Government : GOP voters have 12 candidates to choose from on Feb. 1

Republicans will have 12 choices when they vote in the Iowa Caucus on Monday evening.

While Democrats deciding whom to support in Monday’s Iowa Caucus have three choices, the Republicans – even after a few candidates have dropped out – still have an even dozen names to choose from.

In alphabetical order, the surviving candidates include:

Jeb Bush

Ben Carson

Chris Christie

Ted Cruz

Carly Fiorina

Jim Gilmore

Mike Huckabee

John Kasich

Rand Paul

Marco Rubio

Rick Santorum

Donald Trump

Three Republican Governors or former governors have already dropped out: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Rick Perry of Texas.

While some Republicans have said they are still undecided, a few have expressed strong support for one particular candidate.

“I support Ted Cruz,” says Barry Adams of Vinton. “He does what he says he is going to do. Disrespect for the law and the Constitution is the worst problem in the federal government. Cruz would fight that – he will not go along to get along.”

Adams has met many candidates in the past and is impressed with Cruz’s personality, as well.

“I find him very personable. I have shaken hands with a number of presidential candidates: George H.W. Bush, both Doles (Robert and Elizabeth), Romney, Huckabee, Santorum, and more. Cruz is as good as any of them. He has a sharp wit. He is almost as funny as Rand Paul.”

One area resident who had his photo taken with Cruz at a recent evening stop at the Van Horne convenience store is Garrison Reekers.

“I believe that Ted Cruz will do what a good President should do: Defending and protecting the constitution,” Reekers says. “I have had a chance to meet Senator Cruz and after taking time to listen to him speak and talking with him I am confident that he means what he says. I also know the Senator's Iowa state director, who is a good man and shares many of the same values that I do that are in line with Senator Cruz.”

LuAnn Urlaub, another regular Caucus participant among Republicans, said she has recently made up her mind after a long, difficult process: She will vote for Marco Rubio

“I like his youth and energy,” she said, adding that while she disagrees with some of Rubio’s comments concerning immigration, she does see the contributions that some undocumented immigrants are making to society.

The economy, said Urlaub, is a main issue in this election.

“If we can create good-paying jobs for our college graduates, then they will not be burdened by student loan debt after they graduate,” she said, adding that creating jobs is better for new college graduates than some candidates’ proposals to make college free.

One first-time Caucus participant plans to cast her ballot for Donald Trump.

“I will be going to the Iowa caucus for the first time in my life, in support of Donald Trump,” says Joslyn Truax, who acknowledges that some people may be surprised at her decision.

“Before you roll your eyes and sigh and say ‘How could you?’ bear with me,” says Truax. “I didn't come to my conclusion by listening to the media and believing everything they tell me, I came to my conclusion by following politics the last two years, research, and by listening to the whole of what a candidate is saying – and not just the sound bites.

Truax cites a few reasons for her decision.

“Donald Trump wants to lay down the laws that we already have. He wants to seal the border to make us safe, but at the same time he wants to make a difficult Immigration process easier, which is very important and needs to be done. No one should wait years to become a legal citizen of our country only to watch illegal immigrants, whosr backgrounds are not known and who come from all countries around the world, slide right through. When we have to deal with another 9/11, we are all going to agree. He wants to use the gun laws already available yet ignored, to help with gun control, but most of all he wants to reopen our mental health facilities because, like me, he realizes the problem is far beyond and has nothing to do with legal gun owners. He wants to quit the Governments ridiculous spending and invest it in our roads and infrastructure's, and most importantly our schools, to help make us a better country and produce more jobs.”

Trump, she said, would raise taxes on the very rich but also make better use of the large amount of money government already gets.

“In his plan, if you make less than medium wage, you do not have taxes to pay,” says Truax. “No matter which way you look at it, our poor communities and families could benefit so much from this.”

Despite Trump’s hard-core persona, says Truax, “He is not going to mess with the social aspect of our country. I really feel he will make race relations better and he will not get into office and change the marriage status of some of the people we know and love. He supports and mentions our veterans and our police officers more than any candidate up there. He can be bought by no one. He is going to go in there and change things in the way that our Founding Fathers wanted them to be.”

Speaking of her support for the candidate leading in many GOP polls, Truax says: “I am an Independent who changed my party to Republican to vote for Trump. I am not finding what I want in the Democratic Party. Taxing people more and more to try and prop everyone else up is not the answer. Raising the minimum wage is a great idea, but raising it so high that employers will struggle to pay their employees, so instead they just raise the price of everything to accommodate the wage hike puts us right back to where we started. The answer is to lay down the laws we have in our books, boost the economy so that regular, everyday people can afford to actually go to the grocery store and still afford to pay their bills, and get the Government out of our lives, not further into them.”

Click HERE for a summary of the biographies of the 12 GOP candidates.

Click HERE for a list of Benton County GOP caucus sites. Republicans living within Vinton city limits all vote at VS Middle School.