URBANDALE — Eastern Iowa plays heavily in GOP plans to land the state in Donald Trump’s presidential column and give Republicans control of the Statehouse by ending Democrats 10-year grip on the Iowa Senate, Gov. Terry Branstad told a conservative group Wednesday.

Iowa Republicans are expecting Trump’s visits to Davenport and Cedar Rapids on Thursday to fire up the party’s base as well as draw support from independents and disaffected working-class Democrats who are feeling their party’s elites have left them behind in a “rigged system” that has made Hillary Clinton their 2016 nominee, he said.

Also Thursday, Branstad’s son, Eric, who serves as state director for Trump’s Iowa campaign, told members of the Westside Conservative Club they can expect to see Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, back in Iowa very soon after this week’s visit.

“Mr. Trump loves the state, loves Iowa. He’s going to be spending a lot of time in Iowa,” Eric Branstad said. “Iowa is important to the campaign. We are a battleground state and so they’re certainly going to put the focus that’s necessary and give Iowa what we deserve.”

For his part, the governor said a number of the 2016 pivotal races for the fight to control the Iowa Senate the next two years are in Eastern Iowa in districts where Republicans hold registration edges and have recruited strong challengers to take on Democratic incumbents.

“I’d like to see us have a Republican Senate to go with a Republican House because that would give us an opportunity to do some unbelievable things, including reforming and reversing the tax and regulatory burden in our state and moving forward with the pro-life agenda, as well as water quality and a number of other things that could make Iowa the kind of growing, prosperous state that I want to see for the long run,” the six-term Republican governor said. “I really believe that we have an extraordinary opportunity and we don’t want to miss it.”

He said he believes GOP candidates are aided by Trump’s crossover appeal to independents and Reagan Democrats who feel betrayed by a Democratic Party controlled by “the media elite, the money elite, the Hollywood elite and the D.C. elite” who have lost touch with working Americans, farmers and others.

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“Even though the Democrats have a formidable machine, there’s a whole lot of working people that have historically supported that party that have had it,” the governor said. “They’ve had it with this rigged system and the fact that they’ve been left behind.”

For that reason, he said he predicts Trump wins in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Iowa as long as he stays focused on the issues and offers voters the “very clear choice” between his outsider’s approach for restoring American greatness versus maintaining the status quo in Washington under Clinton.

Eric Branstad said the Trump campaign plans to open its headquarters in a Des Moines suburb next week and begin making some announcements that “are really going to turn heads” regarding staff additions, future visits and other developments.

“Everything that folks have been saying — that they don’t have the people, they don’t have the A team, they don’t have the organization,” he noted, “we’re going to prove them very wrong, very quickly.”

He said the interest, excitement and momentum among Iowans has been overwhelming.

“Over the last three days, I’m about 1,840 emails behind and I’m about 100 voicemails behind,” he said. “This is the only campaign I’ve ever worked on where everybody is calling us. I’ve never felt that before, I’ve never seen that before and it’s real. We are going to use that excitement and use that momentum and we’re going to turn Iowans out and we’re going to win Iowa come November,” he said.