The political environment for the party has led to widespread alarm. “It feels like it could be a wipeout,” one strategist said.
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WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Chuck Grassley, 93, invoked a grim scenario at a small Republican fundraiser last weekend, spelling out his concern about November’s elections.
“I don’t plan on dying in office,” he said. “But if I did, I don’t want a Democrat governor choosing my successor.”
The image of Rob Sand — the baby-faced Democrat and state auditor who has led in recent gubernatorial polls — choosing a replacement for the state’s senior senator was previously all but unthinkable. The Midwestern state has been led by a GOP trifecta that ascended alongside President Donald Trump nearly 10 years ago.
Now, Iowa Republicans are contemplating a political environment so formidable it’s led to widespread alarm and calls to action, giving the Saturday fundraiser to honor outgoing Sen. Joni Ernst an at-times panicked feel.
“Don’t let your friends vote for the demo-crazies!” the state party’s treasurer, David Barker, implored.
A combination of factors has made Iowa, where Trump expanded his winning margin to more than 13 percentage points in 2024, a tougher landscape for Republicans. The Iran war has pushed up diesel and gasoline prices, squeezing farmers and truckers, while the trade fight with China has hurt soybean growers. And despite the bright spot of low unemployment, Iowa’s economy shrank slightly in the first quarter of 2026, and ranked 48th among states for growth for that quarter.
Grassley’s grandson, Speaker of the Iowa House Pat Grassley, reassured the room that “there are more of us than there are of them,” referring to Republicans’ roughly 180,000-voter registration edge over Democrats.
“If you’re sitting there and you’re fretting,” Pat Grassley continued, help get voters to the polls, even those who seem “frustrated with things that you’re seeing.”
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R), who is running for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Josh Turek, led the crowd in a visualization exercise, urging them to close their eyes and imagine it was 2024 again, before Republicans had unified control of Washington, with a “wide-open” border and “crazy gender policies.”
“Open up your eyes again,” she said. “So you know what the mission is.”
Republicans’ private fears over the upcoming elections in this ruby red state spilled into public when the conservative radio host Steve Deace sent out an SOS message on social media. He revealed in a post last week that Iowa GOP candidates had been informed the state is trending at least 10 percentage points bluer than in 2024, putting several House races at risk.
Deace called the Iran war a “political albatross” in the post that rocketed through the state’s political circles. “We are risking what’s left of the Trump presidency on this,” he said.
Some officials say there is no panic, only a desire to ensure their base is not complacent. The state party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, cast the polling presentation as a “motivational speech” to ensure candidates pull out all the stops to energize voters given the traditional headwinds faced by the party controlling Washington during midterm elections. “We’ve got to work like we’re 15 points behind, not 10,” he said.
In a brief interview, Sen. Chuck Grassley said he believes the election is “trending in our favor.”
“Steve Deace is doing the right things by getting people … scared if they don’t go vote that we’re going to get a bunch of socialists elected,” he said.
But the fear-mongering is not just a strategy: It reflects real concerns that the Iran war and its economic effects could depress the state’s red voters when the party needs them the most.
“So the vibe, generally speaking, is not great,” said one Iowa Republican strategist, who laughed bleakly. The strategist spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the party’s weaknesses. He compared it to Democrats’ big 2006 midterm gains: “It feels like it could be a wipeout.”
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Iowa officials hope Trump will campaign in the reddest area of the state to try to drive turnout and explain his thinking on the war.
In a sign of how powerfully the party fears the Iran war blowback in the state, two House Republicans from Iowa voted with Democrats earlier this month on a resolution that directs Trump to withdraw U.S. troops from the Iran conflict. Hinson also recently announced she wants the war to end, although she did not back the resolution.
Republicans in this once-purple state have made big gains in the Trump era, in large part because of Iowa’s high proportions of white, working class and rural voters who have been core to the MAGA movement. Republicans have held unified control of state government and the two U.S. Senate seats for nearly 10 years. They also hold the governor’s mansion and all four House seats.
But even here, Trump’s appeal has faded, with only 44 percent of voters approving of him in a Siena/New York Times poll taken this summer, before the most recent spike in diesel prices.
Two of the state’s four congressional seats are now rated as toss-ups, a third as lean Republican, and the fourth as solid Republican by the political rating agency Cook Political Report. The governor’s race leans Democratic, according to Cook, while the Senate race is a toss-up.
”I’m a big Trump supporter, I always have been. But you know, the cost of living and gas and fuel price, it’s not helping him at all,” said Ivan Stoltzfus, a Republican donor attending the dinner to honor Ernst, who added he remains hopeful the polls are overstating Democrats’ chances. “He’s probably at the place where he wishes he’d never seen Iran.”
Sand, who defeated a Republican in 2018 and in 2022 was the only Democrat elected statewide, is leaning heavily on a non-partisan message as he seeks to defeat Zach Lahn, a 40-year-old businessman and first-time candidate who defeated Trump’s pick in the GOP primary.
At a recent rally in Cedar Rapids, Sand led the crowd in a somber rendition of “America the Beautiful,” and asked the smattering of registered Republicans in the crowd to take the microphone and share their concerns.
“Our political system is broken, and I think it’s broken largely because it’s run by two private clubs,” Sand, 44, told a large crowd.
He pledged to open the state’s closed primary system to let all voters help select a nominee, as well as other changes. He has said he would be “interested” in appointing an independent if Grassley’s seat were to become open and he was governor.
Republicans fear this could resonate in a state where any Democrat needs conservative backing to win.
“That’s probably my biggest worry right now: Will people recognize the deceit and the fake moderation when they’re frustrated?” Kaufmann, the state party chair, said, referring to Sand and Turek, a Paralympian and Iowa House representative.
The Democrats’ message appears to be peeling off some voters. Richard Kelly, a 82-year-old retiree and veteran who was stopping at Walmart in Marshalltown, said he planned to split his ticket.
“It sucks,” Kelly said, when asked to describe the state of Iowa and the nation, pointing to high gas prices. Kelly, a Republican who votes in the reddest of the state’s four congressional districts, said he would vote for Sand, the Democrat, and then Republicans for every other office.
Several voters across the political spectrum named the exact price of gasoline when citing the issues that matter the most to them in interviews with The Washington Post in recent days.
Kelly said he blames both parties for the current state of the economy. “No matter how good of an idea one party has, the other one finds 97 reasons not to,” he said. “We need a strong independent person running.”
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