(USNewsMag.com) – Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa says she will back Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida over former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination during a rally on Monday evening.
Since the beginning of the modern Republican presidential nominating process fifty years ago, Iowa has played a pivotal role in the battle for the White House.
Popular two-term Republican governor Reynolds will join DeSantis at his event in Des Moines as a “special guest,” according to a social media account affiliated with DeSantis’ presidential campaign in Florida.
DeSantis has spent most of his time and money on the campaign road in Iowa over the past few months, visiting 87 of the state’s 99 counties. Still, polls show the governor is a distant second to Trump in Iowa and elsewhere. However, the endorsement is a potential boost for DeSantis’ presidential prospects.
Reynolds, who easily won re-election to a second term last year, had remained neutral in the 2024 GOP nomination contest as the field of aspirants grew to over a dozen people, but she had repeatedly not ruled out endorsing as the date of the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses approached.
In anticipation of Reynold’s announcement, former President Trump lashed out at the Iowa governor, saying that her political career would be over because “MAGA would never support her again.”
If Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s governor, backs Ron DeSanctimonious, who is “totally dying in the polls both in Iowa and nationwide,” Trump wrote, “it will be the end of her political career in that MAGA will never support her again.”
Trump continued by saying he now regrets endorsing Reynolds and citing a poll from Morning Consult that called Reynolds “America’s most unpopular governor.”
Trump is the clear frontrunner in Iowa and elsewhere. When he became the first sitting or past president of the United States to be indicted for a felony, he saw his advantage over his opponents grow throughout the spring and summer.
Trump has four indictments, including in federal court in Washington, D.C., and Fulton County court in Georgia, on claims he tried to reverse his 2020 presidential election loss.
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