Ankeny, Iowa – In a few hours, Rep. Austin Scott will travel about 40 miles southeast of Iowa's capital to the tiny town of Pella to make a final pitch for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
The Tifton Republican is the highest-profile Georgia elected official on the ground in Iowa on the day of the caucus (Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was here earlier this month) and he’s part of a late push by Rubio’s supporters to position him as the mainstream alternative to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Polls show Rubio in a solid third place, behind the two front-runners but ahead of retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and the swath of mainstream candidates who have largely already decamped for New Hampshire ahead of a snowstorm rumbling toward Des Moines.
Scott joined a team of dozens assembled in a cluttered office in a suburban Des Moines strip mall packed with people who made phone calls, arranged carpools, monitored social media feeds, fielded voter inquiries, handled tiresome media questions and did the painstaking behind-the-scenes organizational work instrumental to getting voters to the caucuses.
Scott said he will try to make the point to the restless voters, many of whom are drawn to Trump’s strong-man rhetoric and Cruz’s hardline conservatism, of the distinction "between making a point and making a difference.”
“People have a right to be angry. But there’s a difference between being angry and being mad,” he said. “Anger can be good if it’s focused on solving a problem. If they’re angry enough to be active, it works for us. If they're mad enough that it forces us to make a point, it will probably result in a loss for Republicans in November.”
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