President Donald Trump said on TruthSocial on Thursday night that he’s coming to Iowa twice before the Nov. 3 election “to get truly fantastic Warriors elected.” The first Trump rally will be in Sioux City on Thursday. The rally will begin at 4:30 p.m. although speeches are not scheduled to start until 6 p.m., according to its ticketing site. The site does not say where in Sioux City the rally will be held.
No information has been published yet, about where and when the Nov. 1, Trump rally will take place.
Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican Party, was the first to announce Trump’s planned visits.
“I just got off the phone with President Trump,” Kaufmann posted on social media shortly before noon on Thursday. “He told me that he will be in Iowa on October 22 and November 1. He is anxious for Iowans to hear his message before they vote.”
In his post, Trump listed “Ashley Hinson for U.S. Senate, Zach Lahn for Governor, Mariannette Miller-Meeks for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, Joe Mitchell for the 2nd District, Zach Nunn for the 3rd District, and Chris McGowan for the 4th District” as the candidates he is trying to boost. Aside from McGowan, who is running in solidly Republican western Iowa, the candidates Trump name-checked are either in extremely close races and may lose (Hinson, Mitchell, Nunn) or already appear likely to lose.
Democratic candidate for governor Rob Sand has always led Zach Lahn in statewide polls, and the margins by which Sand leads have grown as the election approaches. Sand has also had a substantially greater number of Iowans make contributions to his campaign, and even has more Republican donors than Lahn does. And this year, in a surprising break with tradition, neither the PAC of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation nor the PAC of Iowa Association of Business and Industry endorsed a candidate for governor. Both of these groups are typically reliable supporters of Republican candidates.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a Republican super PAC associated with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, was ending its spending on behalf of two incumbents. One of them was Thomas Kean in New Jersey, the other was Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
“The decision represents the first instance this cycle of national Republican groups abandoning incumbents as the party scrambles to prevent more widespread losses in the midterm elections,” the Times wrote.
The decision to pull the funding from the two race was made “over the weekend after internal G.O.P. polling had showed their re-election chances dimming,” according to the Times. The money the CLF had scheduled to spend on Kean’s and Miller-Meeks’ campaigns in the final weeks before the election “is being redirected to shore up a number of incumbent Republicans, including some whom the group has not previously spent money on this year.”
Miller-Meeks has flatly rejected the reporting by the Times and other news outlets that the CLF’s withdrawal is a sign of the weakness of her campaign. She insisted it is a sign of her strength as a candidate.
“We have run such a good campaign, we have worked so hard, we have raised so much money — record amounts — that they’re pulling money out to help people who didn’t take the environment seriously and their races seriously,” Miller-Meeks said at a campaign event with Ashley Hinson in Davenport on Thursday. “So what narrative does that tell you? We’re winning.”
Last week, the Cook Political Report (CPR), a leading campaign analysis site, changed its rating of the Miller-Meeks/Christina Bohannan rematch in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District from “Toss Up” to “Lean Democrat.”
“GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ electoral struggles have, in past cycles, stemmed from her longstanding issues with conservatives in southeastern Iowa,” Erin Covey, CPR editor for House races, wrote in the article explaining the rating change. “Though Trump won her district by 8.5 points in 2024, she barely hung on, winning reelection by just 0.2 percent. But this cycle, it’s largely the tough national political environment — coupled with Miller-Meek’s own unpopularity — that put her in an incredibly difficult position to win reelection.”
According to Covey, even if Republicans increased their spending on Miller-Meek’s behalf and narrowed the gap between the two, “Bohannan has established enough of an advantage to remain the clear favorite.”
The CPR analysis was published four days before news broke of the CLF’s funding shift. According to campaign finance data published this week by the FEC, Bohannan outperformed Miller-Meeks in fundraising during the most recent quarterly reporting period, which ended on Sept. 30. Bohannan raised $2.4 million and Miller-Meeks, a three-term incumbent, raised $1.7 million.
Trump started his Truth Social post on Thursday night by playing up his past popularity in Iowa.
“I am going to be coming to your Great State, which I won in Landslides all three times, with the Highest Vote ever obtained by a Political Candidate (for any Office!),” he said.
It’s true Trump carried Iowa all three times he was the Republican nominee for president, but the 55.73 percent of the vote he won in 2024 against Democrat Kamala Harris — his best showing — is only the 14th highest percentage of the vote won by a presidential candidate in Iowa history.
Trump’s popularity in the state has declined dramatically since his win in 2024. Multiple polls conducted this year have shown the president’s approval rating is underway in Iowa. A New York Times/Siena poll of 606 likely voters in Iowa, conducted between Sept. 22 and Oct. 1, found 58 percent disapproved of Trump’s performance as president.
This year’s Republican primary also showed Trump’s diminished standing in the state. It was once assumed that Trump’s was the most important endorsement a Republican candidate in Iowa could have, but this year’s Republican primary showed the limits of Trump’s appeal. The candidate he endorsed for governor, four-term congressman and presumed frontrunner Randy Feenstra, lost. Trump’s endorsement came very late in the race, just four days before Zach Lahn squeaked out a victory in the primary, beating Feenstra by 0.77 percent.
“Randy Feenstra has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Governor of Iowa — RANDY WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump wrote in his May 29, endorsement of Feenstra on TruthSocial.
Feenstra was the first Trump-endorsed candidate to lose this year.
Five weeks later, Trump finally endorsed Lahn.
“Zach Lahn has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Governor of Iowa – HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” the president posted on TruthSocial.
In his TruthSocial post on Thursday, Trump said the six candidates he listed — “all spectacular people” — “have my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
He finished with, “I WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN, AND NEITHER WILL ANY OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES!”
