Iowa Sen. Zach Wahls entered the race for Joni Ernst’s U.S. Senate seat on Wednesday. Wahls, who is in his second term in the Iowa Senate representing Coralville, North Liberty and other parts of Johnson County, is one of the state’s better-known Democrats and has often been mentioned as a potential candidate for U.S. House, Senate or the governorship in 2026.
In his announcement video and interviews about the launch of his campaign, Wahls said it is time for a new generation of Democratic leaders, and he’s part of that generation.
“I’m a sixth-generation Iowan and a new generation of Democrat,” the 33-year-old Wahls said, as the words “new generation” appeared on the screen. “I believe in the old Democratic values of hard work and family, not handouts for billionaires and insiders. Standing up for workers rights and civil rights like I always have.”
In 2011, a 19-year-old Wahls captured national attention with a speech he made before an Iowa House committee, when the legislature was considering a constitutional amendment to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2009 Varnum decision and ban same-sex marriage in Iowa.
“I defended the freedom to marry for all Iowans, including families like mine with two moms,” Wahls said in his video on Wednesday morning.
In 2012, Wahls was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention where President Barack Obama was nominated for his second term. Wahls thanked Obama for embracing the right of same-sex couples to marry earlier that year, and criticized the Republican candidate for his remarks on the topic.
“Mr. Romney, my family is just as real as yours,” Wahls said. At the time, Wahls was taking a break from undergraduate study at the University of Iowa, while he worked on a book. My Two Moms: Lesson of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family was published in 2013.
In an interview on Wednesday with Cornhole Champions, a political podcast from Iowa Starting Line, Wahls reiterated the need for new blood.
“It is time for a new generation of leadership. I think leaders in both parties, Democrat and Republican, have failed Iowans,” he told host Zachary Oren Smith. “Joni Ernst is clearly a huge part of that problem.”
In both the interview and his announcement video, Wahls cited Ernst’s recent town hall reply to a shouted concern about Medicaid cuts causing preventable deaths with “Well, we all are going to die,” as an example of how Ernst is failing as a senator.
“That’s not acceptable,” Wahls told Smith. “And so from my perspective, what we need to do is support new leaders who aren’t afraid to challenge the establishment or the status quo. I have a track record of doing that. I’ve taken on my own party and I have the scars to show for it.”
Wahls was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 2018. When Wahls announced his candidacy for the open Senate seat that fellow Democrat Bob Dvorsky had held for 24 years, he was still splitting his time between Iowa and New Jersey, where he was completing a Master’s degree at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Wahls was awarded his degree on the same day he won his Senate primary.
In 2020, Wahls was elected minority leader by his fellow Senate Democrats. Three years later, Senate Democrats removed Wahls from his leadership position, after he fired two longtime Democratic Caucus staffers. Wahls said he was making changes needed to improve the electoral chances of Iowa Democrats. His colleagues replaced him with Sen. Pam Jochum of Dubuque, who had been Senate President when Democrats controlled the chamber and had three decades of experience, having served in both the House and the Senate. The staffers were rehired.
“The status quo of the last decade has not worked for the Iowa Democratic Party, and it hasn’t worked for Iowans,” Wahls told the Des Moines Register at the time. “It just hasn’t.”
“Change requires bringing people along,” Jochum told the Register. “And Zach’s goal may have been to do the best for all of us. However, he was also making more and more decisions without the support of our members.”
In his first run for the state Senate in 2018, Wahls campaigned on fighting for workers rights, and on the issues page of his U.S. Senate campaign site, that’s listed as one of his top priorities. Wahls says he will work to pass the PRO Act, which makes it easier for workers to organize and join unions. President Biden called it a top priority of his administration, and even though the House passed it three times, it never got beyond the committee level in the Senate.
Wahls also says he’ll work to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The last time the federal minimum wage was increased was in 2009. Iowa is one of the few states that doesn’t set its own, higher minimum wage, and in 2017, Gov. Terry Branstad signed a bill into law there prohibits cities and counties from setting a local minimum wage. The minimum wage in Iowa has remained $7.25/hr. for 16 years.
Also listed among his priorities is affordable healthcare. Wahls wants to reduce the minimum age for Medicare to 55, and increase investment in mental health services, particularly in rural areas. He said he wants stricter enforcement of antitrust laws to break up “monopolies jacking up prices” for consumers and “agribusiness monopolies that squeeze farmers on costs and prices.”
Wahls also pledges to “[c]odify reproductive rights and restore abortion access”; expand Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; defend free speech, voting rights and “the right to marry who you love.”
Wahls calls the current immigration system “broken,” adding that “politicians like Joni Ernst have failed to fix this mess because it benefits the people who donate to their campaigns—businesses that profit from cheap, exploitable labor while Iowa workers get screwed.” Wahls advocates for reforming the asylum system and creating a pathway to citizenship. He also stresses the importance of improving border security, writing “Secure the border – Hire thousands more border patrol agents and immigration judges.”
All of those positions are standard for Democratic candidates, but Wahls also backs the idea of introducing term limits of 12 years for Congress — the duration of six terms in the House or two terms in the Senate. It’s generally agreed that creating congressional term limits would require a constitutional amendment. The most recent attempt to do so happened in 2023, when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a term limits amendment that would have created a three-term limit on House members and a two-term limit on senators. It was voted down by a House committee and never taken up in the Senate. Cruz was already running for his third term when he introduced the amendment.
Imposing term limits has traditionally been a Republican campaign issue. When she was running for her first term in the Senate in 2014, Joni Ernst endorsed the idea of mandating term limits and pledged to only serve two terms if elected. The senator is currently running for her third term. (Ernst has not formally announced her run yet, but has already hired a manager for her 2026 campaign.)
Wahls is the third Democrat to enter the race for his party’s nomination, following Nathan Sage and J.D. Scholten. Ernst is also facing a challenge from two Republicans: longtime supporter of Trump and Trump’s conspiracy theories Jim Carlin, and Joshua Smith, a former Libertarian who recently changed his registration to Republican because of his enthusiasm for Trump.
Iowans haven’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 2008, and Iowa Democrats haven’t won a House seat since 2018. On Wednesday’s podcast, Wahls attributed much that electoral defeat to the party’s failure “to meet voters where they are.”
“One of the biggest challenges facing our party is that I think there are way too many Democrats who think that they have all the answers, they know better, and frankly, they look down on voters rather than actually going out to meet voters where they are.”
Wahls did not name any Democrats he believes “think they have all the answers” and “look down on voters” — common Republican campaign tropes about Democrats at large — but continued by saying, “That is the exact opposite of what our party needs to be doing.”
“And part of the reason that I’m running for the U.S. Senate is that I know I have the ability with our campaign to reach out to voters directly, and to go meet them where they are, listen to the challenge that they are facing in their lives and do our very best to bring solutions that will actually work for them and their families.”
