Iowa's Double Vacancy: The Once‑in‑58‑Years Election That Could Reshape the Midwest

The last time Iowa voters had to pick both a new governor and a new U.S. senator on the same ballot, Lyndon Johnson was president, the Vietnam War was raging, and Richard Nixon was about to win the White House. That was 1968. In the 58 years since, Iowa's political leaders have tended to stick around — Chuck Grassley has been in the Senate since 1981, Tom Harkin served 30 years, and governors routinely served multiple terms with no constitutional limits to stop them.

That era of stability is over. In April 2025, Governor Kim Reynolds announced she would not seek a third term. In September, Senator Joni Ernst announced she would not seek a third term. Two of Iowa's four U.S. Representatives — Ashley Hinson and Randy Feenstra — announced they would leave their House seats to run for Senate and governor, respectively. Iowa is guaranteed a new governor, a new senator, and at least two new members of Congress in 2027.

That's Rachel Paine Caufield, chair of Drake University's political science department, and she's not exaggerating. Iowa's 2026 ballot is the most wide-open in the state's modern history — a cascading set of dominoes triggered by two retirements and one disastrous town hall moment that changed the trajectory of the entire cycle.

Reynolds: Family First, Legacy Intact

Reynolds' departure was genuinely surprising. Iowa has no gubernatorial term limits, and Reynolds won re-election in 2022 by 19 points. She had become a national Republican star — chairing the Republican Governors Association, delivering a GOP response to Biden's address to Congress, and hosting presidential candidates through Iowa's caucus cycle. She endorsed Ron DeSantis over Trump in 2023, breaking a longstanding tradition of Iowa governors staying neutral.

Her stated reason for leaving: family. Her husband Kevin was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2023 (now in remission), and after nearly a decade as governor, she said it was time to be there for them. There was no political crisis forcing her out — she leaves office popular among Iowa Republicans and with a conservative legacy that includes the state's school choice program, now used by more than 27,000 students.

Ernst: The Town Hall That Changed Everything

Ernst's retirement is the one that reshaped the entire cycle. A two-term senator, former No. 3 in Senate GOP leadership, Iraq War combat veteran, and one-time vice presidential contender, Ernst had the resume to win a third term. But she'd accumulated political damage from multiple directions.

From the right: she hesitated on Pete Hegseth's confirmation as Defense Secretary, citing his sexual assault allegations — a principled stance that infuriated Trump's base. From the left: she'd voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill's Medicaid provisions. And then came the town hall in May 2025, where a constituent yelled that people would die without Medicaid coverage. Ernst's response entered the political lexicon instantly.

"Well, we all are going to die."

— Sen. Joni Ernst, at a May 2025 town hall on Medicaid cuts

She later made a sarcastic apology at a cemetery. The clip went viral. Iowa political analysts said it would have defined her re-election campaign and required massive spending to overcome. Rather than fight that battle, Ernst walked away — opening the door for a candidate without that baggage.

University of Iowa political scientist Dave Peterson noted that Ernst had originally promised to serve only two terms. "She hasn't seemed to have quite the same enjoyment of the job," Peterson said. UNI professor Donna Hoffman offered a simpler explanation: "In this day and age, sheer exhaustion."

The Republican: Ashley Hinson

Within hours of Ernst's retirement announcement, Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa's 2nd Congressional District declared her Senate candidacy and received Trump's endorsement. A former television news anchor who unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2020, Hinson is the clear Republican frontrunner. She won her district with 57% in 2024 and has established a fundraising operation built for statewide scale.

Her primary opponent, former state Senator Jim Carlin, is not expected to pose a serious threat. Multiple Iowa strategists say Hinson will cruise to the nomination.

The strategic argument for Hinson over Ernst is counterintuitive but real: she may actually be a stronger candidate than the incumbent she's replacing. She carries none of Ernst's Medicaid baggage, none of the Hegseth drama, and enters the race as a fresh face rather than a two-term senator defending a record. As liberal Iowa commentator Laura Belin wrote, Hinson "would carry less baggage into the 2026 campaign than Ernst."

But Hinson's departure from the 2nd District creates yet another open House seat — Iowa's third competitive congressional race on the 2026 ballot.

The Democrats: Wahls vs. Turek

The Democratic primary is a genuine contest between two sitting state legislators with sharply different profiles.

Zach Wahls is a state senator from Coralville who first gained national attention as a teenager in 2011, when his impassioned speech defending the right of his two mothers to marry went viral. He's been in the Iowa Senate since 2019, held party leadership positions, and has the grassroots energy and small-dollar fundraising base. Elizabeth Warren has endorsed him. He's made tariffs a central issue, calling Trump's trade policies "absolutely devastating for Iowa" and hammering Hinson for voting against a House resolution to end tariffs on Canada. He's pledged not to vote for Chuck Schumer as Senate Democratic leader — a move that plays well with progressive activists but carries risks in a general election.

Josh Turek is a state representative from Council Bluffs and a Paralympics gold medalist who has centered his campaign on disability advocacy and a more moderate posture. He's picked up endorsements from current and former Democratic senators and is seen by some strategists as the safer general-election candidate. Multiple Iowa Republican operatives have admitted — on the record — that they'd rather face Wahls than Turek, calling Wahls easier to frame as a progressive in a state Trump won by 13 points.

NOTUS reported that the Hinson campaign's press releases almost exclusively attack Wahls while ignoring Turek — a tell that Republicans are trying to elevate the candidate they'd prefer to run against. The Wahls campaign's response: the polling shows both Democrats performing roughly equally against Hinson, and the idea that Iowa voters won't elect Wahls is "rooted in a biased and condescending view of Iowa voters."

National Democrats consider Iowa a second-tier Senate opportunity — behind North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, and Alaska. But in a cycle where every seat matters and Democrats need net four pickups for a majority, Iowa is on the board in a way it hasn't been since 2008, when Tom Harkin last won re-election.

Rob Sand: Iowa's Lone Democrat

Rob Sand is the state auditor — and the only Democrat currently holding statewide office in Iowa. He's the clear Democratic frontrunner for governor after Julie Stauch failed to meet the signature threshold for ballot access, giving Sand an uncontested path to the nomination.

Sand has built his candidacy on fiscal accountability and retail politics, visiting all 99 Iowa counties and deliberately courting Republican and independent voters. He barely won his auditor's race four years ago by a few thousand votes, which Republicans cite as evidence he's beatable. But Iowa Republican strategists have been privately nervous about Sand, whose county-by-county approach mirrors the model that once made Iowa competitive for Democrats. At a Mackinac-style Iowa policy conference, one Republican consultant noted that Sand's campaign strategy has "Republicans talking about him in a way that kind of indicates some nervousness."

The Republican Field: Five Deep

Five Republicans qualified for the gubernatorial primary: Rep. Randy Feenstra (who gave up his House seat to run), former state agency director Adam Steen, state Rep. Eddie Andrews, businessman Zach Lahn, and pastor Brad Sherman. Feenstra is the establishment favorite with the most name recognition, but the crowded field could produce a bruising primary that weakens whoever emerges.

The domino effect is again visible: Feenstra's departure from the 4th Congressional District creates yet another open House seat — though in a safely Republican district.

The Full Cascade

Here is what Iowa's double vacancy has produced, in total:

Iowa's Republican strategist Luke Martz put it plainly: "We're going into what could be a tumultuous midterm, with two seats already highly targeted. This would be a third, depending on who we nominate."

For Democrats, the Iowa math is straightforward: the party currently holds one statewide office in the entire state. If they flip the governorship and the Senate seat, they go from near-total irrelevance to a meaningful presence in a state that sent Barack Obama to the White House twice. If they also pick up one or two House seats, Iowa becomes the story of the 2026 midterms.

The Tariff Problem

Beneath the candidate shuffling is a policy issue that could define every race on the Iowa ballot: tariffs. Iowa's economy runs on agriculture — corn, soybeans, and pork — and Trump's trade policies have hammered export markets. Commodity prices are low. Production costs are high. Iowa farmers who backed Trump are feeling the squeeze, and Democrats are making sure they know it.

Wahls has made tariffs the centerpiece of his Senate campaign, attacking Hinson for voting against a House resolution to end tariffs on Canada. Hinson has defended the tariffs as an effort to "level the playing field." But in a state where soybean farmers have seen their overseas markets shrink, the trade war is personal in a way it isn't in most states.

One Republican operative, granted anonymity, admitted there's genuine anxiety: "There's a concern that it's going to be a good Democratic year."

Bottom Line

Iowa in 2026 is what happens when two retirements, one viral gaffe, and a trade war converge on a state that has been drifting out of reach for Democrats for a decade. It's a state Trump won by 13 points where Republicans hold every statewide office except one, every congressional seat, and supermajorities in the state legislature. On paper, this is still red territory.

But open seats change everything. Incumbents won 94% of their races in 2024. Remove the incumbents and you remove the single greatest structural advantage in American politics. Iowa now has two open statewide seats, at least two open House seats, and a farm economy under pressure from the president's own trade policies. The Democratic bench is thin but credible: a statewide auditor who has visited all 99 counties for governor, and two state legislators with real campaigns for Senate.

This is not a prediction that Iowa will flip blue. It's a statement of fact that Iowa is genuinely contested for the first time in a decade — and the sheer volume of open seats creates a turnout dynamic that nobody can model with confidence. When everything is open, anything is possible.

The primary is June 2. The general is November 3. Iowa hasn't been this interesting since the caucuses.