Note: No podcast this week. My baby girl drops in a few weeks, so the Cornhole crew is taking a week to work ahead.
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Happy Wednesday. And welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith.
It’s official. US Sen. Joni Ernst will not seek reelection in 2026. If you’ve been with me this year, you’re pretty familiar with the will-she, won’t-she of it all. But at last, we have an answer. She won’t and that opens up a galaxy of possibilities heading into 2026.
Iowa Governor (OPEN) - We already knew Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn't running again in 2026. That's one open seat at the top of the ticket. While Republicans haven’t settled on a champion, Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand has been sprinting for a town hall near you. Just looking at his August stops: Des Moines, Clarion, Garner, Dakota City, Webster City, Ames, Cedar Rapids, Page, Fremont, Mills, Montgomery, Cass, Adair, Waterloo, Van Horne… and those are just the stops he announced to the press. It’s been enough to make Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann sweat.
There are a lot of Republicans running for governor this year: State Rep. Eddie Andrews of Johnson, former State Rep. Brad Sherman of Williamsburg, and former Iowa Department of Administrative Services Director Adam Steen. State Sen. Mike Bousselot and US Rep. Randy Feenstra have both formed exploratory committees. The latter is considered a frontrunner… despite it being past Labor Day and there’s still no announcement…
US Senate (OPEN) - Incumbents have an advantage. With Ernst out, the Senate race is in play. After claiming just this month that she was running for her IA-02 seat, US Rep. Ashley Hinson did what we thought she would and sprinted for Ernst’s soon-to-be-open seat. She is a strong candidate, but because of her lock-step with Mike Johnson’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), she will have to answer for cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for billionaire tax cuts—that still somehow manage to raise the national deficit. Hinson has also been supporting the Trump Administration’s continued “truth and transparency” about not releasing the Epstein list, despite agreeing that he was a pedophile. Interesting that we haven’t heard from US Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.
Meanwhile, the Democratic primary has been winnowed, though only slightly. When State Rep. Josh Turek of Council Bluffs jumped in, State Rep. JD Scholten of Sioux City dropped out and endorsed him. Turek quickly made up for his late entry, raising $500,000 in his first week. His campaign has been grabbing up support, including in my neck of the woods Bob and Sue Dvorsky (if you know, you know).
State Sen. Zach Wahls of Coralville has also been hitting prime time—that is MSNBC’s The Weekend Primetime, as well as CNN’s Laura Coates Live and The Briefing with Jen Psaki. He has also been hitting more of us new media folks with a spot on Brian Tyler Cohen’s show. All along, he’s been talking about a Public Policy Polling poll that put Wahls not just ahead of the pack, but ahead of a pre-announcement Ernst. Now that was on what they called the “informed ballot,” that is when a voter knows about the candidate’s support of the BBB.
Nathan Sage of Indianola is still on his 99 counties in 99 days. He spent some time with AFGE workers at the Iowa City VA calling attention to the Trump Administration’s refusal to recognize their contract.
Also Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris entered the race in August. And Bob Krause of Fairfield changed his mind on running in IA-01 and has decided to run in the even more crowded Senate primary.
Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District (OPEN) - Hinson’s departure leaves IA-02 incumbent-less. Until now, the seat has been considered “likely Republican” by election forecasters. While the district’s voter registration numbers still favor Republicans, Hinson’s departure is widely seen as putting the district in play.
Quick on the heels of yesterday’s shakeup, Republican State Rep. Shannon Lundgren of Peosta threw her hat in the race. She is probably best remembered as the House floor manager for the near-total abortion ban that is now in effect in Iowa.
The Democratic frontrunner—though it is early—is State Rep. Lindsay James of Dubuque. She is a Presbyterian pastor and has served four terms in the state House. She did a lot of work trying to pass some protections for mobile home residents. The other announced Democrats are Mathew 25 founder Clint Twedt-Ball of Cedar Rapids and Kathy Dolter of Dubuque, a former nursing dean at Kirkwood Community College.
Iowa’s 1st Congressional District (Miller-Meeks) - US Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has made a career out of squeaking by. Her 2020 victory was decided by just six votes—literally six—making it one of the closest House races in modern history. She won by a more comfortable but still narrow margin in 2022, but this district remains one of the most competitive in the country. Democrats have been eyeing this seat for years, and with the political winds shifting, Miller-Meeks could find herself in the fight of her political life.
Democrat Christina Bohannan is back in the saddle to go after the seat. Even in her loss in 2024, she outperformed the top of the ticket in a year when Republicans had a major advantage. A point I’ve made previously is Iowa is Trump country, but it’s not necessarily Miller-Meeks country. And I think there’s a reason why the congresswoman’s staff has a once again reupped their cadence of tweets.
Muscatine lawyer Taylor Wettach is running in the Democratic primary. And so is Travis Terrell.
Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District (Nunn) - US Rep. Zach Nunn's situation is almost as precarious as Miller-Meeks'. He flipped this seat from Democrat Cindy Axne in 2022, but he reportedly had to be pressured by Donald Trump just to run for reelection this cycle. That's not exactly the sign of a confident incumbent.
The Democratic ticket has two big bicameral names former Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst and State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott. This district, which includes parts of Des Moines and its suburbs, has been a political ping-pong ball in recent years. Whoever wins the primary will benefit from a national scene that has been eyeing this district for a flip for years now. It's the kind of seat that swings with national political winds, and if 2026 turns into a tough year for Republicans, Nunn could find himself looking for a new job.
Iowa’s 4th Congressional District (OPEN) - Like I said, Feenstra is out with dreams of the Governor’s Mansion. But this isn’t a seat that’s likely in play. The 4th District is reliably Republican—think Steve King territory before Feenstra ousted him in the 2020 primary. This seat will almost certainly stay red, but the question is which Republican gets it.
They include Iowa House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl of Missouri Valley, land appraiser Kyle Larsen of Humboldt County, and Siouxland Chamber of Commerce President Chris McGowan.
Democrats who have said they are running include former State Rep. Dave Dawson of Lawton and Ashley WolfTornbane of Storm Lake
AND THOSE ARE JUST OUR TOP OF THE TICKET. Come 2026, there will be a ton of interest in Iowa Legislature races, particularly after the special election victories that the Iowa Democratic Party has seen.
What we’re looking at is something voters should pay attention to. As one source put it to me: if bigger states like Texas and California redistrict, Iowa could end up with more competitive seats than almost anywhere else in the country. We may only be 1 percent of the nation's population, but we might just be ground zero for the 2026 fight for congressional control.
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Your friendly neighborhood reporter,
Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line
