Obviously, he was preferred by national Democrats in part because they felt like he would be better at that, but obviously he still has to confront issues and, and sort of delicately balance where his national party is, uh, with trying to appeal to maybe a, a, an average voter who is going to be a little to the right, uh, of center.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's, um, that's been interesting to watch as well because he, um, has been airing TV ads kind of trying to neutralize the, uh, the attack on Democrats over immigration in particular.

He's filmed a couple of ads from the southern border saying that he supports, um, protecting America's borders and deporting, uh, criminals.

So that's something that he's really been, um, trying, trying to push and trying to kind of, um, put, insulate himself from some of those attacks.

So that's been one area where he's really kind of bucked the party, at least in the last couple of years, to, to be more aggressive, more moderate, um, on immigration.

But another issue, and, and we-- again, we've seen this one all over the country, is transgender issues, um, talking about transgender athletes.

Mm

Uh, uh, which personal attacks are actually landing, do you think?

Well, I think from the beginning, the Sand campaign, you know, they've, they've had a huge amount of resources behind them in terms of campaign donations.

Of course, some of that comes from, uh, Sand's wealthy in-laws.

They've been able to donate millions to his campaign, but he's also raised millions more from, from other Iowans and from around the country.

And so that kind of war chest has helped him to immediately begin attacking Lane as soon as Lane came out of this kind of contested primary back in June.

And so he's been able to go on the airwaves.

He immediately was able to, um, kind of hit the ground running with his town halls to be able to disseminate those attacks about Kansas.

W- what will you be watching here?

Explain how this could work if none of these candidates get 35% of the vote.

Right.

There's, there's a 35% thresh- threshold that these guys need to hit on election night in order to claim the nomination outright, and if they don't do that, um, rather than kind of like a runoff election, it goes to a statewide convention, and this is something that's run by the parties, not by the state necessarily.

So they'll go into...

And, and the state convention happens, happens every election cycle.

That's, that's not surprising.

And, and through this process, this is kind of the extension of the, uh, the precinct caucuses that everyone comes to cover.

It, it, what's your read on this, uh, Brianna? Number one, is the 35% thing like a real possibility? And number two, is this Feenstra's race to lose or not?