Coming to a front porch near you: Anti-Trump evangelizers

It’s a Saturday morning in a well-manicured suburb. Two men knock on your door. When you answer, they greet you with a smile. You’re somewhat apprehensive, but they seem friendly. You hear them out. They engage in small talk, then cut to the chase: Do you plan to support former president Donald Trump in 2024?

These Iowa-based evangelizers are not of a religious stripe. Instead, their purpose is to get Iowans to vote in the upcoming Republican caucus, the first contest in the 2024 presidential election cycle. “Will you be backing Trump,” they ask, “or will you be considering someone else?” Depending on your answer, they smile or they gently prod you to reconsider. Either way, they plead with you to please make sure you get out on caucus night and cast your vote.

Their organization, Americans For Prosperity — a center-right group bankrolled by the billionaire Koch brothers — is no fan of Trump. This election cycle, the Koch network has amassed a war chest of over $70 million, with the express goal of nominating any Republican besides the former president. On Tuesday, AFP broke tradition by officially endorsing a presidential candidate during the primary: Nikki Haley, the ex-South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador. No longer will these door-to-door canvassers push for any candidate besides Trump; now, they’ll be canvassing in favor of Haley.

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I joined a group of AFP-Iowa staffers to knock doors on a Thursday and Saturday morning earlier this month. They are based in a small office near Des Moines, but they don’t do much office work: the heartbeat of their outreach is door-to-door canvassing, whether pushing for presidential candidates or — more frequently — raising awareness for local races or down-ballot initiatives. AFP, a libertarian-leaning advocacy group, has worked to cut through licensing regulations for barbers in Iowa. In Arizona, they pushed for tax reform; in Nevada, for eliminating red-tape for short-term rentals, like Airbnb and Vrbo; in Utah, for not expanding Medicare.

But the focus of the Iowa outreach, at least for the next seven weeks, is getting Iowans to show up on caucus night. Unlike a primary election, where voters can send a ballot by mail or show up during flexible hours to a polling location, a caucus is more rigid. Voters need to show up at 7 p.m. to their precinct location — a high school gymnasium, a community center, another local building — and participate in the preference poll. Getting out of the door is often the hardest part: Mid-January evenings in Iowa are usually snowy, sometimes with sub-zero temperatures, and always dark.

The first step for these AFP canvassers, then, is convincing all Iowans to participate. They’ve already connected with nearly one million Iowa voters, through 250,000 door conversations and nearly 750,000 phone calls. To some degree, it’s a numbers game: In a state with just under 3 million residents, the standing record of caucus-night attendees is 180,000. In 2016, Dubuque County — one of Iowa’s 10 most populous counties, out of 99 — was decided by 27 votes. In 2012, Mitt Romney was declared the statewide winner on election night by an eight-vote margin; later, a recount deemed Rick Santorum the victor, by 34 votes.

Current polls predict 2024 won’t be as close. Trump holds a 20-percentage-point lead in Iowa, and even in AFP’s internal polling, Haley trails by 20-plus, though she’s now the clear No. 2 and has doubled her support since August.

The AFP folks are somewhat suspicious of Trump’s lead, though, based on their face-to-face conversations with voters. “When you’re having that conversation at the door, you get a sense of the intensity of that support,” Drew Klein, AFP-Iowa’s director, told me. “And that’s something that polls are just notoriously bad at tracking, but is extremely important relative to the caucuses.” You don’t get a week or a month to vote, he said — you get one night, and the more passionate you are about who you’ll support, the more likely you’ll show up. As such, they focus their pitch on “soft” Trump voters — those who say they will caucus for Trump, but are either open to other candidates or lukewarm about caucusing.

In the latter case, Klein’s team focuses on getting them out to caucus. “When you can demystify the process and make it less scary, we’re confident that we’re going to see new voters show up on caucus night,” he said.

This became clear once we “hit the doors,” per canvasser lingo. We started at the office, alongside about a dozen other knockers — some of them full-time staff based in Iowa, others part-timers, and others salaried staff from Alaska, Utah or Pennsylvania, here for a one-week shift to help with the door-to-door efforts. We split ways, and I drove with Tyler Raygor, AFP-Iowa’s deputy state director, to a suburb in Urbandale, just west of Des Moines.

Each staffer is equipped with their smartphone or an office-supplied iPad, where they can view a neighborhood map, overlayed with gray or green dots, signaling homes to target. Many of these voters have spoken with AFP representatives in past years about licensing reform or other down-ballot issues. Raygor clicks on their dot and can see summaries of all of their previous contacts with AFP canvassers.

At the first house, a middle-aged man answered. He “definitely” plans to caucus, and he “definitely” will not be supporting Trump. “I like Haley,” he said. Raygor nodded, and encouraged him to get out on caucus night.

Later, at another home, a woman answered. Raygor asked if she’d ever met AFP representatives before. (Records showed she’d been contacted a few years prior.) She said she didn’t remember, but she’d had “way too many” visits from “political people.” She wasn’t planning on caucusing, but if she did, she’d go for “that Indian guy,” Vivek Ramaswamy, who she’d seen on TikTok. Raygor encouraged her to make time to caucus — “we can’t afford four more years of Biden,” he said, “so we need to elect a candidate who can beat him.”

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As we walked away, Raygor noted that many Iowans are exhausted by politics. Being the first state in the nation to cast its vote every four years is a real opportunity, but for some, it’s simultaneously a nuisance. These neighborhoods are knocked and knocked by campaigns and out-of-state interest groups and surrogates. Come February, though, many of the groups will leave. Not AFP, though. “We’re a grassroots group,” Raygor said, and their focus will shift from the presidential race back to local, down-ballot issues. (Raygor, he notes, is a local himself — he grew up in north-central Iowa.)

As we walk, Raygor shows of the sensibilities of a salesman. An Amazon package on the porch? They’re probably not home. A dog barking, then stopping, then barking again? They probably are home. Ever since Raygor grew out his beard, he joked, fewer people answer the door.

The AFP canvassers have a script to follow, but they’re encouraged to be natural in their approach. They start by asking something like this: If the caucuses were held today, would you support Trump as the GOP nominee, or are you leaning toward someone else? If the voter says she supports Trump, they ask whether she thinks Trump can win a general election, or whether Trump has a positive or negative impact on other down-ballot candidates fighting for the same issues.

I never got to see that line of questioning, though. None of the people who answered the door said they plan to caucus for Trump. Several said Haley or Ron DeSantis. One said Ramaswamy. Others were uncertain, and Raygor’s mission then became to encourage them to get out on caucus night, and start there. He asked some if they could follow up in the coming weeks.

Now that AFP has endorsed Haley, Raygor says the approach doesn’t change, although the door-knockers now have a specific candidate they encourage voters to support. Within a day of the Haley announcement, Raygor’s team was equipped with a pro-Haley script and new Haley door-hangers.

Still, while polls show Trump with a double-digit lead in Iowa, the doors tell a different story. “It’s one thing to tell someone on the phone you support one candidate,” Raygor told me. “It’s another thing to pull yourself off the couch and support them on caucus night.”