A Democrat won a special election for an Iowa state Senate seat on Tuesday, setting back Republicans’ bid to regain a supermajority in the chamber and drumming up excitement among Democrats plotting a comeback in next year’s midterms.
Renee Hardman, a member of the West Des Moines City Council, earned more than double the votes of Republican candidate Lucas Loftin for Iowa State Senate District 16, a suburban Des Moines jurisdiction. Her election fills a vacancy after the death of 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.
The large margin is yet another sign of Democratic Party momentum after Iowa Democrats flipped two right-leaning Senate seats earlier this year. 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.
“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 on 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 postTuesday, 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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