DES MOINES, IOWA – Gov. Chris Sununu joined 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday evening, speaking about the need for a new generation to lead in the final days before the Iowa caucuses.
Haley and Sununu spoke at the Des Moines Embassy Club, hosting more than 100 people from 35 states between ages 18 to 30 who were running for office. The event was hosted by Run Gen Z, an organization dedicated to getting more conservative young people to run for elected office.
As the attendees ate dinner, Sununu and Haley spoke about their experiences running for office – and Haley’s current bid for the White House.
Sununu, who endorsed Haley in December, said he was impressed by Haley’s energy as they traveled together on the Iowa caucus trail.
“Look, I was on the campaign (trail) with you two days ago, I just flew to Iowa – I’m exhausted,” Sununu said. “You look like you just got up. You look like you’re ready to go.”
The Iowa caucuses are Jan. 15, less than two weeks away. Most presidential campaigns are holding a blitz of events across Iowa in the days remaining until the first-in-the-nation caucuses – and Haley is no exception.
“We’ve been doing this for 11 months, 16-, 17-hour days, every single day,” Haley said. So when you get to this point, you’re excited. … We’ve done, you know, 150 town halls, shaking every hand, answering every question. I’m the last person to lead, and so now to have it come back to this? It’s good. The big surprise is: It’s cold.”
According data aggregated by FiveThirtyEight, former President Donald Trump leads in Iowa polls ahead of the caucuses with 50 percent, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 18.4 percent, and Haley at 15.7 percent. Though Haley has said she aims for a “good showing” in Iowa, her campaign is already looking ahead to the first-in-the-nation primary – Sununu’s home state.
Haley faced some backlash for comments she made in New Hampshire on the caucuses, where she called for New Hampshire to “correct” Iowa’s results.
“We have an opportunity to get this right, and I know we’ll get it right, and I trust you,” Haley said in Milford, N.H., Wednesday. “I trust every single one of you. You know how to do this. You know, Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it. … And then my sweet state of South Carolina brings it home. That’s what we do.”
DeSantis said her comments were “disrespectful to Iowans” in a KFAB interview Thursday, while the Haley campaign responded that it was a “lighthearted joke.”
“Iowa’s always gonna be the first caucus,” Haley said in an interview with the Des Moines Register and NBC News. “New Hampshire was always gonna be first in the nation. South Carolina was gonna be the first in the South. And we would banter against each other. That’s all this is.”
Haley shared her takeaways from campaigning in early states with the Run Gen Z event.
“I find Iowans to be very patriotic, very hardworking and very careful, they’re very conscious about who they give their support to and what that means,” she said, adding that New Hampshire residents wearing their “feelings on their sleeves” with no topics out of bounds.
She told the group of young candidates that she sees similarities between her previous campaigns for state lawmaker and governor and her time on the presidential campaign trail.
“But I can tell you this, running for president, to me, is no different than running for what you’re looking at,” she said. “It’s just bigger. Because I’m campaigning exactly the same way as I did when I ran against the longest-serving legislator. It’s exactly the same way when I was a Tea Party candidate that ran in a five-way race. … It’s listening to people, it’s communicating, and it’s making sure that you show them what you care about.”
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch, which like the New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. It is republished here under the Iowa Capital Dispatch’s Creative Commons license.