SINGING THE BLUES

MAGA Candidate Collapses in Red State Meltdown

The Democrat surged in front at the finish line.

Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek pulled off a dramatic victory by flipping an Iowa Senate seat from red to blue in a competitive race against GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson.

The win by the Iowa state representative and gold-medal Paralympian gave Democrats another seat as they cemented the Senate majority on a path that took them directly through the Hawkeye State.

It was a brutal final stretch in the Senate race as voters began to turn on Republican leaders, including the president, amid soaring costs due to the war in Iran and Trump’s tariff policies.

MS NOW and CNN both projected Turek won the state.

The race became a nail-biter in the final stretch as a string of polls showed Hinson and Turek in a one-point race to fill the seat being vacated by outgoing GOP Senator Joni Ernst, who announced her retirement in September 2025.

Trump rushed back to the state on Sunday to hold one of his final two in-person rallies in the Hawkeye State, after visiting Iowa just last week. He won the state three times, including most recently in 2024 by 13 points.

Hinson found herself trying to toe a line in the final weeks of the campaign, staying aligned with the president to avoid alienating the MAGA base while also breaking with Trump on a series of issues.

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Last month, Hinson released a video where she touted voting to release the Jeffrey Epstein files as a member of the House only to be hit with a series of fact checks that noted she only voted to release the files after Democrats and a handful of Republicans forced a vote, but she did not sign the discharge petition to force that vote and remained silent as GOP leaders tried to block the files from ever being released.

In September, Hinson also called for an immediate end to Trump’s war in Iran as diesel prices soared and voters became increasingly frustrated with high prices.

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However, Democrats quickly fired back that the Iowa lawmaker repeatedly voted against a series of war power resolutions pushed by Democrats to end Trump’s war, even as a small number of other House Republicans, including fellow Iowa GOP members, crossed party lines to vote with them.

Amid backlash against the president, the Iowa Senate race was increasingly seen as a top target for Democrats, despite a Democratic candidate not winning an Iowa Senate seat since Sen. Tom Harkin in 2008. He retired at the end of his term in January 2015.

But coupled with a strong candidate for governor, Democrats were bullish on their chances of flipping the seat.

Democrats and outside groups spent a staggering $124 million to boost Turek, while Republicans and backers spent more than $118 million on ads for the Senate race to help Hinson in the general election, according to tracking by Ad Impact.

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Sarah Ewall-WicePolitical Reporter

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