She was there to woo the conservative mothers of Iowa. So Casey DeSantis, the spouse of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, wasted no time in speaking about her three younger kids — and the way badly she wished to go away them house.

“It’s funny, somebody outside by the snowball machine was asking, ‘Did you bring your kids with you?’” she stated, sitting on a small stage on Thursday in suburban Des Moines for her first solo look in her husband’s presidential marketing campaign. Her reply was unequivocal: “No.”

The final time she had the good concept of doing a marketing campaign occasion with one among her young children, she informed the gang, was at an occasion for her husband’s re-election marketing campaign in Florida. For most of her remarks, Madison, then 5, squirmed by her aspect. In the ultimate moments, Madison tugged on her sleeve and whispered that she needed to go to the toilet, Ms. DeSantis recalled.

“What you’re having, moms, is one of those out-of-body experiences. Do I need to get up? Do I need to walk her?” she stated, because the viewers roared. “Like, what is happening?”

Widely thought-about to be her husband’s most essential adviser, Ms. DeSantis is the “not-so-secret weapon,” the “second in command” and the “primary sounding board” of his political operation. Now, within the early weeks of his presidential marketing campaign, she’s added one more place to her portfolio: humanizer-in-chief.

Deploying a partner to attempt to soften a prickly political picture is a tried-and-true tactic of presidential politics. In 2007, Michelle Obama charmed Democratic major voters with an everywoman pitch devised to floor her husband’s uncommon life story. Four years later, Ann Romney toured Iowa and New Hampshire, providing “the other side of Mitt” — a caring, empathic household man who didn’t match the caricature of the heartless company raider drawn by his rivals. And within the remaining days of the 2016 marketing campaign, Melania Trump made a rare campaign appearance within the Philadelphia suburbs to counter her husband’s coarse picture with feminine voters.

But not often does this technique seem fairly so early within the major marketing campaign, a mirrored image each of Mr. DeSantis’s struggles to attach with voters and the central function his spouse has lengthy performed in his political profession.

During her husband’s first congressional race, Ms. DeSantis, then an area news reporter, crisscrossed neighborhoods of their northeastern Florida district on an electrical scooter, knocking on doorways and making his case. Years later, when he ran for governor, she narrated his most attention-grabbing marketing campaign advert, a 2018 spot during which he inspired their then-toddler to “build the wall” with giant cardboard blocks. Her function expanded alongside together with his: After he received, she secured a primary workplace within the governor’s Capitol suite, participated in personnel interviews as he employed employees for his new administration and shared the podium at hurricane briefings — among the most high-profile gubernatorial appearances in storm-prone Florida.

In current weeks, she has joined her husband in embracing the quirky traditions of the early-state major circuit, praising Iowa’s gas-station pizza and making headlines for sporting a black leather-based jacket emblazoned with an unofficial marketing campaign slogan “Where Woke Goes to Die” at an annual motorcycle-themed Republican fund-raiser in Des Moines.

Her high-profile function has created a battle of conflicting spin, as supporters and detractors provide their evaluation of the couple’s skilled partnership. She’s his biggest asset. Or, relying on who’s opining, maybe his greatest liability. She’s the antidote to his much-documented struggles to attach. Or a virus infecting his insular marketing campaign, encouraging her husband’s mistrust of these exterior his tight-knit political orbit.

Yet for Mr. DeSantis, the hope is just that his spouse can provide a solution to safe the holy grail of presidential campaigns: relatability.

That message wasn’t refined on Thursday in Johnston, Iowa, the place Ms. DeSantis appeared alongside the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for a question-and-answer session. “How in the world do you do it?” gushed the governor, herself a mom of three daughters and a grandmother to 11 grandchildren.

“It’s a little bit of organized chaos. I’m not going to lie,” stated Ms. DeSantis, earlier than launching right into a collection of tales about her three younger kids — Madison, Mason and Mamie — and their adventures within the governor’s mansion.

Then, it was right down to enterprise. Ms. DeSantis had come to formally roll out “Mamas for DeSantis,” a nationwide model of the statewide group she began throughout her husband’s re-election bid in 2022. In her remarks, Ms. DeSantis tried to place him as an avatar for the conservative anger at college directors and faculty boards that exploded in the course of the pandemic.

Much of her remarks have been targeted on a unfastened social agenda usually described as “parents’ rights,” a hodgepodge of a motion that features efforts to restrict how race and L.G.B.T.Q. points are taught, assaults on transgender rights, assist for publicly funded personal faculty vouchers and opposition to vaccine mandates.

“I care about protecting the innocence of my children and your children,” she informed the viewers on Thursday. “As long as I have breath in my body I will go out and I will fight for Ron DeSantis, not because he’s my husband — that is a part of it — but because I believe in him with every ounce of my being.”

It was a message that resonated with some within the viewers, which included many who have been affiliated with Moms for Liberty, a bunch that’s emerged as a conservative powerhouse on social points. Mr. DeSantis, stated Elicha Brancheau, a member of Moms for Liberty, has been a powerful champion for fogeys’ rights, and he or she stated she was impressed by his spouse’s dedication to the difficulty.

“I like her a lot. She’s so smart, well-spoken,” stated Ms. Brancheau, who met Ms. DeSantis earlier than the occasion. “I love the dynamic of their family.”

Not everybody was as satisfied.

Malina Cottington, a mom of 5 who began home-schooling her kids after the pandemic, stated she was looking for a candidate who would take the strongest place on preserving what she described as parental rights. She was impressed by Mr. DeSantis however favored the bolder plan of one among his Republican rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy, the multimillionaire entrepreneur and creator who has pledged to abolish the Department of Education.

“I think we need something that drastic,” stated Ms. Cottington, 42, who lives in suburban Des Moines. “We just want to be able to make sure we can raise our kids the way we want to raise them.”