Dems Find Some Hope In Elections In Iowa And Minnesota

For a moribund party, Democrats in the span of 24 hours are showing some signs of life.

On Tuesday, Iowa Democrats notched an upset victory in a state Senate district that Donald Trump won by more than 20 points, and Minnesota Democrats retook their Senate majority in the statehouse. Meanwhile, in Washington, congressional Democrats who had been on defense since Trump swept back into office denounced Trump’s sweeping freeze on federal assistance — adopting a unified message for the first time since Trump took office.

By Wednesday, the Trump administration rescinded the freeze, and Democrats were celebrating for the first time since the November election.

“I haven’t seen people so aroused in a very, very long time,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters during his press conference on Wednesday.

Even some Democrats were cautious about reading too much into the White House’s spending freeze reversal — or the party’s victories in the Midwest. Trump is still steamrolling Washington, with a slate of MAGA-backed appointees and a Republican-controlled Congress. While the Iowa win was an upset, the party’s victory in Minnesota was widely expected. But for Democrats still on their back foot after devastating election losses in 2024, the developments represented a glimmer of hope.

“It’s a bit of positive news in a sea of negativity [and] Democrats are eager for any positive news,” said Iowa state Rep. J.D. Scholten, who represents a chunk of rural northwest Iowa, similar to the rural state Senate seat that flipped from red to blue on Tuesday night. “I don’t think we can base our whole 2026 plan off of one special election, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling.”

After the Trump administration reversed its federal freeze in a two-sentence memo, Waleed Shahid, a progressive Democratic operative, characterized Democrats’ pushback as a blueprint for how to “beat Flood the Zone” — “pick your fights and press where it counts,” he posted on X.

“Their overreach hit a Democratic intersection — legal pushback, constituent pressure and service providers turning up the heat on Congressional Democrats, and a media lane to drive a working-class populist message,” Shahid added in an interview. “There does seem to be more excitement in Democrats being an opposition party than one focused on bipartisanship and capitulation.”

Rallying lawmakers in a private conference call Wednesday afternoon, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told them that their public pressure campaign worked and the rescinded order was a win — but urged them to keep up the fight as the caucus mounts an “all hands on deck effort,” according to five people familiar with the call.

Top Democrats from the House Appropriations Committee, Oversight and the caucus messaging arm presented on their strategies to push back against Trump.

Their messaging arm encouraged lawmakers to hold news conferences with local elected officials to highlight the impact of the spending freeze and to record social media videos about it. The caucus also planned a “Stop The Republican Rip Off Day of Action” on Thursday — that was still on after the order was rescinded — to talk with constituents about “how the Republican agenda will hurt working people to reward the wealthy and well-connected,” according to guidance obtained by POLITICO.

The Iowa special election — triggered after then-state Sen. Chris Cournoyer resigned to serve as the state’s lieutenant governor — gave Democrats an unexpected boost. Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said in a statement that it proved the party “can win in rural Iowa,” while the Democratic National Committee called it an “earthquake.”

But some Iowa political experts urged a more restrained reading of the results, citing the small sample size. In recent years, Democrats have performed better among higher-information voters, who are far more likely to show up for special elections and midterms, which means it’s harder to extrapolate those results to contests that draw more voters.

“Don’t overread here,” said Norm Sterzenbach, a longtime Iowa Democratic consultant. Sifting through the results, though, Sterzenbach argued that Democrats can pick out some helpful trends: Mike Zimmer, the Democratic candidate, performed better in the Quad Cities, a swingy area Democrats must win back to improve their standing in the state, and he ran a localized campaign.

Zimmer “ran on his own background as a teacher, kept it local, not about Trump, not about stuff in Washington, and as much as there’s an urge to react to the news of the day, their campaign didn’t,” Sterzenbach said. “If there’s a lesson, it’s keep it local, don’t get caught up in Trump and Washington.”

Republicans largely saw Zimmer’s victory — and subsequent Democratic elation on social media — as evidence of how bad things have become for Democrats just about everywhere else. Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, called it proof that “they’re grasping at straws” because “it’s a special election in late January in Iowa, so it’s silly to read too much into it.”

Kincaid did, however, caution Republicans that there are key lessons for his party in this Iowa upset. “We need good candidates, and we have to turn out Trump voters when President Trump is not on the ballot,” he said.

“Republicans used to have a really solid midterm coalition and Democrats were the ones who would struggle to turn out their voters in midterms, and I think that’s changed,” Kincaid said. “Figuring out how to get our low-propensity voters to show up is the challenge we have for the next 18 months.”

Daniella Diaz contributed to this report