The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
DES MOINES — Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst has drawn her first Democratic challenger in the 2026 election.
Iowa Army and Marine Corps veteran Nathan Sage, executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, launched his campaign Wednesday to seek his party’s nomination to challenge Ernst for her U.S. Senate seat.
Ernst told reporters in 2024 that she intends to seek a third term, but she has not formally launched a re-election campaign.
Sage is the first Democratic challenger to formally launch a campaign to run for the seat in what is expected to be a competitive Democratic primary. A trio of Democratic state lawmakers — Sen. Zach Wahls from Coralville, Rep. J.D. Scholten from Sioux City and Rep. Josh Turek from Council Bluffs — have told The Gazette they are considering running for U.S. Senate in 2026.
Sage, in a launch video and news release, highlighted his upbringing “in an Iowa trailer park in the shadows of a meat processing plant” with his dad, a U.S. Air Force veteran and factory worker, and his mom, who worked as a day care teacher and later became a certified nursing assistant. Both of parents later died of cancer, he said.
After graduating from Mason City High School, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He rose to the rank of corporal and served two deployments to Iraq, according to his campaign. He later joined the U.S. Army, serving from 2008 until 2013, and worked as a mechanic for a while. He used the GI Bill to study journalism and mass communication at Kansas State University, and worked nights as a screen printer to support his family while attending school, according to a campaign news release.
After graduating, he moved to Knoxville where he worked in radio, serving as a news director and sports director. Today, he serves as the executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, where “he focuses on economic development, supporting local businesses, and fostering community pride,” according to his campaign.
He lives in Indianola with his wife and their two daughters.
Sage said he is running to improve the lives of and “give a voice to” working-class Iowans. “The American dream is under attack. The middle class is shrinking,” Sage said in a statement. “Family farms and small businesses are getting screwed over. Veterans return home and are abandoned. People are working longer hours for fewer dollars.”
Sage, in the campaign video, describes Knoxville as “one of the many places that is being abandoned, hurt by corporations, billionaires, and the politicians they own.”
Sage said he is running “an unapologetically pro-worker campaign” focused on “tackling corruption in Washington and Iowa, standing up to the ruling class and billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, supporting our veterans, and saving our small businesses, small towns, and family farms.”
Ernst’ campaign said the senator is a “proven leader” who delivers for Iowans.
“Look no further than her work to bring justice to an Iowa family whose daughter was killed by an illegal immigrant and to end Washington’s wasteful spending and save Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” said Bryan Kraber, with Ernst’s campaign. “Make no mistake — Joni is relentless, and she’s not slowing down.”
“Don’t mess with this combat veteran who grew up in rural, southwest Iowa wearing bread bags over her good pair of shoes and working the morning biscuit line at Hardee’s to save for college,” Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement to The Gazette. “Joni Ernst lived simply because there wasn’t room for waste, and she’s taken that same fight to the U.S. Senate to save Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars and make Washington — and clearly the Democrats — squeal.”
Nonpartisan elections analysts at the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both rate Iowa’s U.S. Senate race is a safe Republican seat in a state that has shifted solidly to the right in recent elections.
President Donald Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points last fall, and carried the state by 8 points in 2020. Ernst, the first female combat veteran to be elected to the U.S. Senate, won re-election to a second term in 2020. She defeated Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield by more than 6 percentage points, claiming victory in one of the most closely contested and heavily-funded U.S. Senate races in the country that cycle.
Iowa Democrats, though, see a glimmer of hope with their flip of a state Senate seat in a January special election. Mike Zimmer, a retired educator, defeated his Republican opponent by 4 points in a district Trump carried by more than 20 points last November. The district covers all of Clinton County and parts of Scott and Jackson counties.
Ernst has faced criticism over her vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as the U.S. secretary of defense over allegations of sexual impropriety, financial mismanagement, public drunkenness and other personal misconduct. Hegseth has denied the allegations.
A retired lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard, the Republican from Red Oak faced backlash from Trump supporters and MAGA activists for her initial hesitancy to back Hegseth amid a building pressure campaign to him to head the Pentagon.
Iowans also have recently packed raucous town halls and held large rallies to protest and ask pointed questions about recent actions take by the Trump administration, including tariffs and their impact on farmers, deportations and due process. They’ve expressed anger over funding cuts and mass firings of federal employees — including at the Department of Veterans Affairs — led by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Ernst has embraced and defended Trump and Musk’s efforts to expose and eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal government, forming a DOGE caucus of Senate Republicans to involve Congress in discussions of spending cuts.
Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com
