OPINION:
Apologies to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, but this week, and probably for the next two months, the most important woman in the 2024 presidential race is Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa.
For now, at least, the campaign for the Republican nomination has been reduced to the contest in Iowa. If someone can run close to or defeat former President Donald Trump there, it is possible that an endorsement from Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire — which votes eight days after Iowa — will be able to swing the Granite State toward someone other than the former president.
Obviously, if Mr. Trump loses in Iowa or New Hampshire, his aura of invincibility and inevitability will be punctured, and a real campaign might emerge.
Keep in mind that while Mr. Trump consistently leads in surveys, a little less than one-third of likely Republican primary voters have indicated they intend to vote only for Mr. Trump. That means that about 70% of the Republican primary electorate remains open to voting for someone else.
That number seems a bit more relevant in the wake of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ endorsement of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week.
Mrs. Reynolds may be the key to Iowa. In the 2022 cycle, she won reelection convincingly, taking 95 of the 99 counties in her state. Perhaps more importantly, she ran ahead of Mr. Trump’s 2020 performance in every county in Iowa, in most cases by double digits.
The endorsement was not a particular surprise. Mrs. Reynolds runs her state much as Mr. DeSantis runs Florida. Both have championed school choice and parental rights. Both have enacted meaningful tax reform and run budget surpluses. Both are pro-family, law-and-order Republicans.
Both kept their states open during the COVID-19 lockdowns created and enforced by Mr. Trump.
As for Mr. Trump, he has done what he can to minimize the value of the endorsement. In July, Mr. Trump attacked Mrs. Reynolds for delaying her endorsement of any candidate.
That same month, Mr. Trump skipped the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines. A month later, he snubbed Mrs. Reynolds again, refusing to participate in her “Fireside Chat” at the Iowa State Fair.
A month after that, in September, Mr. Trump called the state’s fetal heartbeat law — which Mrs. Reynolds had signed just a few weeks earlier and which a majority of those likely to attend the caucus support — a “terrible thing.”
Leaving aside how any action that tries to preserve life could be “terrible,” attacking a signature achievement of a popular governor seems unwise.
Mr. Trump has neglected his ground operation in Iowa. It is not what it could or should be. It seems clear that Mr. Trump believes he can win Iowa without organizing, without appearing in the state and while dismissing Mrs. Reynolds.
That’s certainly possible, but to hedge its bets, just last week, the Trump campaign dropped yet another $1 million in attack ads targeting Mr. DeSantis. This suggests that despite their very public announcement of a pivot to the general election, Mr. Trump and his advisers remain concerned about Mr. DeSantis.
In her endorsement of Mr. DeSantis, Mrs. Reynolds offered the following thoughts:
“At a time when the world is spinning out of control, that is what we should be looking for in a president. Someone who gets results, who devotes every single ounce of their energy to make our lives better, someone who’s honest, and who actually knows what it’s like to be sent to war, someone who knows when life begins and thinks it’s a beautiful thing to save a beating heart. Someone who calls out our moral decline for what it is, who looks to the future and not the past, someone who, most importantly, can win. And that person is Ron DeSantis.”
It is worth noting that winning Iowa is not the same thing as winning the nomination or becoming president. Just ask former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
But in this cycle, a win by Mr. Trump in Iowa would probably be dispositive and more or less end the campaign for the Republican nomination. On the other hand, a loss on Jan. 15 in the Hawkeye State would indicate that Mr. Trump has some vulnerabilities.
Mrs. Reynolds knows that, and so does Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Trump should know it as well.
• Michael McKenna is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs.
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