Elissa Slotkin

Lucas Grundmeier is the Register's opinion editor.

A Michigan Democrat’s campaign sprint through Iowa on April 7 illustrated both the opportunity and the mountain-climb that confront the state’s Democratic Party in this year’s elections.

Iowa Democrats want to be relevant in high-profile races for the first time since President Donald Trump’s first midterm election, in 2018. That year, Democrats snagged three out of four U.S. House seats, gained ground in the Iowa House and nearly unseated incumbent Gov. Kim Reynolds in her first time facing voters at the top of the ticket.

Since then, Republicans have routed Democrats in rural Iowa. Trump carried the state handily twice. In 2022, Reynolds secured her second full term by a 19-percentage-point margin. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst won new terms comfortably. In each general election, the GOP expanded its advantages in the Iowa Senate and House. Some congressional and statewide races were close but still went Republicans’ way. The exception, Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand, narrowly secured a second term in 2022 after Republicans declined to support his opponent, a surprise winner in the party primary.

But expert forecasters and other pundits think there is hope in 2026 for Iowa Democrats. That national party leaders would send a strong surrogate like Sen. Elissa Slotkin, the Michigan Democrat, here suggests a similar sentiment.

The hurdles are still considerable. The secretary of state’s office numbers released this month give Republicans an advantage of at least 23,000 in active voter registrations over Democrats in all four congressional districts. A CNN/SSRS poll taken March 31 to April 2 revealed that, nationally, Americans have slightly more favorable opinions about the Republican Party than the Democrats. People aren’t pleased with either party, but the data certainly don’t seem to portend a blue wave.

Senator offers concessions on some issues that have hurt her party

Slotkin, asked about her strategy for navigating that environment, talked about taking difficult votes in Congress to support her constituents over the wishes of Democratic Party leadership. “That's the lot of being a Midwestern Democrat,” she said. “Everyone's a little mad at you all of the time.”

She added that, at a meeting with Trump voters in Indianola earlier on April 7, people were still turned off by President Joe Biden’s refusal to acknowledge problems with inflation and his immigration policies: “People experience ― they know their own pocketbooks. You cannot convince people that they don’t know and understand their pocketbooks.”

Politicians are generally advised to avoid spending much time looking back and discussing mistakes they or their colleagues might have made. Slotkin, in a conversation with Register journalists, broke that pattern in talking about Biden-era policies. She volunteered, without prompting, that Congress’ refusal to assert authority on the use of military force enabled not just Trump’s war with Iran but also President Barack Obama’s strikes on Libya. And she was forceful in saying that the Democratic Party was not being well-served by its leadership at all levels of government and needed new faces.

That’s a good start on course-correcting. Democrats would do well to seriously consider also acknowledging that Biden was on dangerous ground in using the government to try to suppress COVID-19 misinformation and dissenting views on LGBTQ issues.

Primary election will tell us more about Democrats’ progress

Slotkin’s visit to the Register came during the window when Trump’s official policy was that “a whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran’s leadership agreed to his demands. That informed many of the questions my colleagues and I asked Slotkin, who served multiple tours in the Middle East as a CIA analyst and recorded a video with other members of Congress in 2025 encouraging service members to refuse illegal orders. "Other militaries kill civilians. That is not what we do, OK? Not on purpose," she said April 7. "And so I think it completely undercuts our relationship with both allies and adversaries when we bluster on Twitter and then may or may not follow up.”

Slotkin was campaigning this week for Democratic U.S. House candidates. She didn’t take a position on the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, where two state senators are competing, but said she’d be back, if asked, before the general election. By that time, with competitive statewide races for both Republicans and Democrats, primary turnout will give us more imperfect information about whether Democrats are gaining enough ground to make for a competitive November.

Lucas Grundmeier is the Register’s opinion editor.