“My friends, this is not a normal election,” Vice President JD Vance said near the end of his speech at a campaign rally in Des Moines Tuesday. “This is not a normal political environment.”
Vance then demonstrated a major reason why this is not a normal political environment. Republicans who follow the lead of Donald Trump routinely make cartoonishly dishonest claims to vilify their political opponents, and also frequently use racist and xenophobic language they hope will appeal to voters. Vance did both.
“This is a contest between a party that wants to take all of your money and give it to illegal aliens, and a contest between [sic] gentlemen like Zach Nunn who fight every single day for you.”
The vice president was in Des Moines briefly in between stops in Ohio and Oklahoma to campaign for fellow Republican Zach Nunn, who is seeking a third term in Congress representing Iowa’s 3rd District. Nunn is facing a strong challenge from state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott. The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball considers the race in the 3rd Congressional District a toss-up, and Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister and part of the leadership team at the Des Moines Area Religious Council, outraised Nunn during the most recent campaign finance reporting period. Trone Garriott raised $1.69 million from Jan. 1 to March 31, while Nunn raised $1.26 million in the same period. Nunn finished the three-month reporting period with more cash in bank, with $3.04 million compared to Trone Garriott’s $2.19 million.
Tuesday was Vance’s first visit to Iowa since he was sworn in as vice president in January 2025. He had been scheduled to campaign for Nunn and attend a Turning Point USA event at Iowa State University on April 30, but Vance canceled that trip.
Vance began his speech at the Ex-Guard manufacturing facility in Des Moines the same way he ended it. After taking the stage to the sounds of the Hollies 1972 hit “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and acknowledging notable political figures at the rally — including Gov. Kim Reynolds, Attorney General Brenna Bird, Secretary of State Paul Pate and Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann — Vance told the crowd how he views the election.
“The fundamental question for us in this election is actually not any specific question of public policy, not any particular issue,” he said. “It’s fundamentally do you want people in Washington D.C. who fight for you, who fight for the people of this district, or who fight for corruption and fraud.”
It made sense for Vance to avoid specific policies and issues given President Trump’s latest polling numbers. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll published on Sunday found that 62 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance as president, which is the highest disapproval rating during his two terms in office. Other polls have shown similar spikes in those who disapprove of Trump’s performance. But among Republicans, the new poll found that 85 percent still approve of Trump’s performance, and the crowd at Ex-Guard reacted enthusiastically to Vance and Nunn.
“I think that’s what defines the Republican Party in Washington D.C. right now is that it’s simply about common sense,” Vance said. He then offered an example of what he considers common sense, making a barely veiled appeal to xenophobia.
“You want to lower the cost of homes for American families? Here’s a simple thing: why don’t you stop giving 30 million homes to illegal aliens?” he said. “Why don’t you seal the border and make sure those homes go to American families for a change? That’s how you lower the cost of housing.”
It’s not the first time Vance has proposed mass deportation as a way of reducing the cost of housing.
“Why did homes get so unaffordable?” he said during a televised cabinet meeting last December. “Because we had 20 million illegal aliens in this country taking homes that ought by right to go to American citizens.”
House policy experts normally estimate the impact of undocumented immigrants accounts for about 1 percent of the average home price. A study published in January 2025 by the Social Science Research Network found that attempting to use mass deportation to lower home prices “would likely backfire because it would drain the construction workforce, significantly slowing an already sluggish rate of new residential construction.”
Vance routinely engages in rhetoric that is not merely false, but grows inconsistent as he repeats it. The 20 million in his December version of the claim grew by 10 million in six months to become 30 million on Tuesday.
Vance also routinely uses rhetoric with dogwhistle appeals to xenophobia and racism, as anyone who remembers his false claims during the 2024 presidential campaign about Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio eating their neighbor’s pets knows. Those claims were being spread bywhite supremacists online before Vance took them up, but the then-junior senator from Ohio mainstreamed them. After the claims were repeatedly debunked, Vance said it didn’t matter if they were false, as long as they brought attention to the suffering of white residents in towns like Springfield.
“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance told CNN in September 2024. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
When he turned to attack Sarah Trone Garriott in his speech, Vance switched from anti-immigrant dogwhistles to transphobic ones.
“So while Zach is fighting to make sure for the benefit of Iowa, but frankly for the benefit of the whole country, that we get more E-15 into the market all over the United States of America, his opponent voted to put biological males in girls sports as early as kindergarten,” Vance said.
What Vance is referring to is Trone Garriott voting against Gov. Reynolds’ 2023 bill banning transgender girls and women from participating on a school or college sports team that matches their gender identity. There had never been a complaint about trans athletes participating in sports in Iowa when the bill was introduced, and it was opposed by every medical and mental health professional who testified before the legislature. Every Democrat in the House and Senate voted against the bill.
Vance took a few more shots at Trone Garriott over her votes against bills undermining the rights of transgender Iowans, and finished by asking, “Why is that the priority of a woman who wants to represent you in Washington D.C.?”
The part of Vance’s speech attacking Trone Garriott got off to a fumbling start, because he couldn’t find her name in his notes. (Trone Garriott responded with a video on social media in which she reminded Vance of her name and highlighted the fact that Nunn has not held any open town hall meetings during the years he’s served in Congress.)
Vance did reference farmers, claiming Trump has massively expanded opportunities for Iowa farmers. He said this on the same day the Des Moines Register published a long story on the difficulties Iowa’s agriculture sector is facing.
“U.S. farmers already were struggling with high production costs and low prices when President Donald Trump placed tariffs on the country’s largest trade partners last year, cutting exports of commodities like soybeans and leaving farmers with record-size crops they struggled to sell profitably,” the Register’s Donnelle Eller reported.
Now his administration is sending $12 billion to farmers to help offset the tariffs’ impact and provide a bridge to beefier government safety net supports later this year. Congressional leaders are discussing sending $15 billion more to farmers to compensate for the war with Iran driving farm fertilizer and fuel prices higher.
Even with aid, many U.S. farmers are haunted by the prospect of unsustainable debt. Nationally, farm bankruptcies were 44% higher last year than in 2024, and in Iowa, they more than doubled.
“We know a lot of farmers are struggling with high fertilizer prices,” Vance said. “I’m aware of that. As the president of the United States has said, we got a little blip in the Middle East, we got to take care of some business on the foreign policy side. But you know what we’re doing simultaneously? We’re working with the congressman and we’re finding ways every single day to make sure that you guys and the farmers of this great state get access to the products that they need.”
The vice president did not offer any examples of what the Republicans are doing “every single day” for farmers.
Speaking before Vance took the podium, Nunn also acknowledged that farmers are being hurt by the spike in the price of fertilizer and other necessities (“the input cost”) after the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Nunn recounted meeting with Gold Star families, and how he and Vance talked with them, acknowledging the toll having family members serving overseas in the military takes on families, especially, as in the case of the Gold Star families, when a service member dies in the line of duty.
“Iowa, I want to say that we know that we’re hurting,” Nunn, himself a veteran, told the rally-goers. “We’re hurting in the loss, we’re hurting in what we’re trying to do for our families, we’re hurting and sometimes that pain is acute. It might be the cost of filling up the minivan. It might be the input cost we’re putting on the field. But this much is also true, the sacrifice that our men and women standing on the front line today ensure that we have a country that can be energy-independent from places like Iran and Russia.”
Nunn also offered the crowd a Vance-style assessment of Democrats.
“Hakeem [Jeffries] just said it last week before an assassination attempt on the president. He wants regime change. The Democrats are saying, ‘We want the largest tax increase on working-class Americans,'” Nunn said, “and Democrats across the board are putting places like Iowa, not only in second, but at a distant, distant 50th.”
According to the State Coincident Index issued in January by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia — which compiles data on non-farm payroll employment hours worked in manufacturing, wage and salary disbursements and the unemployment rate — Iowa ranks 50th among states for economic growth for the previous 12 months.
“The rank of Iowa’s Index growth over the most recent 12 months is 50, meaning that the Index views Iowa’s recent economic growth performance as below average when compared to other states over the same 12-month period,” the January report said.
