Democrats won both of Iowa's top races on Tuesday. State Rep. Josh Turek defeated Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for the state's open U.S. Senate seat, and state Auditor Rob Sand won the governorship, the Associated Press projected.
Turek took 50.6% of the vote to Hinson's 46.3%, flipping the seat held by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who chose not to seek reelection. Iowa has not had a Democratic senator since Tom Harkin retired in 2015. Turek carried 10 counties that voted Republican for president in 2024, including Muscatine County, which Trump won by 15 points.
"Together, Iowa, we have proven that the impossible was possible," Turek told supporters in Des Moines. Harkin joined him on stage. "The great Tom Harkin changed my life and gave me and so many other disabled Americans an on-ramp onto society," Turek said.
Turek, 47, was born with spina bifida and won Paralympic gold medals in wheelchair basketball in 2016 and 2020. He won his first Iowa House race in 2022 by six votes. He tied Hinson to the war with Iran and Trump's trade war, and promised: "First and foremost in the United States Senate, I will fight to end this war in Iran."
Hinson, a former Cedar Rapids TV anchor serving her third term in the House, had launched her campaign promising to be Trump's "top ally" in the Senate. It was her first electoral defeat.
First Democratic governor since 2006
Sand, a two-term state auditor, defeated Republican businessman Zach Lahn and had 56.7% of the vote with 87% of results in. He becomes the first Democrat elected governor of Iowa since Chet Culver in 2006 and succeeds Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who did not seek another term.
Lahn, a first-time candidate, had beaten Trump-endorsed Rep. Randy Feenstra by less than a percentage point in the June primary. After his win, Sand repeated the line that framed his campaign: "not redder or bluer, but better & truer."
Video and photos: Josh Turek and Rob Sand campaigns
