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DEMS BREAK GOP SUPERMAJORITY IN IOWA STATEHOUSE WITH 20-POINT SWING
IN TRUMP DISTRICT  
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Stephen Prager
August 27, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ In a race that bodes well for Democrats' hopes in 2026, Catelin
Drey won by championing "affordable housing, childcare, and
healthcare, strong public schools, and bodily autonomy," wrote one
progressive Iowa journalist. _

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Democrats have broken
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GOP stranglehold over Iowa's statehouse with a resounding win in a
special election for the state Senate on Tuesday.

In the Sioux City-area district that Donald Trump
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11 points in 2024 and which had been won by Republicans for 13
consecutive years, Democrat Catelin Drey is projected to have won a
convincing 55% of the vote over her Republican opponent, Christopher
Prosch.

By taking the vacant seat, Democrats not only added to the mounting
evidence for a coming anti-Trump backlash in the midterms, but also
ended the Republican supermajority in Iowa's state Senate, which has
allowed the GOP to spend the past three years curtailing
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rights, stripping civil rights protections
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transgender people, and chipping away
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public education.

Additionally, the Democrats have thrown up a barrier to Republican
Gov. Kim Reynolds, who needs a supermajority to confirm appointments
and will now require some measure of bipartisan approval.

Like other successful Democratic candidates, Drey's message focused on
affordability, with a special emphasis on the cost of living for
families. Her slogan was "Iowa's Senate needs more moms."

"She has highlighted issues of particular importance to young
parents," wrote Laura Belin for the progressive Iowa politics
site _Bleeding Heartland
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"Affordable housing, childcare, and healthcare, strong public schools,
and bodily autonomy."

Drey seized on outrage toward Republican attempts to defund public
schools. Teachers, she said in one ad
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"shouldn't have to rely on GoFundMes just to do their jobs."

"One takeaway from the Iowa special election: don't listen to centrist
Democrats on education," said
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Berkshire, an education writer for _The Nation_ and the _New
Republic_. "Catelin Drey made defending and funding public schools a
focal point of her campaign and called for rolling back Iowa's
controversial school voucher program."

Drey's victory adds to the already mounting pile of evidence that
backlash towards President Donald Trump, whose approval ratings have
skidded to near-record lows
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recent weeks, will manifest at the ballot box next November.

G. Elliott Morris, a political data journalist, wrote
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in his _Strength in Numbers _newsletter that "there have been plenty
of special elections" this year, with "all of them suggesting a pretty
sizable leftward shift in the electoral environment since November
2024."

Citing data
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Downballot_'s special election tracker, Morris wrote:

On average in 2025, Democratic candidates in special elections are
running about 16 percentage points
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of Kamala Harris’s margin versus Donald Trump in last year’s
presidential election. That is 5-6 points higher than the average
Democratic overperformance in 2017
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These crushing results, Democratic strategists say, are the reason
behind Republicans' frantic efforts to ratchet up gerrymandering
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states like Texas, where they control the state legislature.

"If you're wondering why Republicans are gerrymandering the fuck out
of red states," said Democratic fundraiser Mike Nellis, "Democrats
just flipped a Trump Iowa Senate seat. That's what they're afraid of."

With Drey's victory, Iowa Democrats have now won four consecutive
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elections held in the state, flipping two other Republican-held seats.
Riding that wave of optimism, they now have their sights set on a
greater target: Iowa's two-term senator Joni Ernst, who comes up for
reelection in 2026.

Defeating Ernst would be a significant boost to Democrats' efforts to
regain control of the Senate in 2026. That effort may have been helped
along by Ernst herself, who responded to questions at a town hall
earlier this year about her support for savage cuts to healthcare in
the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill Act by callously remarking
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all going to die."

An internal poll published
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showed Democratic state senator Zach Wahls, one of many Democrats
vying for the party's nomination, edging Ernst out in a hypothetical
general election. Other polls show the race to be within the margin of
error.

In a video posted to X, Wahls said Tuesday's Democratic victory is
further evidence that "the state is in play," after not having elected
a Democratic senator since 2008.

"Iowans are sick of the inability of the current administration and
politicians like Joni Ernst to deal with rising costs. They are sick
of the corruption, and they are ready for change," Wahls said. "We are
going to flip this US Senate seat, the exact same way that Catelin
Drey flipped her state Senate seat."

_Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Iowa
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* Electoral Politics
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* Democratic Party
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* victory
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