White House hopefuls try luck at Iowa fair

Almost every presidential candidate is passing through.

DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Hi. “I mean this is love”.

GONYEA: But there it is. “But so far you have to say, hasn’t worked out badly, right?” It was Hillary Clinton’s trip to the fair. Tom Harkin of Iowa, whose endorsement she won this week. Voters in all of the state’s 99 counties will submit their choice for the Democratic and Republican nominee – whom Iowa’s delegates will formally nominate at each convention next summer. He’s retired, but he’s still a very big deal. They enjoyed some of the bonds. But Trump did interviews with reporters as he made his way through the fair, hammering Clinton as untrustworthy and predicting that the controversy over her emails would become a “serious problem” that would ultimately cause her to withdraw from the race.

“This isn’t the campaign Chuck ran for Rick”, said Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, a Republican who is staying neutral in the GOP primary, after warmly bumping into Laudner at the fair.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: The facts are the same as they have been from the very beginning of these questions being raised. “So I’m going to let whatever this inquiry is go forward and will await the outcome of it”, Clinton said.

Waiting on the hot tarmac stood Tana Goertz, the victor for Iowa on his show, The Celebrity Apprentice, a motivational speaker and now his deputy campaign manager for the state.

Trump made a grand entrance by touching down in a $7 million helicopter.

GONYEA: And in what, a photo op?

And Robinson said Trump is bolstered by his front-runner status, allowing him to bypass the get-to-know-you stage and skip to firing up large crowds during brief jaunts to the state.

VIGELAND: Don, one of the mainstays of the fair is the soapbox. “There’s Donald Trump. What can we do?”

The difference, he said, is that Trump has the resources to take the same conservative message of a candidate like Santorum and actually produce results. The Des Moines register, which sponsors the soapbox, has said bad things about him. And he says if people want to change it, they should vote for him.

And he also notes that not everybody goes, and it’s true.

“Oh, we’re not going to sit”, Clinton responded, taking a bite of her pork chop. Rand Paul is not going this time. In 2011 Republican candidate Mitt Romney declared from the soapbox that “corporations are people, my friend”, a line that dogged the former private equity executive.

Chafee says, “You’ve got to be careful at these fairs”.

She defended her joke on Saturday during her press conference, describing the controversy as just another example of the “partisanization” of politics. She toured the barns.

Before wrapping up her visit, Clinton sampled a pork chop on a stick and a lemonade. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Laudner’s team is also careening into local events with a TRUMP-branded bus that draws crowds even though the candidate is nowhere near it.

When a helicopter flew overhead during Sanders’ speech, he was quick with a joke. Don, thanks, and enjoy yourself.