“I’m Nathan Sage, dad, mechanic, sports radio host, vet, child of a trailer park in Iowa,” the first Iowa Democrat to enter the 2026 U.S. Senate race says in a video posted online Wednesday morning. “And I’m going to kick corporate Republican Joni Ernst’s ass next November.”
Sage, the executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, lives in Indianola with his wife, Amanda Sutherland-Sage, and their two children. This is his first run for elective office.
Most candidates strike an upbeat tone in the videos used to launch their campaigns, but Sage has gone for a more confrontational approach. The narrator’s voice calls Ernst, who is in her second term representing Iowa in the Senate, “scandal-ridden, corporate-funded Joni Ernst,” as the sort of generic rock music used in truck commercials plays in the background.
“There’s a war at home, and we’re losing it,” Sage says in his video. “Unions under attack, farmers fucked over. People working nonstop just to survive, too busy to enjoy life.”
Sage calls Knoxville “one of the many places that’s being abandoned, hurt by corporations, billionaires and the politicians they own.”
“The economy is rigged, and those in power don’t give a damn. They’re the ones doing it,” Sage says.
The platform page on Sage’s campaign site echoes the populist tone of the video.
“For decades, the billionaires and multi-national monopolies who bought up both parties have been rewriting the rules to favor themselves,” the candidate writes. “Small businesses, family farmers, and the working class are being ground into the dirt while profits soar for a tiny handful of enormous corporations. We are entering a new Gilded Age — and it’s time to fight back.”
One of the priorities listed in Sage’s platform is “ban[ning] individuals from spending millions of dollars to buy elections. This may take a constitutional amendment. But we’ve done that as a country 27 times before. Better get started.”
Sage promises not to accept corporate donations and he’ll “refuse to work for a party boss who answers to billionaire donors.” Asked by the political news site NOTUS if he’d support Sen. Chuck Schumer for another term as the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Sage said he’d need to know Schumer better before making that decision.
In his platform statement, Sage lists nine other priorities.
• Increasing the minimum wage to a liveable wage and strengthening unions
• Improving health care and ending the “parasitic price gouging” of patients by insurance companies, drug manufacturers and private equity firms.
• Cutting taxes for the working class and shifting the federal tax burden to billionaires
• Supporting small businesses and small towns
• Increasing federal support for veterans
• Improving border security and passing comprehensive reform of the immigration system
• Improving the environment by holding polluters accountable and promoting clean energy
• Banning stock trading by members of Congress and restricting lobbying by former members
• Strengthening anti-trust laws and enforcement
Nathan Sage was born in Mason City. His father worked in a rubber and plastics factory and his mother taught daycare and preschool before becoming a certified nurse’s aide. His family lived in a trailer park while he was growing up, and Sage remembers when his father was arrested after a $50 check he wrote to buy school clothes for Sage and his sister bounced.
“We grew up poor, but I still believed in this country,” Sage says in his video.
After graduating from Mason City High School, Sage joined the Marines. He served two tours of duty in Iraq, working as a mechanic and earning the rank of corporal. After returning from Iraq, Sage left the Marine Corps and enlisted in the Army. He served for five years, once again earning the rank of corporal.
Sage attended Kansas State University on the G.I. Bill, and after completing his degree moved back to Iowa. He worked in radio, as a news director and a sports director. In May 2023, he was hired as the executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce.
Sage told NOTUS his run was in part inspired by Dan Osborn’s Senate run in Nebraska last year. Osborn, a Navy veteran, who was an industrial mechanic before becoming a union leader, ran as an independent candidate against incumbent Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. The Nebraska Democratic Party decided not to field a candidate, and threw its support behind Osborn. Fischer beat Osborn by almost 7 percentage points, but Nebraska is a heavily Republican state and that margin was the lowest winning margin for an incumbent Republican senator in the state since 1970. Osborn had the strongest showing of any candidate challenging a Republican for a Senate seat in 2024.
Other Democrats are expected to join the Senate race, and although Ernst has not officially declared another run, she has said she intends to seek reelection.
“I am running for Senate to give a voice to every Iowan who struggles to get by,” Sage writes on his platform page. “I grew up poor. I know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. It’s time for Washington to have a Senator who will actually fight for the working class.”
