Pence, Trump court Iowa voters in hopes of getting early state momentum

NEOLA, Iowa -- Former Vice President Mike Pence ended most of his 12 events across 10 Iowa counties this week by asking the crowd to pray over the next few months -- for himself, his wife Karen and all of the other 2024 GOP hopefuls.

That ask presumably includes his former running mate and the highest hurdle for Pence to clear in his own quest for the White House: former President Donald Trump.

“I'd ask you if you're of the mind to bow the head and bend the knee and from time to time, Karen and I'd be grateful if you remember us in your prayer,” Pence said in Sioux City Iowa on Wednesday morning. “Pray for all those good men and women that are standing in the Republican primaries.”

But Pence isn’t always deferential to his former boss. The three-day Iowa blitz was peppered with questions from voters about Trump -- including two directly about Pence’s his role in certifying Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021, a move that Trump falsely claims is why he is not currently in the White House. Pence, who usually refers to his frontrunner opponent carefully, offered some sharp responses back.

“I said, at least on one occasion, this week here in Iowa, I had no right to overturn the election in 2020,” Pence said at his final campaign stop on Thursday in a western Iowa town just a 20-minute drive from Council Bluffs, where Trump later held an event on Friday.

“I'm very confident -- moreso after this week, that the people of Iowa are going to take a fresh look, not only at us, but at the former president, and that all the candidates,” he added.

The two candidate visits to the pivotal early state this week, both in size and tone, offered a split-screen of how the men who were once on the same ticket are strategizing to win the caucus and eventually the GOP nomination.

In Iowa this week, Pence spanned hundreds of miles from the Urbandale Independence Day parade to a local campground halfway across the state in Neola. He sat in intimate gatherings with local Republican parties and shook hands with veterans and community members. To the widely Evangelical Midwestern electorate, he billed himself as an experienced, faith-filled civil servant. Pence’s campaign confirmed to ABC News that his plan is to do much of the small-scale, retail politicking he engaged in over the last week.

Pence's mention of Trump is mostly delicate while interacting with voters in Iowa, often telling people he’s proud of the accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration and was loyal to the president “right up until that fateful day that my oath to the Constitution of the United States required me to do otherwise.”

"Pence is very methodical and strategic," said Doug Heye, a GOP strategist and former Republican National Committee aide. "He's going to take Trump head-on on those things where politically he sees the best advantage -- and with an eye to history, as he's as he's obviously trying to do."

Trump walks a similar line when talking about Pence: polite, but unyielding in his response to the events of January 6.

“I like Mike Pence very much. He’s a very fine man, a very nice man,” Trump said during his CNN town hall in May. “He made a mistake. ... He did something wrong. He should’ve put the votes back to the state legislatures and I think we would’ve had a different outcome.”

In Council Bluffs on Friday, hundreds lined up to hear Trump boast about the agricultural accomplishments of his presidency and stop at a local Dairy Queen before leaving the state. Throughout his remarks, Trump took jabs at his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis. He did not mention Pence once.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign told ABC News that the candidate’s path forward in Iowa is “full-spectrum dominance at every level that no other campaign can even come close to touching.”

The stakes are vastly different for the two candidates. For Trump, who lost the 2016 Iowa caucus to Sen. Ted Cruz before soaring to the Republican nomination, the caucus win would be welcome but not necessarily imperative. For Pence, who trails Trump and DeSantis by double digits in most national polls, Iowa could be essential.

And Pence seems to know that, pledging to make the “full Grassley”-- a tour of all 99 counties in the state, something that senior Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley has popularized.

“I think we need to do well. We're gonna work our hearts out. I'm gonna go to all 99 counties…I'm gonna do the whole Pizza Ranch tour,” Pence said at an event in Le Mars, Iowa this week, when asked how essential the Hawkeye State’s contest was.

Bob Vander Plaats, president of The Family Leader and an influential Evangelical Christian activist in the state, noted that an Iowa win, especially against former President Trump, could be one of the surest ways to gain serious momentum in the GOP primaries.

"It's not always that you pick the winner, but you narrow the field," said Vander Plaats, who acknowledged that past Iowa caucus winners like Cruz, Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee didn't go on to become presidential nominees.

"The thing is here, I think why Iowa is so crucial this time, If Trump wins Iowa, I think a lot of people would think 'I don't know how you're gonna stop him.' but if you beat Trump in Iowa, that's gonna basically show that he can beat that he can be beaten and it will be a launchpad."

Pence appears to be putting faith in the ability of the people of Iowa to recognize the distinctions between him and Trump. And it's precisely his religiosity and emphasis on “civility” that seemed to impact some Iowa voters this week.

“To actually sit here and listen to you talk about your faith…And then to think that this could be a reality for our country to be led by a man of faith. It just touches Nancy and my heart deeply. That's what we need,” Sioux Center resident Bernerd Versteeg stood up and told Pence at a meet-and-greet in the town on Wednesday.

But Versteeg, in an interview with ABC News following the event, said he still wasn’t sure he’d caucus for Pence. He said he needed to give a “few more” a look.

Ida County GOP Chair Teresa Paulsrud said she thinks the state is fair game for a candidate like Pence, who she said is “a wonderful person”

“Obviously, I voted for Trump twice. There are Republicans who are not sure they're going to do that a third time. And I've heard some of that feedback. It's just hard to say. You know, this is impossible to predict,” she said after hosting Pence’s event in Ida County, adding that “nobody can beat his experience level.”

Vander Plaats noted the disconnect between early polling and victories in early states.

"The early polls just don't say a whole lot. If it was the case, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, none of them were to win the Iowa caucuses because they were all trailing and trailing significantly," Vander Plaats said.

“So what you need to do is doing the things that Pence is doing and that's going from Pizza Ranch to Pizza Ranch, shaking hands answering the same questions and just wearing on people well. I think Iowans are wise they're savvy, they're very discerning, but they don't make up their mind quickly. And I think that benefits somebody like Vice President Pence."

And Chip Saltsman, national campaign chairman for the Pence campaign who ran former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 White House bid, told ABC News that he wasn’t worried about Pence’s place in the polls.

“Governor Huckabee was at 1%, in the summertime in 2008. I have yet to see a front runner in the summer make it to the Iowa caucus and win,” Saltsman said. Huckabee won the caucus that cycle before losing the GOP nomination to then-Sen. John McCain.

“Iowa is a grassroots state that rewards hard work, and it's a state where you have to earn their vote and you can't buy it,” he added.

There are roughly six months until the Iowa caucus, slated to be held on Jan. 15, 2024.

--ABC News' Libby Cathey and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.