DeSantis wrapping up ‘full Grassley’ Iowa county tour in December as caucuses approach

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) will wrap up his tour of Iowa‘s 99 counties on Dec. 2 as the 2024 presidential candidate looks to sway voters away from former President Donald Trump ahead of the Iowa caucuses in January.

DeSantis has been focusing on completing the “full Grassley,” a term used to describe Sen. Chuck Grassley‘s (R-IA) annual 99-county tour that he has completed for more than 40 years. The Florida governor’s replication of the longtime senator’s tour is part of DeSantis’s bid to get ahead in the Iowa caucuses, which begin on Jan. 15.

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Past caucus winners, such as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in 2012 and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2016, completed similar tours. On Dec. 2, DeSantis will complete his Iowa tour at the “Thunderdome” wedding venue in Newton, Iowa, according to CBS News.

The Florida governor, like many 2024 Republican candidates, is looking to revive his status as the top alternative to Trump. DeSantis’s decline in the polls, most recently to single-digits in New Hampshire, has added to a list of signs that his campaign may be too far gone. Strategists and polls indicate that former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has taken the mantle from DeSantis as the most viable candidate to defeat Trump in the Republican primary, polling at second place in most early primary states.

To push his campaign forward, DeSantis is appearing to put all of his eggs in Iowa’s basket after spending a large amount of 2023 campaigning in the Hawkeye State and relocating a third of his staff in October. The governor has been the only active 2024 candidate to commit to holding at least one event in every Iowa county, making 130 stops in Iowa overall. Ninety-two events were hosted by Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis.

DeSantis is not the only candidate to focus on the Hawkeye State this election cycle. The governor was joined by Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at the Family Leader Foundation’s 2023 presidential Thanksgiving forum on Nov. 17.

To establish more of a presence in Iowa, Ramaswamy launched a $7 million ad buy in the state focusing on his campaign trademark to “speak the truth” in early November, the same week that DeSantis did. Ramaswamy also announced earlier this month that he rented an apartment in the state and would be holding more than 200 events in Iowa between now and the caucuses.

Trump has only held 17 events in Iowa, but he has repeatedly traveled to the state in recent weeks hoping to lock up the nomination.

DeSantis’s campaign called the 99-county tour an “organizational effort” to give them the ability to target bigger media markets, according to CBS News. Never Back Down has reported that 30,000 “commitment to caucus” cards have been collected. The cards are not legally binding but signal support for a candidate.

Since his tour began, DeSantis has received several endorsements from notable Iowa leaders, including 120 county chairs, 41 state legislators, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), and Family Leader Foundation CEO Bob Vander Plaats. Both Reynolds and Vander Plaats have tense relationships with the former president, earning mudslinging and heavy criticism from Trump following their endorsements of DeSantis.

“The Iowa caucus is littered with campaigns that lost because they thought they could win through the air alone, relying solely on paid television advertising,” Andrew Romeo, DeSantis’s communications director, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The reality is you need a strong mixture of paid media, candidate presence, and ground game to win an Iowa Caucus, and no one is executing in all three areas better than us as we hit the closing stretch.”

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Despite losing key endorsements, Trump still holds a significant lead in many Iowa polls. A poll from the Des Moines Register-NBC News-Mediacom last month showed Trump dominating at 43%, followed by Haley and DeSantis tied at 16%. Trump holds an overall RealClearPolitics poll rating of 61.6%, with DeSantis trailing behind at 13.7% and Haley at 9.8%

The Washington Examiner reached out to Grassley’s campaign for comment.