Ron DeSantis still wants a ‘satellite caucus’ for Iowans in Florida

Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet. Photo via AP.

With less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses that are pivotal to his presidential hopes, Ron DeSantis is worried that his voters will be in his state rather than where he needs them Jan. 15.

“I’ll run into folks and some will say, ‘Yeah, I’m going down to Florida in January.’ I’m like, ‘Are you going before the 15th or after the 15th? Most of them are staying to caucus. Not all are,” DeSantis said. “And then I say, ‘OK, are you going to fly back to caucus?’ And some say they will. Some say, ‘Well, I’m going to have my neighbors go.'”

“Look, we should have probably figured out a way to have a satellite caucus site down in Southwest Florida,” he added. “We probably would have some pretty good stuff.”

The Iowa Republican Party clarified in November its lack of interest in an out-of-state caucus, and the Governor previously played off his pitch like it was a joke.

“I’ve joked to the folks that we should figure out if we can get some satellite caucus locations in Southwest Florida because I think there’s quite a bit of Iowans who come down there and, you know, they haven’t had a caucus for, since 2016, on the Republican side. So, what I’ve been telling people is, you know, anyone coming to Florida, just make sure you caucus first and then come down and get that done,” he said on AM 600 WMT.

The latest plea for a “satellite caucus” comes just weeks after First Lady Casey DeSantis brooked controversy by “asking all of these moms and grandmoms to come from wherever it might be — North Carolina, South Carolina — and descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus because you do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus.”

While Casey DeSantis eventually cleaned up her statement by clarifying that out-of-staters don’t actually have the right to vote in Iowa, it wasn’t before the Donald Trump campaign and others voiced outrage, alleging attempted “voter fraud.”