Dems Flip Iowa Senate Seat in Special Vote
that Could Spark Anxiety on New Texas Map
Capitol Inside
August 27, 2025
Texas Republicans may need to temper their expectations for a new congressional map in the wake of a Democrat's victory on Tuesday night in a special state Senate election in Iowa in a district that President Donald Trump won by more than 11 points last fall.
Democrat Catelin Drey turned the tables on the GOP in Iowa when she defeated a Republican by almost 11 points in a special contest in an Iowa Senate district where an incumbent for the GOP died in June. Drey's surprisingly easy victory snapped an end to the super-majority that Iowa Republicans enjoyed in the state's upper chamber.
Republican Governor Kim Reynolds set the special Senate election on the earliest possible date with no concern about Democrats flipping the seat that the GOP controlled for more than a dozen years.
Reynolds now will need at least one Democratic vote to have her nominees to state posts confirmed in the Senate as a consequence of Drey's win.
Democrats at the national level made the Senate District 1 fight in Iowa a high-level priority as a test of Trump's down-ballot strength and referendum on his popularity after nearly eight months into his second term in the White House.
“National Democrats were so desperate for a win that they activated 30,000 volunteers and a flood of national money to win a state senate special election by a few hundred votes,” Iowa Republican Party Chair Jeff Kaufmann said of the SD 1 results. Drey actually beat Republican Christopher Prosch by 797 votes based on the initial tally at the Iowa Secretary of State's office.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin had a different take on the special Senate vote in the Hawkeye State. "Iowans are seeing Republicans for who they are: self-serving liars who will throw their constituents under the bus to rubber stamp Donald Trump's disastrous agenda - and they're ready for change," the DNC boss said. "They are putting Republicans on notice and making it crystal clear: any Republican pushing Trump's unpopular, extreme agenda has no place governing on behalf of Iowa families."
Democrats celebrated the Iowa Senate election outcome as the new U.S. House map in Texas landed on Governor Greg Abbott's desk where he's been expected to sign the legislation that contains it into law without delay. The Texas governor could decide that GOP state lawmakers here overestimated the president's pull here and send the redistricting plan back to the Legislature for the sake of drawing more congressional districts here for the Republicans.
By signing the map that cleared the Texas House and Senate last week, Abbott and the Republicans here appear content to settle for a tie with California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Assembly in his state where they needed only six days to approve a U.S. House map with five more seats tailored for Democrats. The Texas Republicans have spent seven weeks on congressional redistricting this summer in contrast - thanks in large part to House Democrats who held the plan hostage for two weeks with a quorum-busting walkout this month.
While the new California map faces a final obstacle in a statewide election in November, the Texas Republicans could be the biggest losers in the war on redistricting that Trump initiated and they enabled if they don't flip all five of the targeted seats here.
Iowa has long been viewed as a barometer for the nation as a whole in terms of the politics there. Texas Republicans could be in trouble If the special state Senate election in Iowa is a gauge of what to expect at the polls next year in other states. Here's why based on the shares of the vote that Trump and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz received in the five additional congressional districts that were crafted for the GOP on the new map here.
* Congressional District 9. Trump carried this Houston-area district in 2024 with 59.5 percent of the vote for a winning margin of 19.9 points. Cruz won in the new version of CD 9 with 54.4 percent of the vote in a fight with Democrat Colin Allred in the U.S. Senate race here last fall. Cruz beat the Democratic challenger in the new CD 9 by 11.2 percentage points.
* Congressional District 32. Trump won in the redrawn version of CD 32 in the Dallas area with 57.7 percent of the vote and a winning margin of 17.7 points last year. Cruz won by 12.5 points in CD 32 on the new map with 55.2 percent of the vote. CD 32 and CD 9 appear to be safely Republican in the new U.S. House plan based on the 2024 results in both places. But the Iowa Senate election could spark considerable angst among the Republicans in the Lone Star State based on the other three congressional districts that lawmakers here approved last week.
* Congressional District 28. Trump prevailed by 10.4 points with 54.8 percent of the vote in the South Texas district that Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry of Cuellar of Laredo represents. But Cruz carried the new version of Cuellar's district by a mere 0.2 points with 48.8 percent of the vote in 2024. Cuellar said this week that the Republicans actually made the district more Democratic with the redistricting plan that was designed to eliminate him from the U.S. House roster.
* Congressional District 34. Trump won in the reconfigured CD 34 by 10.1 points with 54.6 percent of the vote last year. But Cruz received only 49.7 percent of the vote in the new CD 34 where he defeated Allred by 1.9 points. Democratic U.S. Rep. Vincente Gonzalez of Brownsville could be a slight favorite there now if the Iowa Senate election results are not an aberration.
* Congressional District 35. Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris by 10.4 points in 2024 in the new CD 35 with 54.6 percent of the vote. But Cruz won there by 3.8 points with 50.6 percent.
more to come ...
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