GOP rivals share the stage, but did it change any minds?

DES MOINES — There were only two Republicans on the presidential debate stage Wednesday as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met for the highest-stake faceoff yet just days before Iowa’s caucuses.

Haley and DeSantis' spirited debate came in the shadow of a live town hall held by the man who is dominating the GOP primary contest — Donald Trump. The former president has stayed away from all five televised debates, holding a rival town hall Wednesday on Fox News. The one Republican candidate whose entire campaign has been based around stopping Trump, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, suspended his campaign just hours before the debate.

For the Iowa Republicans who attended the debate between DeSantis and Haley at Drake University, the event had only mixed results in helping voters make up their minds.

Jim Wallace, of Des Moines, went in undecided — and came out the same.

“Honestly, no,” Wallace said when asked if the debate helped him make a decision. “I think they’re both terrific. Frankly, it’s hard for me to differentiate between them.”

But Curt Ellis, of Grimes, said he came into the evening leaning heavily toward Haley and that watching her in the debate “sealed the deal.”

“She can put a lot more positive spin on the direction (of the country), and it seems like there’s a lot more focus on where she wants the leadership to go,” Ellis said. “I think Haley’s been overall a bit more positive. I think we’ve had plenty of negative.”

Donna Vorm, of Johnson, and Mona Yentes, of Clive, attended the debate together. Both are DeSantis supporters and emerged unchanged.

“I like DeSantis, and Nikki basically summarized why I’m supporting him: He’s a great governor,” Yentes said. “He’s a great administrator. He said what he believed, he did it, he kept the promises, and all the things that conservatives have wanted leaders to do, he did.”

Here are some takeaways from the event:

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Fight for second

Ever since debates began in August, Trump’s absence has created a surreal scene of politicians badly trailing in the polls talking about what they’ll do when they win the presidency. On Wednesday, at least, it was clear that the remaining contenders in the Republican primary are fighting for second place.

The opening question was why each of the two candidates thought they were the best option for voters who didn’t want to support Trump.

Haley opened the debate by touting a new website to track DeSantis’ “lies.”

DeSantis countered, “We don’t need another mealy-mouthed politician who just tells you what she thinks you want to hear, just so she can get into office and do her donors’ bidding.”

The sharpest exchange came after Haley continued to needle DeSantis on how he ran his campaign, saying it showed he couldn’t be trusted to run the country if he could spend $150 million and have so much internal chaos and stagnant polling. When the Florida governor tried to interrupt her, Haley said, “I think I hit a nerve.”

DeSantis dismissed Haley’s criticism as “process stuff” that voters don’t care about and bragged about his conservative record in Florida while jabbing her for failing to pass school choice as governor.

Both made swipes at Trump, but spent most of the time on each other.

Trump’s campaign already has quipped that the debates are actually vice presidential debates and, during his Fox News town hall, suggested he already knew who his pick for vice president would be if he wins the nomination.

Attacking Trump, but carefully

By staying physically offstage, Trump has largely avoided being attacked in the debates. It’s tricky to criticize a man beloved by most Republican voters, and for the most part, the contenders haven’t bothered. But that’s been slowly changing.

DeSantis opened with what’s become his standard campaign sound bite — claiming that Trump is interested only in “his issues” but he cares about “your issues.” Haley criticized the former president for piling onto the federal deficit, not being strong enough against China and failing to end illegal immigration.

Trump’s counterprogramming

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Many of Trump’s rivals, including some of his fellow Republicans and Democratic President Joe Biden, have warned that he is surrounded by chaos and would be ineffective in the presidency at best — and a threat to democracy at worst.

During his appearance at a Fox News town hall that aired at the same time as the debate, Trump seemed to downplay such concerns. He backed away from his comments, also delivered on Fox last month, that he wouldn't be a dictator “except for Day One.” On Wednesday, he said he's “not going to be a dictator.”

“I’m not going to have time for retribution,” he said despite having repeatedly framed his campaign that way. “There won’t be retribution. There’ll be success.”

When asked if political violence is ever acceptable, Trump, who helped spark an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, said “of course” such activity is never acceptable. That’s despite predicting “bedlam” just a day earlier if criminal cases against him succeed.

Uniter vs. fighter

Without other candidates vying for attention on stage, voters got to see the contrasts between DeSantis and Haley. The biggest one may have been their style: Haley repeatedly talked about the importance of bringing people together while DeSantis was often scornful of reaching out to the other side.

Part of Haley’s pitch to the Republican electorate is that she could unite the warring sides of the country. On Wednesday, she bemoaned politicians who keep telling people who’s “wrong” as opposed to uniting the public. “What a leader does is they bring out the best in people,” she said.

She was throwing a jab at Trump, but might have also aimed for DeSantis, a renowned partisan brawler who touts how he’s defeated the Democratic Party and liberal interest groups as Florida governor.

The contrast was sharpest at the end of the debate, when the subject turned to crime and DeSantis bemoaned the “BLM riots” — a reference to "Black Lives Matter" — after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020 and Trump’s response.

“He sat in the White House and tweeted ‘law and order,’ but he did nothing to ensure law and order,” DeSantis said, noting he mobilized the Florida National Guard. He dinged Haley for sending out a consolatory tweet about Floyd’s death.

Haley bristled. She noted that South Carolina saw two horrible incidents during her tenure — the shooting of an unarmed Black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer and the 2015 murder of nine Black people by a white supremacist at a historically Black Charleston church. After the church shooting, Haley removed the Confederate flag from the state capitol.

“We came together as a state in prayer and we had no riots,” Haley said. “We didn’t need the National Guard, because a leader knows how to bring out the best in people.”

Iowa surrogates react

Senate President Amy Sinclair, R-Allenton, and a DeSantis endorser: “I think probably for me the most the most compelling arguments in favor of Governor DeSantis … he has made Florida the single best large state in the nation. He and his legislature have worked hard to make the economy thrive, to make education top of the nation, to eliminate regulation, to reduce debt. … He delivered on the promises that other Republicans have been making for decades. … And so the most compelling argument isn't even an argument about what he's going to do with Social Security or the war in Ukraine. The most compelling argument is that he walked in and took … that state and made it the best one in the nation.”

Rep. Austin Harris, R-Moulton, and a Haley endorser: "I think the message — the positive message — that Nikki Haley laid out about her record and the vision that she has for this country will resonate. … I think that when people look at what was said tonight … they're going to see somebody that had a positive vision for the country, and somebody who isn't focused on attacking his opponent.”

Iowa Christian evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, a DeSantis endorser: "My dad told me a long time ago you know, you don't build yourself up by tearing somebody down, but at the same time, you have to call people's records about what they have said and what they say they're going to do now. And again, I thought Governor DeSantis did a great job of that."

Sen. Chris Cournoyer, R-LeClaire, and a Haley endorser: “I think she, instead of attacking her opponent, she spent time talking about the issues. She talked about how she's going to solve those issues. And, and I think that's what voters want to hear right now. … I'm hearing a lot from independents and even Democrats who are going to change their voter registration on Monday to caucus for Nikki Haley on Monday. And I think that's really an important part of unifying the country and broadening the base of our party. It just shows that she has a command of the issues and she's ready to modernize and bring in a new generational leadership style that we just don't have right now.”

Erin Murphy and Tom Barton of The Gazette Des Moines Bureau contributed.