Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who is facing backlash over dismissive remarks and a sarcastic video she made about death and cuts to social safety net programs, now faces a rockier road to a third term, according to a noted elections handicapper’s Tuesday update.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted its rating for the 2026 Senate race in Iowa from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican” following Iowa Democratic state Rep. J.D. Scholten’s entry in the race.
“Though this was not the most artful example of politicking that we’ve ever seen, Ernst’s comments alone also did not really tempt us to immediately move off our Safe Republican rating for her race,” Sabato’s analyst J. Miles Coleman wrote in the ratings revision. “However, earlier this week, Democrats got a more proven recruit in state Rep. J.D. Scholten.”
“Aside from having a credible opponent, Ernst could face a more challenging environment than she faced in either of her previous two elections,” Coleman added.
Scholten cited Ernst’s remarks at a town hall meeting in Butler, Iowa, on Friday — where she responded to detractors who voiced concerns that cuts to Medicaid would threaten lives by saying, “Well, we are all going to die” — and her subsequent mock apology video, as driving factors behind his decision to run next year.
“After her comments over the weekend, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but that’s when I just said: This is unacceptable and you’ve gotta jump in,” Scholten told the Sioux City Journal on Monday. “At the end of the day, though, it’s not about her, it’s not about me, it’s about the people of Iowa deserving better.”
Political newcomer Nathan Sage is also running for the Senate seat as a Democrat.
Scholten, a former minor league baseball player, unsuccessfully campaigned for Iowa’s GOP stronghold 4th Congressional District seat in 2020 and 2018 before his election to the state Legislature.
Ernst won her 2020 reelection bid by roughly 7 points in a race that had at one point been deemed a toss-up.
“It’s possible that 2026 could be like 2018: Iowa did not have a Senate election that year, but Democrats did end up winning three of the state’s four U.S House seats that year, and we suspect that if Iowa had had a Senate election, it likely at least would have been close,” Coleman wrote in Tuesday’s updated analysis of the race.
A poll released in December — after President Trump soundly won Iowa’s 2024 election with nearly 57 percent of the vote — found that just under half of Iowa voters surveyed said they plan to vote for Ernst next year. The other half was split almost evenly between people who said they planned to vote for someone else and those who said they were undecided.
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