His allies control the state GOP, and they’re looking ahead.

It started as an Odyssey.

Two years ago, A. J. Spiker was an unknown, 31-year-old realtor from Ames, Iowa, who read Frédéric Bastiat and dabbled in state politics. He signed on, as many of his friends did, to work for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Because of his experience on the state Republican committee and his work as chairman of the Story County GOP, he was asked to serve as vice chairman of Paul’s Iowa effort. At first, Spiker thought it would be only a title, and that he’d rarely, if ever, interact with his political hero. “Usually, presidential candidates stay out of what’s happening on the ground,” he explains in a phone interview. Then he got a call: Paul was coming to Iowa, and he wanted to hit the road.


The Paul campaign tapped Spiker to be the driver. He went to his driveway, opened the door of his white Honda Odyssey minivan, and began to clean out his three kids’ toys. A few weeks later, he, Paul, and a couple of senior aides were on Interstate 35, cruising through the cornfields and talking about economics. The Paul crew stopped at diners, slept in motels, and organized rallies and fundraisers from their smartphones. Paul would do radio interviews from the van, and when they weren’t discussing philosophy as a group, Spiker would prep the congressman about the next town and give him the all-important names of the local officials.

Spiker suddenly found himself in the inner circle — the man behind the wheel of Paul’s Iowa campaign. Months later, on a cold January night, the Texas Republican eventually finished a disappointing third in the caucuses. But Spiker came out a winner. He made a name for himself as an astute organizer and impressed Iowans in his role as an unofficial liaison to the Paul skeptics within the Republican party. As a devout Roman Catholic, he connected on a personal level with backers of Rick Santorum and other conservatives and argued that Paul was with them on most of the issues. Paul’s advisers credit Spiker for helping Paul rise in Iowa from outsider status in 2008 to near the top of the pack in 2012.


That reputation buoyed Spiker a month after the caucuses, in February 2012, when the the state GOP needed a new chairman after the abrupt resignation of Matt Strawn, who had embarrassingly fumbled the final tally of the caucuses. (Mitt Romney was initially declared the winner, even though Santorum actually won by a hair.) Spiker decided to make a play for the post, and he used his social conservatism and his Paul network to woo support. “The vote was on a Saturday morning in Des Moines, and Kim Lehman, who supported Santorum, nominated me,” he recalls. In his pitch, he talked about the need for the party to stand up for conservative principles, and not just its brand.


Spiker wasn’t sure how the vote would unfold. As he made his way around the state GOP’s headquarters, he was nervous. Republican governor Terry Branstad, who had been in elected office since before Spiker was born, endorsed his opponent, Bill Schickel, at the last minute. Spiker wasn’t intimidated by Branstad’s maneuvers; he dug in his heels instead: “You know, that endorsement kept me in the race,” he says. The first vote among the state committee was too close to call, and a second ballot was needed. Eventually, Spiker won by only one vote, nine to eight. Less than a year after joining the Paul campaign as a volunteer, he became the youngest Republican state chairman in Iowa’s history.


These days, Spiker’s ascent continues. He was easily reelected to the chairmanship earlier this year with 13 votes on the state committee, and he has helped to populate the state GOP apparatus with former Ron Paul activists, though he likes to think of them as supporters of liberty, rather than of any particular candidate. David Fischer and Drew Ivers, two former Iowa advisers to the Paul campaign, are now party leaders, and several members of the central committee are libertarian conservatives.

And though he’s not officially a member of Senator Rand Paul’s political operation, Spiker is still a prominent member of Paul World — the group of politicos close to the Paul family who are quietly getting ready for Paul to run. In our conversation, Spiker plays down his ties and says he speaks to the senator only on rare occasions. “He came here a few times for his father, and I talk to him when he visits, but that’s about it,” he says. But he does have a frequent, if casual correspondence with Paul aides, such as Doug Stafford, who is considered to be Paul’s top political strategist.



Spiker’s claim of neutrality, however, hasn’t stopped his critics from wondering whether he’s tilting the party toward the Paul wing, especially after he invited Senator Paul to give a high-profile dinner speech in Cedar Rapids earlier this month — the first major 2016-related invitation that he was able to extend. That gesture clarified the image of cozy relations between the new Iowa GOP vanguard and the Paul family, at least among the establishment Republican operatives who once scoffed at all things Paul.

Those Republicans haven’t refrained from blasting Spiker for his association with Paul. Branstad, sources say, has icy relations with Spiker, and several prominent Iowa donors have resisted giving money to a Paul-affiliated party. Branstad and Spiker have also warred publicly and privately over the fate of the Ames straw poll: Branstad would like to see it phased out, but Spiker thinks it’s a great event that helps put lesser-known candidates on the map. More prevalent is general unease about the power of Paul’s army. “The words are fine about reaching out and opening doors,” Schickel said earlier this year, during a speech to Iowa Republicans. “But when our chair, our executive director, our communications director, and our finance director are all from [Paul’s] Campaign for Liberty, that sends a message that is disenfranchising to many Republicans.”

Spiker, naturally, dismisses talk of a conspiracy to ensure Paul wins the 2016 Iowa caucuses. “This is more of a generational shift,” he says. “There is a group that wants to see the party advance, and there is a group that wants to see principles advance, and the latter is where the party is moving.” Regardless, should Paul run, as many close to him expect, he’d no doubt benefit from this Republican sea change. The Paul camp is no longer an Iowa sideshow. It’s running the show, and Spiker’s odyssey is proof.

— Robert Costa is National Review’s Washington editor.