from her.
But, again, there are still five months left. So things could change.
For now, it’s hard not to notice the amount of time — in public — that she spends with DeSantis and his wife, Casey. And Reynolds has not been appearing with Trump as he navigates four criminal investigations into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. (Reynolds did campaign with Trump in Davenport in March but hasn’t appeared with him during recent visits).
Note: While Reynolds could clearly do more publicly to assure Iowans that fraud did not cost Trump re-election in 2020 (as could all prominent Iowa GOP leaders), she does not echo Trump’s unfounded claims about widespread election fraud.
Let’s see how this all plays out. Trump has already ripped Reynolds for her previous pledge of neutrality. He apparently believes that she owes him for campaigning on her behalf when she ended up beating Democratic challenger Fred Hubbell (the wealthy Des Moines business executive) by three points in 2018.
Reynolds doesn’t believe that Trump is the reason she won five years ago. But it’s possible that Reynolds could be one of the reasons that Trump fails to win the caucuses in 2024.
And if it’s DeSantis who beats Trump next January, his victory may have us remembering that CyHawk football game on September 9th…not because the Hawkeyes won but rather because DeSantis won the attention of the Cyclone graduate who chose to sit next to him…and not the former president of the United States.
(Dave Price is a native Midwesterner and Iowan by choice for the past 22 years. He has written two books on the uniqueness of presidential campaigns in Iowa).
Thanks for reading and please consider checking out other members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, a group of independent writers across the state.
Two examples where our Governor has questioned election results. CNN. 9-22 " Incumbent Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in December 2020 that she wanted Iowa to join the Texas lawsuit that tried to overturn Biden’s victories in four states, and she lamented that the state wasn’t given an opportunity to sign on because Iowa has a Democratic attorney general". DESMOINES, Iowa (AP) — "Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Thursday condemned the destructive riot at the U.S. Capitol that resulted in four deaths and the suspension of Congress, but she remained sympathetic to unfounded assertions questioning the integrity of the presidential election."