Iowa's Sparsely Populated Northwest Is A Key GOP Caucus Battleground For Both Trump And DeSantis

ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Some of the most contested real estate for Iowa’s Republican caucuses is a vast, wind-swept plain where hogs outnumber people by the millions.

Northwest Iowa’s landscape is sparse, made up of high plains, in places marked by fields of soaring white wind turbines. The landscape is interrupted by pig farms with their telltale squat barns and pungent odor.

This is the evangelical Christian heart of conservative Iowa. While its population is dispersed over dozens of snowy counties, the tens of thousands of voters here are often critical in GOP races. Both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have invested in appealing to politically influential evangelicals, making the fight for northwest Iowa a microcosm of the race to win Monday’s caucuses.

Trump had scheduled two rallies this weekend in the region before canceling due to winter weather. DeSantis has spent long hours courting voters here, stopping Thursday in Rock Rapids, population 2,600, before heading to Le Mars, about four times larger.

While Republican candidates in Iowa aren’t talking as much about abortion rights, a reflection in part of concerns that the issue is a winning one for Democrats, many voters and pastors in northwest Iowa say that’s still their central focus.

“Speaking for my parishioners, a lot of them look back at Trump and say, among recent presidents, he’s done more for the pro-life cause,” said the Rev. John Vermeer of Rock Rapids, among the many clergy in the region who are part of the conservative Reformed Church brought to the area with settlers from the Netherlands more than 150 years ago.

“There’s another side that’s disappointed with what seems like pragmatism,” Vermeer said. “And people around