The hurly burly of the Legislative Session won’t stop people from coming to the Hawkeye State between now and Monday.
That’s the promise Ron DeSantis made to Iowa reporters Tuesday after a town hall event.
“I got a bunch of people from Tallahassee coming. Members of the Florida legislature, people, the administration, former people in the administration paying their own way wanting to come up and then just wanted to do that,” DeSantis said.
Those associates of the Governor will join other “people from all over this country who are coming to volunteer to help turn out the vote.”
“People that just have been supporters of mine in other states, they’re paying their own way. They’re just showing up to our office and they’re going to go knock on doors,” DeSantis said.
“I don’t think any other candidate has that type of enthusiasm because I mean, these are people that have appreciated the leadership that we provided, you know, down in the state of Florida and they see that as something that could help get this country in better shape.”
The Governor also provided a storm and itinerary update to the Hawkeye State scribes, describing his hectic schedule before the main event in the Midwest.
“I was back in Tallahassee this morning, declared a state of emergency because we had a lot of tornadic activity coming through Northwest Florida and going across northern Florida. We delivered the state of the state address to open up the Legislative Session,” DeSantis recounted.
“We did a briefing at the Emergency Operations Center, got on a plane, flew into Des Moines, then just did the Fox News Town Hall,” he added. “We’re in good shape in Florida with everything. We marshaled resources and fortunately, you know, a lot of those resources did not end up needing to be deployed. There was some damage, no fatalities as of my briefing right before the town hall, which is a very, very good sign.”
The DeSantis campaign told supporters weeks ago they were on their own for travel costs should they want to support their candidate.
“Since we’re doing what we can to make it from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina, we aren’t able to commit at this time to paying for everything for the few hundred surrogates we’ll have up here,” wrote Amanda Vargo, on behalf of the campaign.
“Candidates can have surrogates speak on their behalf at caucus night. We have more than 500 caucus locations that we’re looking to fill, and we’d love to have some of Governor DeSantis’ trusted supporters speak on his behalf! It’s an all-hands-on-deck effort!”
The DeSantis campaign is leaving open the possibility that their imported supporters will potentially “be the only advocate in the room for Governor DeSantis.” But they don’t have to worry about what to say, as talking points will be provided.
“You’ll be given the floor to read a script we’ll provide and give the caucus-goers some personal reasons why you support Governor DeSantis,” Vargo added.
There was also a call from First Lady Casey DeSantis to “moms and grandmoms to come from wherever it might be — North Carolina, South Carolina — and descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus because you do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus.”
Casey DeSantis clarified these comments during a later event in Iowa, noting that the campaign knows “that they cannot vote in the caucus process, but they can come and volunteer and they can be a part of it in that way, so you’re seeing people from North Carolina, from South Carolina, from Florida, in particular coming because they feel so strongly about protecting the future of their kids.”
The clarification was needed, as controversy was quick to manifest. The Iowa GOP noted that all caucus participants must actually live in the state in the wake of those comments, while the Donald Trump campaign suggested the DeSantises were engaged in a voter fraud scheme.
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