By Natasha Korecki and Henry J. Gomez - NBC News
SALIX, Iowa — It's become commonplace. In these early days of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' bid for president, Casey DeSantis joins her husband on stage and the stories begin to flow.
There is that of bottled water from the Sea of Galilee, so precious for the baptisms of children, that it is accidentally thrown by a housekeeper at the governor's residence. Then there are Casey's testimonies about her motherhood, battling permanent marker scribbles on furniture and crawling at the end of the day, when her husband comes home from work and she hands him the three children.
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The couple shoots all indicators of healthy family values to a conservative evangelical Republican Party (GOP) audience. And even without mentioning Donald Trump's name, they set an inescapable antithesis to the former president, who faces charges related to paying a porn star and was found responsible for sexual abuse and who, when he landed in Iowa on Thursday, was not accompanied by his wife.
DeSantis' team knows who he's targeting in Iowa and beyond. At a donor retreat last week in Miami, campaign officials estimated that 65 percent of attendees at the Iowa GOP caucuses are evangelical Christians.
Ron DeSantis with his wife, Casey, and sons, Madison, Mason and Mamie, at a campaign party in Tampa, Florida, in November. Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images
According to a person with knowledge of DeSantis' team's strategy in early states, he's betting that segment of the party is fed up with the sexualized drama of a man who is also being investigated for classified documents seized at his sprawling Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
But breaking Trump's conservative evangelical support is no easy task, given that he is credited with appointing three Supreme Court justices who eventually joined a conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade.
However, DeSantis' team sees it as a necessary path to winning early states.
"Clearly, it's an opening for us with evangelicals," said the source familiar with the early strategy. "It's authentic. You can't fake your family. You can't fake your commitment to your children and your wife. Once they see that it is authentic, it is certainly a contrast. Who would think as a Republican that we would defend payments to porn stars?" ç
[DeSantis campaigns in territory where he has a tough task against clear Trump supporters]
At the Miami retreat, a donor poignantly asked DeSantis' polling chief, Ryan Tyson, about Trump's sex scandals and how the campaign planned to appropriately contrast them with DeSantis' "beautiful" family.
"I'll answer it this way: A wise man once told me when I was about to have my first child, he said 70% of being a good father is showing up," Tyson said, according to an audio of the retreat published by Florida Politics. "The governor is going to show up. The citizens of Iowa are ripe to see it, and I think you're going to see something very special when it comes along, when you meet the first lady, when you meet the family."
This week, on his first trip since launching his campaign, DeSantis and his wife are touring the first three polling states: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Casey DeSantis' role ranges from moderator of talk shows (husband and wife sat in cozy armchairs on the floor of a welding factory here near Sioux City on Wednesday morning) to that of keynote speaker. The Cedar Rapids crowd gave her a standing ovation twice.
The couple also announced Wednesday that they plan to take two of their three children to the campaign. "The 6 and the 5" — DeSantis' abbreviation for the ages of his older children — will get their first taste of the presidential campaign this weekend at Sen. Joni Ernst's Roast and Ride in Des Moines, Iowa.
Beyond that, images of their children are splashed on social media posts, showing a family meal the last week of school or a video in which the two hold the children at different times while talking to the crowd.
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"You're going to see some very interesting moments with us," Casey DeSantis told an audience of about 150 at Salix's welding shop. "But we're going to bring them, because, honestly, it's very hard. You can't get these years back, can you? I mean, these are those pivotal years where the memories you'll have will last a lifetime," he said.
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DeSantis often tells GOP crowds that he has "no time for drama" or "palace intrigue," subtle allusions to the Trump administration, which featured his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner in high-profile advisory roles. Ivanka Trump has said she would not be part of her father's 2024 campaign.
But perhaps the most striking thing is the absence of his wife. Melania Trump did not accompany her husband to his appearance in Manhattan on charges related to paying the porn star, nor did she attend a follow-up speech at Mar-a-Lago, even as he bragged about having built his business with his family. In May, Melania Trump told Fox News that she fully supported her husband's 2024 campaign and that it would be a "privilege" to be first lady again.
Aside from trying to exude family values and bond as parents, DeSantis' emphasis on his young family could help send subtle signals to Republicans that, at 44, he could represent the party's next generation, ahead of Trump, who is 76, or President Joe Biden, who is 80.
"His family is a great image of what Americans are, and that's about working hard to provide for your family," Dan Zumbach — an Iowa state senator who has endorsed DeSantis and who introduced him Wednesday night to a crowd of about 500 people in Cedar Rapids — said of DeSantis' family in an interview. "And I think they're doing a great job presenting American history. We want a future for these children and our grandchildren, and they know how to get it."
But when asked if he saw DeSantis' emphasis on his young family as a stark contrast to Trump, Zumbach backtracked.
"Trump also has a family," he said. "And he's only a little older, but no, I don't see much difference."
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A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
At nearly every event in Iowa this week, Casey DeSantis began his remarks by apologizing for his hoarse voice, which he blamed on the amount of time he had spent telling his 3-year-old daughter she couldn't color the dining room table and bathroom walls with permanent marker. (In Salix and again in Cedar Rapids, he made sure to point out that mom and dad had talked to the kids beforehand via FaceTime video phone app.)
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"It's like a hamster on the wheel when you're trying to talk to a 3-year-old," he described.
At the welding shop, the governor recalled the family's return from their recent overseas trade mission at 3 a.m.
"Our 6-year-old son and the First Lady had dance rehearsal at 8 a.m., and Mason, 5, and Mamie, 3, had baseball game at 9. So we were doing our things as parents... And I'll tell you I usually have a lot of stamina, but I was really exhausted," he said.
"So they're doing all their stuff," he added, "then they had a birthday party, then Madison had a dance recital —
"On the beach, by the way," the first lady chimed in. "So, sandsuit, back to the leotard."
It remains to be seen how this strategy works among Iowa voters and other voters. None of the dozen voters interviewed at DeSantis' events Wednesday cited his family as a primary reason they were interested in him. Some said they liked the emphasis he placed on his young family and family values, but were careful not to interpret it as a contrast to Trump.
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"You can tell Trump loved his family. I was counting on them a lot," Morris Denson of Marengo said as he waited for DeSantis to speak in Cedar Rapids. "Family meant a lot to Trump and DeSantis. Everyone has a different way of presenting it," he said.
Having seen the DeSantises in Salix, Brenda Croker said the effort to promote the family narrative is a "dubious" strategy. She was most impressed by the way Casey DeSantis described her work connecting single mothers with faith-based organizations.
"I believe in helping people, but I also believe in giving them the gospel — helping them get out of their situation without the government," Croker said.
But conservative radio host Steve Deace of Iowa saw the character differences as a compelling argument for DeSantis, particularly with evangelicals.
"If you're worried about your children and grandchildren coming to you and saying, 'How come nothing happened when Trump behaved like that like president and you look the other way, but you never looked the other way when I was behaving like that?'" Deace said. "That's a lot of uncomfortable conversations that have been had in evangelical homes in recent years. And if you have someone who can give you a lot of those same disorders but with a modicum of self-control, it's not that hard to sell."