Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, announced on Friday that she would not seek re-election in 2026, setting up the first open race for the state’s top office in years.
Ms. Reynolds, 65, has served as governor since 2017 and was lieutenant governor before that. She has overseen the transformation of a state that was once a battleground carried by former President Barack Obama into a Republican stronghold.
“This wasn’t an easy decision because I love this state and I love serving you,” she said in a video announcing her decision to step aside.
Ms. Reynolds is the first woman to serve as governor of Iowa. She succeeded Terry Branstad, a Republican who led the state over two long stretches in the 1980s, 1990s and 2010s before resigning in 2017 to become President Trump’s ambassador to China.
Ms. Reynolds governed as a fiscal conservative, cutting income tax rates in the state to a flat 3.8 percent as of this year.
In the 2024 presidential race, she endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida before the Iowa caucuses and campaigned aggressively with him, earning the ire of Mr. Trump. By contrast, Mr. Trump heaped praise on the state’s Republican attorney general, Brenna Bird, who had endorsed him.
By late 2024, Ms. Reynolds’s job approval rating in the Iowa Poll, the state’s top survey, had dipped to its lowest level on record, 45 percent.
Iowa continues to be the first state in the Republican presidential nominating calendar, giving its governor outsize sway in national politics.
The decision for Ms. Reynolds to retire will shake up the leadership of a state that has been remarkably stable. Senator Charles E. Grassley, 91, has served in the Senate since 1981, and his Republican counterpart, Senator Joni Ernst, is up for re-election in 2026. Iowa’s delegation in the House is now made up of four Republicans, three of whom represent districts seen as potential battlegrounds.
One of them, Representative Ashley Hinson, praised Ms. Reynolds on X minutes after the video was released. “The next governor no doubt has big shoes to fill,” she wrote.
The state auditor, Rob Sand, is widely seen as a likely Democratic candidate for governor.
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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