Ernst, 55, was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and comfortably won reelection in 2020. Iowa, once a swing state, remains an uphill battle for Democrats.
By Amy B Wang, Hannah Knowles, Kadia Goba and Theodoric Meyer, The Washington PostSen. Joni Ernst makes her way to a closed briefing for members of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.
Sen. Joni Ernst will not seek reelection to a third term, she announced Tuesday, creating an opening for Democrats in their bid to regain control of the Senate. In a video posted online, Ernst, 55, said it was “no easy decision” to retire from Congress and indicated she wanted to spend more time with her family. “As our family ages and grows, it’s my time for me to give back to them. … While this chapter of elected service will soon close, I will always find ways to best serve my community, state and these great United States of America,” she said. Shortly after the senator’s announcement on Tuesday, Rep. Ashley Hinson , who has served in the House since 2021, announced her campaign for Ernst’s seat. “I’m running for the United States Senate to fight alongside President Trump and deliver on the America First agenda,” Hinson, whose Senate run was widely anticipated, wrote on X. “The Left will do anything and everything to resurrect their out-of-touch agenda and dismantle our progress. As Iowa’s next Senator, I will stop at nothing to Make America Great!” Iowa, once a swing state, remains an uphill battle for Democrats. President Donald Trump won the state in November by more than 13 percentage points, and the last time a Democrat won a Senate race in Iowa was in 2008. Democrats, however, think they have reason for optimism next year in a race for an open seat. Even before Ernst’s decision, five Democrats had already begun campaigns for her seat, including Des Moines School Board Chairwoman Jackie Norris, state Rep. Josh Turek and state Sen. Zach Wahls.“This is an open seat and our best chance in years to win the seat back,” Wahls said Tuesday after Ernst’s announcement. At a Republican event in Iowa in August, Ernst acknowledged the growing field of Democratic challengers but did not indicate whether she would run again, only insisting her seat would stay in GOP hands. “Every day we get a new Democratic member of the House or Senate that decides to run for this Senate seat. Bring it on,” Ernst said then. “Bring it on, folks. Because I tell you, at the end of the day, Iowa is going to be red.” The reshuffled race comes during recent signs of political headwinds for Republicans in Iowa, where Democrats last week flipped a state Senate seat in a special election, ending the Republican supermajority in the chamber.Several of the Democratic candidates for Senate have seized on the special election upset as a harbinger for next year’s midterm elections. In a statement Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee suggested Ernst decided not to run because she could not defend Trump’s agenda. “Republicans can see the writing on the wall: spiking costs and ripping away health care does so much damage to their states that they would rather leave the Senate than defend their actions to voters,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand , who chairs the DSCC, said in a statement. Democrats need to pick up four seats to retake the Senate next year, which would require them to flip at least two Republican-held seats in states that Trump won last year by double digits. The DSCC started running ads this summer in four such states - Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas - and Democrats recruited former senator Sherrod Brown to run in Ohio. Ernst was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and comfortably won reelection in 2020. She said last year that she planned to run for a third term but would have also been open to a position in a second Trump administration. During divorce proceedings in 2019, Ernst also revealed she was interviewed to be Trump’s running mate in 2016 but declined.Ernst, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, initially did not support Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who faced an allegation of sexual assault, which he denied. Ernst, a sexual assault survivor who has led efforts to curb assaults in the military, ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth. Earlier this year, an exchange at one of Ernst’s town halls went viral after the senator glibly dismissed one attendee’s concern that people who would lose Medicaid coverage under Republican legislation would die. “Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst said then. “So, for heaven’s sakes. For heaven’s sakes, folks.”
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