Rita Hart was reelected chair of the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) by the party’s state central committee on Saturday. There were three other candidates for the position: Kim Callahan, IDP chair of the 3rd Congressional District; Alexandra Nickolas-Dermody, a community organizer in Davenport; and former chair of the Boone County Democratic Party, Tim Winter.
Hart won 38 of the 49 votes cast. Winter finished second with 10 votes. Hart’s reelection comes just two months after Iowa Democrats suffered a crushing defeat in the 2024 general elections, with Donald Trump easily winning the state, Republicans reelected in all four congressional districts and Democrats losing seats in both the Iowa House and Senate.
“The 2024 election did not go how I nor any Democrat in Iowa wanted, but the IDP is stronger than it was two years ago,” Hart said in a statement following the vote. “I am looking forward to continue building on the strong foundation we’ve put in place during the last two years so Democrats in Iowa can win.”
At the end of the 18-page plan for moving the party forward that Hart presented to the committee, the former Iowa state senator from Clinton County — who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2018 and for Congress in 2020 before being elected to lead the party in 2023 — said “2026 has the potential to be a transformative year for both Iowa and IDP.”
At the beginning of “Forward: Victory 2026,” Hart said the “most important accomplishment of the last two years for IDP as an institution is that our finances have stabilized and we have retired our outstanding debt.” According to Hart, the IDP’s outstanding debt was $100,000 when she took over, and the key to the IDP being able to provide assistance to candidates and county parties is continuing “to grow our revenue streams.”
“We must continue to have a consistent call time operation, further grow our small dollar and recurring donor program, and use congressional races and the Senate race to encourage EARLY national investment we did not see in 2024,” Hart said.
For decades, the IDP had been able to count on money from the national Democratic Party and Democrats with presidential aspirations looking to make connections in the state ahead of the Iowa Caucus. That came to a halt after the 2020 election cycle, when it became obvious that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was going to move Iowa out of the first-in-the-nation slot it had held since 1972. The results of that year’s election appeared to confirm Iowa as a solidly Republican state.
“Without national investment, it is very difficult to have a paid year-round organizing program,” the 2026 plan said. “The large-scale coordinated campaign was funded by transfers from national committees and presidential candidates, not the IDP operational budget.”
The lack of funds coming in from the national party and ambitious out-of-state politicians led to “a dramatically reduced organizing footprint from IDP,” which limited the help available to local party organizations.
Later in the document, Hart raises the possibility of trying to persuade the DNC to let Iowa have one of the few early slots in the 2028 presidential nominating process but says that any decision about that will have to come after a “family discussion” within the IDP about the future of the state’s Democratic presidential caucus.
Hart noted “the legacy of the caucuses is a well-trained cadre of volunteers and activists,” but added, “Unfortunately, we are still recovering from the pandemic in getting many of those folks active.”
The plan calls for a renewed effort to get Democrats who haven’t participated in recent elections to vote in 2026, and changes in how the party assesses those efforts. According to the plan, in the past the IDP has focused on “inputs” when evaluating impact — “doors knocked, phone calls made, relationships mapped.”
“We should instead be talking about the numbers of IDs for ballot preference, [what voters continue to be their] most important issue, and voting method. We will review voter file data from 2024… but we should not dogmatically iterate on the 2012 Obama campaign model in 2025 (reverse engineering goals based on assumptions about attempts per shift). Parties and campaigns must have the opportunity to innovate – if it is resulting in conversations.”
The plan also calls for increased assistance to county parties in determining the most effective means of spending their funds during an election cycle.
Another area of emphasis will be “creatively deploying our communications assets beyond just traditional media… That means understanding how voters are receiving their news via social media, streaming services, podcasts, etc.”
Part of that effort will involve expanding the IDP’s “storyteller program,” which is intended to highlight “stories of people Iowans relate to and how they are affected by Republican policies.”
The “Forward: Victory 2026” plan “was endorsed by Iowa Auditor Rob Sand, Iowa Democratic House Leader Jennifer Konfrst, and Iowa Democratic Senate Leader Janice Weiner,” the IDP said in a statement on Saturday.
“We’ve known for these last two years that we have a long ways to go, right?” Hart said, speaking to reporters after the vote on Saturday. “We were really down in ’22, so it’s not going to get fixed in one cycle. It’s not a quick turnaround. It takes time. it takes a lot of work.”
That echoes a statement Hart made in “Mandate for Change,” the plan she presented before being elected IDP chair in 2023.
“We cannot fix everything in one two-year cycle,” Hart wrote. “We need to be realistic about what can be achieved in two-year and four-year time frames.”
