Is Feenstra finally courting Republican voters?

Some conservative and Republican organizations were beginning to wonder if Randy Feenstra, the U.S. congressman and candidate for Iowa governor, would ever accept their invitations to engage with the Republican grassroots before the June gubernatorial primary.

Perhaps he’s finally ready to change things up. Among a series of campaign stops last week, Feenstra appeared at the Feb. 17 monthly gathering for MAGA Nation, a conservative group formed last year to maintain the energy behind President Donald Trump’s 2024 win.

Presumably the front-runner with more name recognition and money in the till than the other four candidates, Feenstra’s campaign strategy to date seems to have been to bypass county parties and grassroots groups such as MAGA Nation and quietly coast to the GOP nomination on relative name recognition, supplemented with paid ads.

His appearance at MAGA Nation’s February event suggested a departure from that anemic strategy — even if just briefly — as some were bound to give him the third degree about everything from policy positions to his lack of engagement with the grassroots.

I drove two hours to West Des Moines to see if the Randy Feenstra that appeared there was the same Randy Feenstra I met two months ago at a barely publicized, sparsely attended Dec. 19 stop in Cedar Rapids that was organized by his campaign.

Recap: ‘You’re going to lose’

I had attended that Dec. 19 campaign stop in my capacity as a political junkie. Taken aback by the anemic performance I witnessed that afternoon from the presumed front-runner whose lackluster effort had already caught the ire of many Republicans, I shook the candidate’s hand as he walked up to greet me and politely told him that he will lose the election.

As I mentioned in the column I wrote the following week, I also told the good congressman, who politely listened as I told him why he would lose, that he should tell me so to my face at his inaugural gala in 2027 if I end up being wrong and he ends up stopping Rob Sand from buying the governorship with his rich wife’s money and his humble boy-next-door act.

But that’s a big if.

“I’ll remember this conversation,” was Feenstra’s reply.

The next time we crossed paths was at Tuesday’s event, minutes before it was to start. This time, our interaction was a bit briefer.

“Hi, I’m Randy Feenstra,” he said with a smile as he extended his hand.

“We’ve met,” I replied with my own smile. And that was the extent of it.

To be fair, it’s hard to recall every name and face and conversation when there are over 2 million eligible voters to court. Perhaps I’m not the only outspoken blonde who told the supposed GOP front-runner to his face that he’s going to lose.

Absence begets criticism

Feenstra did at the MAGA Nation gathering exactly what was expected: he faced a tougher audience than he was accustomed to. He took their questions and (mostly) answered them — and he did it with seemingly more energy and intensity than he has previously shown.

If he were to have campaigned that way from the get-go — that is, if he had made himself more visible to the critics and available to the skeptics — he might have outright avoided some of the hostility he has faced from members of the Republican grassroots.

But he hasn’t. And his energy and intensity at the MAGA Nation event almost seemed a projection of the criticism he has been fending off from people in his own party for months now.

Feenstra has earned that criticism. He’s ducked some notable events, such as the sold-out Jan. 27 primary debate organized by conservative group Moms For Liberty that was moderated by popular WHO Radio host Simon Conway. The debate had been scheduled for the evening of Jan. 27 — the same day as President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Iowa. Feenstra caught a ride to town with Trump on Air Force One.

But instead of traveling 10 miles that evening to participate in the most widely broadcast GOP primary debate to date, Feenstra caught another ride back to Washington, D.C.

“And the very next day you turned around and came right back (to Iowa) again,” Conway said to him during a Feb. 16 radio interview. “Why didn’t you just come to the debate?”

Feenstra told Conway that flying back to D.C. on Air Force One gave him an opportunity to spend a couple hours with Trump.

“To me, it was just so valuable to be with the president talking about our state and how we can get it to grow,” he said.

Or to pitch the president for his endorsement. More on that in a moment.

“I hear you about debates,” he added. “We have a filing deadline … it’ll be open and closed on March 13, so then we’ll know who exactly is gonna be running for governor. And I think at that point, we can … see what debates can be done.”

No debates until primary opponents confirmed

Feenstra told members of the media Tuesday night that until the March 13 candidate filing deadline passes, “we don’t even know who’s gonna be in the race.” When I asked him if he expected any other candidates to file, he said he had “no idea” and didn’t answer a follow-up question about whether additional primary challengers would affect his campaign strategy.

By putting so much emphasis on knowing who the other Republican candidates are, Feenstra seems to acknowledge that getting past the June primary isn’t a slam dunk.

And it may not be. Lacking a Trump endorsement so far, Feenstra is reduced to assuring Trump loyalists that he is “working on” getting the President’s blessing and “earning it every day.” Meanwhile, some of those same loyalists have actively urged the President to withhold his backing.

To date, the governor’s race is the only major race in Iowa in which Trump has not made an endorsement.

Feenstra is also missing the endorsement of influential conservative evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats — who made waves in 2020 when he endorsed Feenstra for Congress over then-incumbent Steve King. Vander Plaats announced earlier this month that he was backing Adam Steen, the former head of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services who launched his campaign in August.

“I believe you cannot win the governorship without motivating your base,” Vander Plaats told media personality Steve Deace, who also endorsed Steen. “And Congressman Feenstra has just been inept at motivating the base, whether it's his campaign or whether it's him or a combination of both.”

If Steen continues to gain steam or if any of the other candidates blossom, securing enough votes in the June primary could be a challenge. If no candidate receives a minimum 35%, the nominee will be chosen by state convention delegates — typically those who attend caucuses and participate in their county party functions.

Nomination convention could shake things up

That’s far from a done deal, but with five candidates vying for it, nomination by convention isn’t an outlandish possibility. It was last done in 2018, when delegates selected Mike Naig as their candidate for Secretary of Agriculture after multiple rounds of voting.

If Iowa Republicans select their gubernatorial nominee at the party’s June 13 convention, Feenstra’s campaign could arrange for enough supporters to be convention delegates, easily clinching his nomination.

Or the delegation could be mostly comprised of grassroots activists and members of the county party organizations he’s been quietly keeping at arm’s length. That makes events such county central committee meetings and other grassroots groups important — even to a so-called front-runner flush with campaign cash.

His appearance at Tuesday’s event didn’t do enough to endear its attendees to the well-financed Feenstra. The best they could do was agree — vehemently, for what it’s worth — that they will vote for Feenstra if he is the Republican nominee.

“One hundred percent. Because we don’t have any other choice,” said Waukee resident Carmela Rollins. “If you get Sand, I’ll guarantee, you’re gonna be another New York, another Minnesota.”

That won’t be enough to get him across the finish line in November.

Tuesday’s event was better than what I’d previously observed, but it couldn’t cure me of my concerns about the governor’s race in Iowa.

I said it in December, and I’ll say it again now: if Randy Feenstra is the nominee, Iowa Republicans will lose in 2026.

Comments: 319-343-8222; althea.cole.writer@gmail.com