Cold comfort for Haley-heads in Iowa

Christensen was allowing herself to hope for that much. She liked Haley. “I just felt like when I met her, I felt proud to be a woman, with all she’s accomplished in her life,” the part-time school aide said.

Christensen and more than 260 of her neighbors had stuffed themselves into parkas and winter boots and crept along barely plowed roads to make their way to their caucus site at the school. They arrived on time for the 7 p.m. proceedings, folding themselves onto a set of collapsible risers or leaning on the royal blue mats that lined the wall. There were a few people wearing Haley stickers; a Ron DeSantis supporter was handing out campaign-themed fans. A service dog lay quietly next to its owner. A few children sat in a corner, banging soda bottles on the ground to stave off the boredom.

The caucus site was run by Terry Rich, a former zookeeper who once ran the state lotto. He also liked Haley, and when it came time for Iowans to try to persuade each other with brief speeches ahead of voting, Rich traded his black American-flag-embroidered baseball cap for a Haley hat and spoke to his neighbors on behalf of the former South Carolina governor.

“I think she’s the winner in the general election,” he said. And that would be historic: “Who ever thought, 10 years ago, it would be the Republicans who could elect the first woman president of the United States?”

That line drew applause from the bleachers.

A Vivek Ramaswamy supporter took center court to explain that his preferred candidate “knows how to shut down the deep state.” A DeSantis backer dinged Trump for deferring to Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s former top infectious-disease expert, during covid. Trump’s champion, a man named Keven Arrowsmith, spoke off the cuff about the first time he had read “The Art of the Deal” and became “quite a fan” of Trump’s negotiation skills.

When it came time to vote, the locals — 173 from the Waukee precinct, plus another 90 from nearby Clive — wrote their preferred candidates’ names on tiny slips of paper, and Rich and Arrowsmith began collecting the ballots in a pair of Hy-Vee grocery bags.

At 7:30 p.m., they emptied them and read each of the ballots aloud, one by one. Less than five minutes into the counting, phones buzzed with the news that Trump was projected to win the caucuses statewide.

No surprise there. But could Haley win a small victory here?

It was hard to tell from the voice count. Arrowsmith, reading the votes for Waukee, would go on a “Haley” streak, then a “Trump” streak, each interrupted by the occasional “DeSantis” or “Ramaswamy.”

A few dozen voters circled the school cafeteria table that had been dragged into the center of the gym to watch the count. Diane Banasiak, a retiree from Clive, hovered with her “Pick Nikki” sign. A Trump-supporting couple exchanged worried looks. In the end, Trump still won 73 ballots among the Waukee voters. Haley came in second with 44 votes, DeSantis third with 33 and Ramaswamy fourth with 23. The former president won among the Clive voters, as well: Trump received 33 votes, DeSantis 26 and Haley 25.

“That surprises me,” Banasiak said. “There are so many young women who live around here.”

The Haley fans blamed the cold for keeping young families at home. They blamed the media narrative of Trump’s inevitability for discouraging whatever motivation could have pushed anti-Trump Republicans to show up in subzero temperatures.

Rich looked for silver linings in the margins. “Success for Nikki Haley would have been less than 50 percent for Donald Trump, and that’s what happened,” he said of the outcome at the site. “I didn’t expect her to win.”

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There had been no hiccups in the process, no question about the results. That, at least, was something.

“I’m glad they voted for their candidate,” Rich said, “because I want people to vote who they want.”

“We as a country have lost our way,” Christensen said. She wanted “anybody but Trump” to win. “If the best we can do is Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis, we’re in a world of trouble.”

At Haley’s election night party, in a hotel ballroom at the West Des Moines Marriott, hope gave way to cope.

“This is exactly where they wanted to be a month ago. We just kept wanting more,” said Pauline Niebur of Des Moines, who had been a precinct captain for Haley at the caucus held at her local middle school. Haley had walloped Trump there by almost 100 votes.

“Does Iowa always pick the winner? No,” said Claudia Ewald, from West Des Moines, whose caucus had also chosen Haley. “But one of our top two is usually the nominee.”

Maybe that would be the hope to hold on to: a second-place finish.

In the ballroom, where Haley’s supporters sipped beers and picked at appetizers, Fox News’s election night coverage was being broadcast onto a wall. A graphic showed DeSantis and Haley seesawing between second place. By 10 p.m., Haley had settled into third, and the Haley-heads kept finding smaller and smaller things to celebrate: As Fox News cut to a county-by-county analysis, a woman rang a cowbell whenever the screen revealed a county where Haley had bested DeSantis.

Then Trump’s victory speech hit the airwaves. He congratulated DeSantis and Haley, sort of, observing that the two “actually did very well.” Not that anyone could hear him, because the audio had been supplanted in the speakers by George Harrison’s “What Is Life.”

Haley took the stage, a half-hour later, in a magenta shirtdress and a tight smile. She had spent more money on advertising than any other candidate in the state and ended with less than 20 percent of the vote.

That was more than the 2 percent she had started with, she reminded the room.

“Iowa made this GOP primary a two-person race!” she said — a somewhat odd declaration, coming from the third-place finisher. But the Haley-heads responded with thunderous applause.

Then, it was off to the airport, to catch a flight to New Hampshire.

She thinks she can win there. She knows quite a few people who are voting for her.