Vance Gets Chance to Woo IA GOP Voters 05/05 06:07

   Vice President JD Vance will visit Iowa on Tuesday, marking his first visit 
since taking office to the state where Republicans in less than two years will 
cast the first votes to pick their party's next presidential nominee.

   DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Vice President JD Vance will visit Iowa on Tuesday, 
marking his first visit since taking office to the state where Republicans in 
less than two years will cast the first votes to pick their party's next 
presidential nominee.

   Vance, who is seen as one of the GOP's strongest potential candidates for 
president in 2028, is making the trip to campaign on behalf of Republican Rep. 
Zach Nunn, who faces a competitive race to keep his Des Moines-area seat in the 
November midterms.

   But the visit offers Vance an opportunity to test his reception before 
Iowa's voters, whose leadoff caucuses give them an outsized role in determining 
the next presidential nominee. Campaigning for a local congressman in his role 
as the sitting vice president gives him an opening chance to make an impression 
on Iowa Republicans, seasoned evaluators of those who seek the nation's highest 
office before the campaign begins in earnest.

   Vance's appearance comes days after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is also 
considered a possible 2028 candidate, spoke to a group of evangelical 
Christians who are influential in Iowa's GOP contest.

   Des Moines-based Jimmy Centers, a Republican political consultant, said the 
2028 contest is "light-years away," but said the Republicans who hear Vance 
speak on Tuesday will be evaluating how he might measure up in an election for 
the White House.

   "I certainly think, as of right now, Vice President Vance would probably be 
a straw-poll winner of Iowa Republicans for 2028. But I don't think anyone is 
saying, 'We won't consider anybody else,'" Centers said.

   Vance visit comes as higher prices for gas, fertilizer hit Iowans

   Vance, who has not said whether he will run for the presidency in 2028, is 
scheduled to appear with Nunn at a manufacturing facility in Des Moines. His 
office did not comment on the trip's impact on Vance's political future.

   The vice president's visit follows a trip President Donald Trump made in 
January to tout the administration's tax cuts, part of a string of stops 
they're making this year on economic issues ahead of the midterm elections that 
will determine control of Congress.

   But Vance's visit comes at a time when his own political prospects -- and 
the message he's expected to deliver on the economy -- have been complicated by 
the war in Iran.

   The vice president, who has long been skeptical of foreign military 
interventions, has seemed a reluctant defender of the nine-week-old war for 
which Trump has struggled to find an off-ramp. Iowans, like much of the rest of 
the country, are grappling with higher gas prices because of the conflict. But 
the state's farmers are also feeling the pinch of high fertilizer costs from 
the war and have been hurt by the tariffs Trump has imposed.

   While Iowa's farmers have steadfastly supported the president, they have 
been looking to the White House for assurances that the current troubles won't 
last.

   Vance's visit to Iowa was originally scheduled for last week, but the timing 
shifted because the House moved to pass a sweeping farm bill that Nunn was due 
to vote on.

   The vice president also had been slated to appear last week at an Iowa State 
University event with Turning Point USA, but the organization said it was not 
able to reschedule the event with the university until sometime in the fall.

   It's 'awfully, awfully early' in the road to 2028

   Kim Schmett, a longtime Iowa GOP activist, said the presidential cycle 
starts "deceptively slow."

   Republican figures testing the waters often drop by the Westside 
Conservative Club, which Schmett hosts, but he said it's still too far out from 
the caucuses, which are typically held in January of the presidential election 
year.

   He said Trump's Make America Great Again political movement "is very alive 
and going here" in Iowa, which would benefit Vance -- as well as Secretary of 
State Marco Rubio, who is also thought to be another potential candidate.

   "I think there's going to be a lot of MAGA support," he said. "And Vice 
President Vance and Marco Rubio seem to be the recipients of where that is 
going at the moment."

   But Schmett cautioned, "it's awfully, awfully early in the process."

   On the Democratic side, at least half a dozen presidential prospects have 
been making visits to the states with the earliest presidential primary 
contests, including recent visits to Iowa by former Transportation Secretary 
Pete Buttigieg and Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin.

   Meanwhile, potential Republican presidential candidates "are treading very 
lightly," said GOP strategist Alex Conant, who worked on Marco Rubio's 2016 
presidential campaign.

   "I think Republicans are going to be very reluctant to get in Trump's way 
until Trump gives the green light for the campaign to start," Conant said.

   That means much of the groundwork to meet with donors or activists or 
recruit political staffers might happen slowly and subtly -- for now.

   After the midterms? Conant said: "It'll be irresistible."