Iowa Republican Joni Ernst won’t seek re-election and gives Democrats a 2026 Senate boost: report
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst will not seek re-election in a decision that could have a big impact on the midterm elections, according to reports.
The decision would end months of lobbying and speculation from her Republican colleagues and giving Democrats a clear opening to put the upper chamber of Congress in play. Ernst has not publicly commented on the matter. CBS News reported Friday that Ernst will make an official announcement next week, citing multiple sources familiar with her thinking.
Her retirement gives Democrats an opportunity to pick up a seat in a red-purple state and narrow the GOP’s majority. Other seats in Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina are also being eyed as potential pickups, though Republicans are still heavily favored to retain control of the chamber come 2027. If Democrats take control of the Senate, they would be able to slow down most of Trump’s agenda and could reject his various nominees during his final two years.
The Independent has reached out for comment. The senator’s last tweet on her campaign account, from three days ago, recognized “national dog day.”
Ernst was first elected to the Senate in 2014, during the Tea Party wave that accompanied then-president Barack Obama’s second term. Since then, she’s watched her state trend further and further red, and in 2024, Donald Trump won the largest share of votes of any Republican presidential contender in Iowa in decades.
But Republicans just lost their supermajority in the Iowa state senate, following an upset victory by a Democrat earlier this year. And the likelihood that Trump himself has run his last race means that the GOP will no longer have his magnetic presence at the top of the ticket going forward.
Two Democrats have already announced campaigns for Ernst’s seat, though that number could grow now that the incumbent will not be a factor. Nathan Sage, a Marine vet and mechanic, is leading in fundraising at the moment.
“[Joni] Ernst is bowing out of this race, because she knows what we’ve known for a long time — Iowa is WINNABLE!” tweeted the Sage campaign after the news broke Friday.
“We’re the only campaign offering real change after decades of failed leadership from both parties, but we can’t do it without you,” the statement continued.
Zach Wahls, another member of the Iowa state senate and Sage’s competitor in the primary for Ernst’s seat, released a video on X vowing to flip the seat.
“We are going to flip this U.S. Senate seat the exact same way that Catelin Drey flipped her state Senate seat,” he vowed.
Taking control of one or both chambers of Congress next year would allow Democrats to effectively halt Trump’s legislative agenda for the remainder of his term. It would also allow Democrats to wield the power of Congress’s committees, particularly the investigative powers that would allow members to probe initiatives such as Elon Musk’s DOGE office and the Trump-directed federal occupation of Washington, D.C.
It would also give Democrats momentum heading into 2028, when the party hopes to retake control of the White House.
Ernst’s path to re-election was likely to be her toughest political battle yet. Video of her at a town hall event this year telling a voter “we all are going to die…for heaven’s sakes” in response to the voter’s concern about cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits was widely shared online by her critics. Republican members of Congress, including Ernst, have struggled to sell Trump’s budget reconciliation package — the “big, beautiful bill” — on the campaign trail as a result of voter concerns about new eligibility requirements threatening to throw millions off of both programs.
She’d previously won office by playing up folksy charm and her own blue-collar background, including her experience castrating pigs in a memorable ad from her 2014 bid for Senate.
Before joining the Senate, Ernst was a member of the state legislature.
