DES MOINES, Iowa — Vice President J.D. Vance heads to Iowa on Tuesday, marking his first visit since taking office to the state where Republicans in less than two years will cast the initial votes to pick their party’s next presidential nominee.
Vance, who is seen as one of the GOP’s strongest potential candidates for president in 2028, is making the trip to campaign on behalf of Republican Rep. Zach Nunn, who faces a competitive race to keep his Des Moines-area seat in the November midterms.
The vice president, a former U.S. senator who represented Ohio, departed Washington accompanied by his son Vivek. He will first stop in Cincinnati to vote in Ohio’s primary elections, followed by an appearance in Oklahoma City to hold a fundraiser in his role as finance chair of the Republican National Committee.
But the visit to Iowa offers Vance an opportunity to test his reception before Iowa’s voters, whose leadoff caucuses give them an outsized role in determining the next presidential nominee. Campaigning for a local congressman in his role as the sitting vice president gives him an opening chance to make an impression on Iowa Republicans, seasoned evaluators of those who seek the nation’s highest office before the campaign begins in earnest.
Vance’s appearance comes days after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is also considered a possible 2028 candidate, spoke to a group of evangelical Christians who are influential in Iowa’s GOP contest.
Des Moines-based Jimmy Centers, a Republican political consultant, said the 2028 contest is “light-years away” but said the Republicans who hear Vance speak on Tuesday will be evaluating how he might measure up in an election for the White House.
“I certainly think, as of right now, Vice President Vance would probably be a straw-poll winner of Iowa Republicans for 2028. But I don’t think anyone is saying, ‘We won’t consider anybody else,’” Centers said.
Vance’s visit comes as higher prices for gas and fertilizer hit Iowans
Vance, who has not said whether he will run for the presidency in 2028, is scheduled to appear with Nunn at a manufacturing facility in Des Moines. His office did not comment on the trip’s impact on Vance’s political future.
The vice president’s visit follows a trip President Trump made in January to tout the administration’s tax cuts, part of a string of stops they’re making this year on economic issues before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
But Vance’s visit comes when his own political prospects – and the message he’s expected to deliver on the economy – have been complicated by the war in Iran.
The vice president, who has long been skeptical of foreign military interventions, has seemed a reluctant defender of the 9-week-old war, for which Trump has struggled to find an off-ramp. Iowans, like much of the rest of the country, are grappling with higher gas prices because of the conflict. But the state’s farmers are also feeling the pinch of high fertilizer costs from the war and have been hurt by tariffs Trump has imposed.
While Iowa’s farmers have steadfastly supported the president, they have been looking to the White House for assurances that the current troubles won’t last.
Vance’s visit to Iowa was originally scheduled for last week, but the timing shifted because the House moved to pass a sweeping farm bill that Nunn was due to vote on.
The vice president also had been slated to appear last week at an Iowa State University event with Turning Point USA, but the organization said it was not able to reschedule the event with the university until the fall.
It’s ‘awfully, awfully early’ in the road to 2028
Kim Schmett, a longtime Iowa GOP activist, said the presidential cycle starts “deceptively slow.”
Republican figures testing the waters often drop by the Westside Conservative Club, which Schmett hosts, but he said it’s still too far out from the caucuses, which are typically held in January of the presidential election year.
He said Trump’s Make America Great Again political movement “is very alive and going here” in Iowa, which would benefit Vance – as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also thought to be a potential candidate.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of MAGA support,” he said. “And Vice President Vance and Marco Rubio seem to be the recipients of where that is going at the moment.”
But Schmett cautioned, “it’s awfully, awfully early in the process.”
On the Democratic side, at least half a dozen presidential prospects have been making visits to the states with the earliest presidential primary contests, including recent visits to Iowa by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin.
Meanwhile, potential Republican presidential candidates “are treading very lightly,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant, who worked on Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“I think Republicans are going to be very reluctant to get in Trump’s way until Trump gives the green light for the campaign to start,” Conant said.
That means much of the groundwork to meet with donors or activists or recruit political staffers might happen slowly and subtly – for now.
After the midterms? Conant said: “It’ll be irresistible.”
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Price reported from Washington.
