Iowa has been a safe red state for almost a decade. That’s why it was so shocking when the state’s largest paper, the Des Moines Register, dropped a poll shortly before the 2024 election showing Kamala Harris was ahead of Donald Trump.
As it turned out, Trump easily won the Hawkeye State for a third time. And Trump being Trump decided to sue the paper, its parent company, Gannett, and the well-respected pollster, J. Ann Selzer, just like he’s sued ABC and CBS/Paramount over stories he didn’t like. Will this be yet another example of corporate media bending the knee? We’ll have to see.
To find out what’s going on with Iowa politics today, we talked to Zachary Oren Smith of Iowa Starting Line, which is part of COURIER, a new-media company that’s committed to doing fearless journalism in our communities.
Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas lived in Iowa for a decade, but has watched the state shift hard right since leaving in 2004. One of the turning points was the 2014 election of Republican Joni Ernst to the U.S. Senate, replacing longtime Democratic Senator Tom Harkin.
A Party of Psychopaths
When Joni Ernst was running in a crowded Iowa Senate Republican primary back in 2014, she released an unorthodox ad boasting about castrating pigs on the farm that changed the race.
Ernst, as you might remember, made headlines a couple months ago at a town hall when she was faced with folks angry about the huge cuts in Trump’s budget that will kick more than 10 million off Medicaid.
When someone yelled out, “People are going to die,” Ernst gave a dismissive reply that will forever live on on YouTube.
"Well, we all are going to die,” she declared. “For heaven's sakes, folks.”
It’s not clear if Ernst will run for reelection in 2026 and a host of Democrats have already joined the race. So will Iowa stay red in 2026? Smith said it’s definitely a state to watch.
Meanwhile, as Iowa’s two Republican Senators voted for Trump’s health care cuts, the state is facing a devastating health crisis that Iowa Starting Line is reporting on in its gripping series, “The Hot Spot.”
“Iowa has the second highest rate of cancer, [and] the fastest growing rate of cancer,” Smith noted. “And Iowa's starting line through our series, The Hot Spot, is working to ... unpack, to tease out the many contributing factors that are driving our cancer rate.”
You should definitely check out their reporting. And for more on what’s happening in Iowa, subscribe to Zachary’s podcast, Cornhole Champions.
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