On the third anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a “commit to caucus” rally in Newton, Iowa.
“When they first announced it was on Jan. 6, I didn’t even think anything of it,” Thad Nearmyer, GOP chair of encompassing Jasper County, told The Daily Beast this week. “And then a little bit later it kind of occurred to me that that date has some significance. “
A 52-year-old conservative who raises hogs and cows, Nearmyer added, “I would imagine that will get brought up by him.”
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Nearmyer offered his own view of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack that a host of prosecutors and judges along with many Democrats and even some Republicans view as an assault on democracy itself.
“It wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as it was made out to be,” he said.
But if Nearmyer minimizes the Jan. 6 crimes themselves, he views Trump indictments arising from those and other alleged wrongdoing to be a very big deal in terms of their impact on presidential politics. And this is one instance in which a candidate seems to have actually been helped by being hit with multiple felony charges.
“Definitely, definitely,” Nearmyer said when asked if it gave Trump a boost. “And that Colorado thing was the same way.”
Nearmyer was referring to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that temporarily disqualified Trump from running in that state’s primary. The court cited Article 14 of the U.S. Constitution, which bars anyone who has participated in an insurrection from holding public office.
The various legal actions against Trump are honest efforts by various oath-bound judges and prosecutors to uphold the rule of law. Nearmyer nonetheless views them as tantamount to election interference.
“I would say it’s getting awfully close to that, if not crossing that line for sure,” Nearmyer said.
He expects to witness one result when he attends the Trump rally on Jan. 6 at the Des Moines Area Community College in Newton.
“I think it will be overfilled most likely,” he said. “It holds like 300 if I remember right.”
That would compare with what he guessed to be a “200-ish” crowd when he attended a Ron DeSantis rally on Dec. 9 in a former Newton roller rink called The Thunderdome.
“But a lot of them were media,” he said.
The press was there to cover the end of DeSantis’ much hyped tour of all 99 counties in Iowa. His campaign squared off The Thunderdome with curtains in an apparent effort to make the event appear more crowded.
DeSantis lamented last week that despite visiting the 99 counties, his campaign had been eclipsed by 91 counts Trump faces in four criminal indictments, two of them directly related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“I would say if I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “If it was anyone other than Donald Trump…”
DeSantis added, “It distorted the primary… It’s just crowded out, I think, so much other stuff and it’s sucked out a lot of oxygen.”
Much the same is affecting the Republican primaries across the nation. And Trump’s biggest campaign events continue to be the latest developments in the criminal cases against him. Any defeats or victories further rouse his supporters.
Wednesday saw the Colorado GOP petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule that state’s highest court and keep Trump on the ballot. Thursday saw Maine’s secretary of state remove Trump as an insurrectionist from its ballot.
In 2012 and again in 2016, Jasper County voted for Obama. The county went for Trump just when Nearmyer became the country GOP chair.
“I’ll take the credit for that, but that’s probably not really the case,” Nearmyer told The Daily Beast.
He suggested that the biggest reason for Newton going from blue to red was the closing of the century-old Maytag factory in 2007. A town once known as “The Washing Machine Capital of the World” ceased to produce them and more than 2,000 locals were suddenly without work.
“There was a strong union in town, and that’s all gone now,” Nearmyer said.
Largely Democratic union members departed; Republican farmers such as Nearmyer were ascendant. Just under two-thirds of the voters chose Trump in the 2020 election.
That excitement may kick in again if Trump becomes the GOP nominee, but at present, it remains just a choice between two Republicans, one of whom appears to have a prohibitive lead.
“I don’t think it’s a big deal between Trump and DeSantis,” Nearmyer said. “It’s not like local Republicans are doing a lot of arguing about it, that I see anyway. I think regular people on the streets still are more concerned about basketball and the bowl games than they are the caucus.”
As he describes it, the caucus set to take place on Jan. 15 is “not a very exciting process.”
“It’s a bunch of neighbors that get together in a room and write down their name on a piece of paper,” he said.
But in this instance of what would seem like democracy at its purest, the Newton Republicans do not seem bothered that the primary front runner is holding a caucus rally on the third anniversary of his effort to overturn an entire presidential election.
