DES MOINES — A host of presidential candidates barnstormed the Iowa State Fair in recent days, grilling pork, taking selfies, visiting the famous butter cow and making stops to see Mean Gene, a 3,060 pound super bull, and drawing crowds of varying sizes. The candidates’ visits underscored the importance of the Hawkeye State, which will host the GOP’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in January.
Iowa
What the 2024 candidate appearances looked like at the Iowa State Fair
Trump reasserted his dominance in the GOP race. DeSantis toured the fairgrounds with his family and was interrupted by protesters. Ramaswamy did a rendition of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” And they drew varying crowd sizes.
Former president Donald Trump reasserted his dominance in the GOP race and trolled Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running a distant second. DeSantis toured the fairgrounds with his family and was interrupted by protesters. Longer-shot candidates tries to leave an impression, including entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who did his own rendition of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”
Here’s what some of the candidate appearances looked like:
Trump, arriving at the fair with an entourage of Florida lawmakers, did not spend as much time on the fairgrounds as his rivals. He arrived at the pork tent midday Saturday and was gone before 2 p.m. He and his surrogates posed for selfies and passed out Make America Great Again hats, in front of a crowd that swelled to fill the width of the fair’s grand concourse. The Florida representatives flipped pork burgers and chops, while Trump campaign manager Susie Wiles snapped photos.
Unlike DeSantis, who Wiles once worked for and who appeared at the tent around an hour before, Trump did not partake in the actual grilling tradition. As Trump’s plane flew over while DeSantis made his appearance, attendees turned around to face it and began to chant his name.
After visiting the pork tent, Trump then proceeded to the Steer N’ Stein bar where he spent much of his speech introducing the members of Congress who traveled with him and hyped him up. “In 2024, we’re going to three-peat and we’re going to make this man the 47th president of the United States,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) told a cheering crowd.
Trump’s presence alone, while brief, monopolized the fair’s main street fair. As attendees gawked from above on the Sky Glider, hundreds of people swarmed the pork tent and lined up to see his remarks, in which he repeated false claims about the 2020 election and did not bring up DeSantis.
DeSantis has put his family front-and-center on the campaign trail, and the state fair was no exception. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis — also his most influential political adviser — walked the grounds with their three kids in tow: Six-year-old Madison, five-year-old Mason and three-year-old Mamie.
They coaxed one daughter to go down a tall slide (she declined). They rode the Ferris wheel with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). They perched the kids on their shoulders to see above the crush of cameras and aides that followed them everywhere. Voters noticed: “My husband said, ‘He’s the one carrying the little kid on shoulders,’ and I love that,” said fair attendee Marie Todd, who came away thinking DeSantis was a good dad.
Apparently liberal protesters created real problems this weekend for DeSantis at the state fair — using the same tactics that scuttled a DeSantis campaign stop one day earlier in Menlo, Iowa. As he took the stage with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for a Q&A, they began blowing loud whistles and clanging a cowbell that made it hard to focus on DeSantis’s message for about 10 minutes (cellphones and cameras swiveled toward the action). The chaos ended when law enforcement physically pulled the protesters away through a cheering crowd.
The DeSantis team sees benefits to clashes with protesters, believing many GOP voters want a combative candidate. Beyond that, the governor was also dealing with barbs at the fair from team Trump. Among the digs was a banner the Trump campaign paid for that flew over the fair and read: “Be Likable, Ron!”
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a long-shot hopeful, was the first candidate to take the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox stage, drawing nearly as many reporters as fairgoers for his remarks.
He was introduced by his wife, Kathryn, who wore a large cowboy hat and spoke about her struggle with addiction and recovery. Burgum later spoke about his wife’s family’s work in the John Deere business, befitting of their later stop by a tent at the fair with John Deere equipment on display.
Burgum made an unusual choice in fairground food, trying rattlesnake nachos with venom sauce. He later joked to The Washington Post that “it was wild caught, free range, non-GMO, organic rattlesnake.”
Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley wore a shirt reading “Underestimate me, that’ll be fun” to the fairgrounds on Saturday, and brought along her college-aged son, Nalin. She kicked off the day by participating in the chat with Reynolds, and later appeared at the Soapbox, where she took a large number of questions and questioned the premise of an attendee’s suggestion that she did not support same-sex marriage.
Later in the afternoon, Haley and Ernst played games in Thrill Ville. Nalin defeated both at a basketball game, and Ernst scored a win in Skee-Ball. Haley redeemed herself at a water balloon shooting game, winning the round and picking a red bear as a prize. The trio then walked to the pork tent, where Haley flipped pork chops and burgers.
Former vice president Mike Pence spent two days at the fair, participating in many of the traditional trappings, including the Soapbox, an interview with Reynolds, and stops to flip pork burgers, pay respect to the butter cow and take a photo with Mean Gene. It was emblematic of the old-school campaign Pence is running, as he tests the appetite for traditional conservatism in today’s GOP.
Fairgoers stopped him throughout the day to take selfies. “He was the vice president of the United States, do you want to go talk to him?,” one woman said to a young child, as Pence passed by. “Hey, it’s Mike Pence!” said another fairgoer. Other fair attendees went up to Pence to wish him luck. Another yelled “beat Trump.”
As he toured the fairgrounds, Pence received some heckles from Trump supporters but also words of thanks for his decision to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, despite pressure from Trump and his allies not to do so.
During each candidate’s Fair-Side Chat, Reynolds asked them what their favorite walk-off song was, which was then used to play them offstage at the end of the event. Ramaswamy, a millennial, said his pick was Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” describing it as “young and scrappy” and leading Reynolds to joke, “I am really starting to understand my age.”
After the Q&A concluded, Ramaswamy signed a woman’s hat, then noticed the song playing over the speakers. He began fist pumping, then signed a book and took a selfie before beginning to rap along to the song, while Reynolds looked on in confusion.
Embodying his college alter ego “Da Vek,” Ramaswamy sang along, “Better go capture this moment and hope it don’t pass him.”
Later in the day, Ramaswamy and his wife and children toured the fairgrounds. As he participated in a radio interview, two teenagers outside held a large sign at the window reading “EAT A CORNDOG, YOU COWARD.” Ramaswamy is a vegetarian.