'A known entity' — How Trump hit 50% at Manning-Templeton area caucus
MANNING, Iowa —
Former President Donald Trump needed no closing argument from supporters in a speedy caucus in the Manning-Templeton area Monday night as he garnered 50 percent of the vote here as part of a commanding first-in-the-nation launch toward a third Republican presidential nomination.
"He's a known entity, like him or don't like him," said Carroll County Republican leader Craig Williams of Manning, a former legislator seeking an Iowa House seat this year. "Honestly, I think a lot of these lawsuits against him have made more people want to support him than go against him."
Trump collected 63 votes at the caucus site, the Manning High School auditorium, in secret-ballot voting. Former South Carolina Governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley received 28 votes and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis captured 27. Bio-tech entrepreneur and political upstart Vivek Ramaswamy, who endorsed Trump by night's end, earned 6 votes. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson received 1 vote, and another vote wound up in the other category.
Supporters for DeSantis and Haley spoke before the vote. When Williams, who managed the caucus, asked if a Trump supporter wanted to speak before the vote no one rose. But minutes later, as lines formed of caucusgoers in the aisles, the Trump support flowed on the ballots.
Williams thinks the November general election will hinge largely on the economy, an analysis in line with what Trump supporters at this site in Manning said Monday before giving him the win.
"There's the economy and there's a border issue," Williams said. "The border issue is really starting to affect a lot more people in places where a year ago they didn't pay that much attention — the sanctuary cities that are being overrun."
Statewide, Trump hit 51 percent with DeSantis at 21.2 percent; Haley, 19.1 percent; and Ramaswamy, 7.7 percent.
Some neighboring counties to Carroll County went even heavier for Trump as the former president pulled 64.3 percent in Audubon County, 68.6 percent in Shelby County and 62.9 percent in Calhoun County.
Mike Sibbel, 66, who farms southwest of Halbur, supported DeSantis.
"He's been governor and done a pretty good job down in Florida," Sibbel said. "I just think he's going to be better."
Karen Herreman, 68, of Manning, said Trump can run on his record.
"He did a lot things, peace in the Middle East, building a wall," she said.
Herreman said Trump was a good president for farmers.
"And he's good for the stock market, investments," she said.
Nancy Meier, 58, of Manning, a nurse who works in Denison, said Trump does not approach government as a politician.
"He came at it the first time the way he's coming at it now, as a businessman," Meier said. "He wasn't a politicians for a living. He started out building his own business."
Meier said Trump is strong on trade and building American infrastructure and the military.
Angela Irlbeck, 57, of Templeton, said Trump leads with strength.
"He has held strong, and I know he is going to continue fighting for the American public," she said. "I would like that in a leader."
Steve Hahn, 66, a retired Pella Corporation worker in Carroll who lives in Roselle, showed up for Haley, wearing a red-white-and-blue Haley 2024 sweatshirt, and made a fierce case for her from the stage before the voting started.
"The world is on fire right now and we need a strong leader like Nikki Haley to douse the flames," Hahn said, noting that Haley is a military spouse.
Hahn also pointed to what he called "reckless spending" under Trump and the two previous administrations.
"Reckless spending leads to inflation,." he said. "The fed (Federal Reserve) then has to raise interest rates to slow inflation. What a clown show. We need to move on from the drama and chaos of the past 16 years."
Matt Shipman, 39, of Templeton said DeSantis has a proven recent record in elections, and has turned Florida from a swing state to a reliable red state.
"We have lost every election cycle since Trump became the face of the Republican Party and some of it is because he wastes his energy doing things like attacking Governor Kim Reynolds instead of Democrats," Shipman said in a speech before the vote.
Most of the caucusgoers in Manning came in with clear and unshakeable intentions for their votes, but at least one person changed his mind in the moment.
Tom Underberg, 80, said his neighbor Hahn, the Haley speaker, persuaded him to switch his vote from Trump to Haley. Not only did Underberg, a Roselle resident, do that, but he turned around his Trump hat before voting.
"I think she can win and Trump can't," Underberg said.
Williams said he thinks Republicans will rally around Trump should the former president gain the nomination in large part because they are troubled by the leadership of President Biden.
“At the end of the day Biden is so bad maybe people will stay home if they don’t like Trump,” Williams said. “I don’t see people saying, ‘Well, I can’t vote for Trump, so I’ll go vote for Biden.’ That’s not going to happen.”
(Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.)
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Douglas—A powerful commentary on school shootings with a new (to me) approach to “where might we do something differently”.