The deep freeze trailing in the storm’s wake, with subzero temperatures forecast all day and nighttime wind chills plummeting to -30—as in minus-30—on Monday, will, however, be very much in the news as Iowa Republicans bundle up and head to 730 caucus sites statewide to pick their 2024 GOP presidential candidate.

Whether Monday’s frigid temps will dissuade voters from getting to caucus sites, often within an easy drive of their homes, is a question many have been wondering since the National Weather Service forecast it 10 days ago.

Some say yes. Some say no. But nobody knows no matter how many hours of talking head speculation fills air time between now and Monday night.

Lee Stofer, of Camanche in east Iowa’s Clinton County, who will be hosting a caucus in the barn behind his Lee Stofer Music shop, said if it was snowing Monday night, that could trim turnout.

But cold? No. It’s Iowa in January, he told The Epoch Times.

“Bring a coat,” he suggested. The barn isn’t heated, which is why he expects it to be over with “within an hour.”

“The bitter cold on Monday may keep some people away,” Waterloo precinct captain Kevin Briden told The Epoch Times. “But people in Iowa are hearty souls who take this caucus vote seriously. So people may be surprised as to how many show up.”

They won’t be surprised in Bremer County. During a meeting in the Readlyn Library on Thursday, Bremer County GOP Committee Chair John Pentecost told 23 precinct and caucus captains to expect as many as 1,800 Republican voters to show up at the county’s five caucus sites.

That would be 350 more than the record 1,445 who participated in the county’s 2016 Republican presidential caucuses.

“With the temperatures they are forecasting for Monday night, I don’t think we’ll have that high of a turnout,” Mr. Pentecost said.

The precinct and caucus leaders mostly disagreed, noting Mr. Pentecost moved from balmy Minnesota to the east-central Iowa county a few years ago, so what does he know about locals’ commitment to caucus?

It’s the Democrats caucusing in nearby Denver, Iowa, who need to worry, they said. “I’d like to watch them getting there because most of them walk around barefoot,” one laughed.

In Mills County’s Silver City, Gary and Susan McNutt are hosting their precinct’s caucus in their family room—one of the few, if not the only one, that will be in a private home. In 2000, nearly a third were.

More than 50 showed up in her family room for 2016’s caucus, said Ms. McNutt, co-chair of the Mills County Republican Committee. She expects at least that many on Monday, regardless of how cold it gets.

“We’ll have everything all shoveled and put out cookies and coffee,’ Ms. McNutt. “We’ll squeeze everybody in with their big coats.”

Campaigns Disrupted

The storm, which had dropped about 6 inches of snow by mid-day Friday in the Des Moines area, is expected to make travel hazardous through Saturday when winds up to 35-45 miles per hour create ground blizzards, glazing roads in slip-streams of feathery ice and snow funnels.

While the Friday storm may not affect Monday’s turnout, it disrupted Republican presidential candidates’ stump schedules, prompting cancellations of planned appearances by former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Republican front-runner former President Donald Trump did not have any scheduled campaign events Friday. Kari Lake, an Iowa native who is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona, canceled an appearance on his behalf.

Mr. Trump’s Saturday stump stops in Atlantic and Sioux City and Sunday in Indianola and Cherokee remain on his campaign site’s schedule.

The storm and subsequent deep freeze are no surprise. It’s been forecast for 10 days. Mr. Trump called on supporters during a Jan. 5 rally in Newton to brave the cold and get to their caucuses on Monday.

“You just have to put on that warm coat and get out there,” he said.

Ms. Haley’s campaign canceled three campaign events in Fort Dodge, Le Mars, and Council Bluffs and is instead staging “telephone town halls.”

“Stormy weather won’t stop us from ensuring Iowans hear Nikki’s vision for a strong and proud America,” Haley campaign spokesman Pat Garrett said in a statement. “With only three days until the caucuses, we’re going to keep telling voters why they should Pick Nikki.”

Mr. Ramaswamy was sallying forth in his campaign, conducting a “Live from an Iowa Blizzard Tele-Townhall“ in his SUV between campaign stops.

“Ran into Steven walking into our 2nd event today, but he couldn’t join us because he is working today as a postal service worker delivering the mail,” he said in a mid-afternoon X post about meeting a mailman making his rounds. “If he’s working in the middle of the snowstorm, so am I.”

During a Free Soil rally on Wednesday protesting the proposed Summit CO2 pipeline, Mr. Ramaswamy said his supporters won’t be dissuaded by the cold.

“Human beings come out a little bit less when they’re cold,” he said. “I think this is going work to our advantage. Many of my supporters are not tepid supporters.”

Enthusiasm Tested

Mr. DeSantis attended his first event Friday, but his Never Back Down PAC canceled the rest of his slate for the day. He did, however, make an unscheduled stop at his campaign’s Iowa headquarters in Urbandale to thank volunteers.
“What it does for the overall turnout, I mean, nobody can forecast what the turnout is gonna be,” he said. “Anyone that tells you they can do that is not it’s not being honest. It’s a major wildcard.”

It’s a “wildcard” he, like Mr. Ramaswamy, believes could benefit his campaign.

“I know it’s going to be cold. I know it is not going to be pleasant,” Mr. DeSantis told campaign workers. “We don’t know what the turnout is going to be like. It could be much smaller than the 2016 cycle. That’s possible.”

So, he told his volunteers, “Bring four, five friends. That could make a big difference” if the turnout is lower than expected.

FAMiLY Leader founder, influential conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, told CNN in an early afternoon interview that the Florida governor’s ground game is “the best I’ve ever seen” and will be “the difference-maker” on Monday.

Conservative WHO (AM) Des Moines radio host Jeff Angelo, in a later CNN interview, said he doesn’t “think we are going to have a record turnout. People have heard all the news reporting and the hype and maybe they were going to come out but, nothing like minus-30 degrees to encourage you to stay in your kitchen and have a little chili that night.”

It will be the “diehards” who show up, he said, and no one in the race has more “diehards” than Mr. Trump.

“Trump supporters will absolutely walk through snow” to cast their ballot, Mr. Angelo said, noting the “less enthusiastic” voters the other campaigns, especially Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis, are relying on could be no-shows for Monday.

The deep freeze is going to give others “more trouble” than it will for Mr. Trump, with the lower turnout favoring the former president. “The more the temperatures drop,” he said, “the higher the probability that Trump wins.”

That’s pretty much what a campaign staffer told Mr. Trump last week, he told supporters during his Newton rally.

“My people will walk on glass—they don’t care … right?” He said. “We love bad weather because the weather’s not going to keep our people away. The worse, the better. We won’t lose one vote.”

Janice Hisle contributed to this report

None of the hopefuls, however, were staging events where former Arizona gubernatorial candidate and MAGA maven Kari Lake went upon her arrival at the fair: into a steamy, scented barn to milk a cow.

An Iowa native raised on a farm, Ms. Lake made points with each pull, asking between the swish, swish, swish of freshly spurt milk if any reporters from the New York Times were around so they could see living proof “that there are only two genders.”

If this exhibition didn’t suffice, she invited anyone unsure about how many genders there are to go to the nearby bullpen “and milk a bull and see how that goes.”

Four presidential candidates were on the grounds—former Vice President Mike Pence, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Michigan businessman Perry Johnson, conservative radio host Larry Elder, Jr.—stumping at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox and joining Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for ‘Fair Side Chats.’ Texas pastor and entrepreneur Ryan Binkley was making rounds.

But it was Ms. Lake, a prospective 2024 Arizona senate candidate, and potential Trump running mate, who stole the show on the second day of the 11-day Iowa State Fair.

More than 1 million visitors and at least 13 presidential candidates are expected to prowl the 445-acre fairgrounds near the State Capitol complex east of downtown Des Moines before the fair ends Aug. 20. At least seven, including Mr. Trump, will be on scene Aug. 12.

Ms. Lake said the former president enjoys venues like the Iowa State Fair, where he plans to meet and greet folks on the midway “because he is a man of the people” rather than participate in the fair’s scheduled event. His campaign only announced he was coming on Aug. 8.

And so Ms. Lake was on Team Trump’s vanguard, ensuring the former president, who leads GOP rivals by 30 percentage points in national polls but not by as such wide margins in Iowa, remains first and foremost in voters’ minds.

“I am going to do everything I can to help President Trump,” she said, noting the nation is suffering under the tutelage of the Biden administration. “I’m really just a mom who is tired of where this country is going.”

Ms. Lake said as a native Iowan who grew up on a farm, she understands the importance of agriculture. “Iowa feeds the United States and the world,” she said, “and the president knows that” too.

Senate or Trump’s VP Running Mate?

One of 2024’s most pivotal Senate races will be in Arizona, where Republicans have a good chance to gain a seat in their effort to recapture the Senate.

Incumbent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, elected in 2018 as a Democrat before leaving the party in December 2022, has not announced her 2024 intentions but is expected to seek a second six-year term.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) announced in January that he was running for Ms. Sinema’s seat. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb and former gubernatorial candidate George Nicholson are the two most prominent Republican hopefuls.

With an April 8 filing deadline for the state’s Aug. 6, 2024 primary, much is in flux in the key battleground state, but a contentious three-way race appears likely.

Ms. Lake said she is pondering entering the GOP primary to win the party nod to take on Ms. Sinema and Mr. Gallego.

“I am strongly considering it,” she said, promising a decision by fall. “I need to take a look at the field” to ensure the Republicans field a candidate that can “meet the needs of the people of Arizona.”

Rumor had it that Ms. Lake would be appearing later at Steak & Stein, a restaurant bar on the fairgrounds midway, and would be bartending.

She was, she said, but had not heard about the bartending gig. But, no problem, she can do that.

“I know how to milk a cow and I know how to tap a beer,” Ms. Lake said. “I’d do it if they let me.”

Even without Mr. Trump on the scene, Aug. 12 will be a busy day for midway politicking with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Trump administration U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—all already campaigning across the Hawkeye State—joining Gov. Reynolds for morning ‘Fair Side Chats.’

Mr. Ramaswamy and Ms. Haley will later that day appear on Des Moines Register Political Soapbox along with Republican pastor and business owner Ryan Binkley and Democrats Marianne Williamson—who will be on stage as Mr. Trump is speaking elsewhere on the fairgrounds—and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) will be campaigning at the fair next week.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.