A Democrat won a special election for an Iowa state Senate seat Tuesday, denying Republicans the opportunity to regain a supermajority in the chamber and handing the Democratic Party a large-margin victory ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Renee Hardman, a member of the West Des Moines City Council, received 71.4 percent of the vote in the special-election race for state Senate District 16, according to unofficial results from the Iowa secretary of state. Republican candidate Lucas Loftin received 28.5 percent of the vote in the race, which encompasses a suburban Des Moines jurisdiction.
A Republican win Tuesday would have restored the party’s former two-thirds supermajority and allowed Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’s nominees to be approved on a party-line vote. Reynolds will now need to win over at least one Democratic lawmaker to confirm nominees. Hardman’s election fills a vacancy after the death of state Sen. Claire Celsi, a Democrat, in October.
Hardman will be the first Black woman to serve in the Iowa Senate. In 2017, she became the first Black woman to be elected to the West Des Moines City Council. She also served as mayor pro tem in West Des Moines.
Democrats say the large margin in the race, in which some 10,300 votes were cast, is yet another sign of positive momentum for their party after Iowa Democrats flipped two right-leaning Senate seats earlier this year.
Democrats tend to over-perform in off-year races and special elections, but in the wake of 2024 losses, the party has attributed several recent off-year gains around the country to national momentum against President Donald Trump and Republicans.
Along with the Iowa wins, Democrats saw gains earlier this year in a special election for the state Senate in Georgia and a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. And while Republicans retained a ruby-red congressional district in Tennessee earlier this month, the race was more competitive than initially expected.
Democrats also swept major off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, including governors’ races in both states.
Hardman’s winning margin has also surpassed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s 2024 margin in Polk County — the county that encompasses much of Senate District 16. Hardman received 71.46 percent of the vote in Polk County on Tuesday, while Harris won Polk County last year with 54.8 percent of the vote.
“Democrats have been on fire in state legislative special elections throughout 2025, and Iowa is our latest proof point,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement Tuesday.
Senate Democratic Leader Janice Weiner also celebrated the victory, saying: “We’ve heard consistently from voters across our state that they are fed up with nine years of Republican leadership. … Every time they’ve voted this year, Iowans have said loud and clear: They want change.”
Iowa Democrats, whose support has waned in recent years, are still up against a robust Republican majority in both legislative chambers. Owing to that majority, Republican agenda items on abortion restrictions and schoolbook bans have moved forward. Iowa Republicans also earlier this year voted to remove civil rights protections for transgender people in the state, a move decried by several Democratic lawmakers.
In a social media post Tuesday, Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann acknowledged the Republican loss by praising Loftin’s campaign, saying it “forced the Iowa Democrat Party to spend a significant amount of money in a district so blue there wasn’t a Republican candidate on the ballot last cycle.”
“Although we fell short this time, the Republican Party of Iowa remains laser-focused on expanding our majorities in the Iowa Legislature and keeping Iowa ruby-red,” he said
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