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SIOUX CITY, Iowa — President Donald Trump will touch down on Thursday in Iowa, the site of perhaps the tightest Senate race in the country. Strangely enough, both candidates are welcoming him.
Only one, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, will be at his rally on Thursday, but Democrats are banking that Trump’s presence helps them due to his unpopularity.
“It’s good. … He needs to see what the policies, like the tariffs and the war in Iran, cuts to healthcare, have done to a state like Iowa,” Democratic candidate Josh Turek said in an interview.
A couple hours away in Greenfield, Hinson denied any tension between her and Trump, despite her recent calls for him to end the Iran war and stop cutting deals with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“President Trump knows where I stand,” she told Semafor. “I nag him a lot to get priorities for us all the time.”
At an event on Tuesday in Des Moines, she disclosed that Trump recently called her right after she dropped off her kids.
“Ashley, it’s your favorite president. How’s it looking, how are you feeling about the polls?” Hinson recalled Trump asking her. She said she asked how a deal to export more soybeans was coming together.
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The Senate race is absolutely everywhere in Iowa, which is also home to three competitive House races and a governor’s race (Democrat Rob Sand is now favored to defeat Republican Zach Lahn). The Senate race appears to be the one Republicans are most worried about. Trump will swing through Iowa twice in October, a sign that Republicans need him to juice turnout in a state he flipped that hasn’t flipped back to Democrats.
The radio ads are inescapable, the TV spots are relentless, and Trump’s visit puts an exclamation point on a race where the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the RNC are both spending millions in coordinated advertising on behalf of Hinson. The top Senate GOP super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, is also spending money to counteract Turek’s competitiveness.
“You know what that means. They wouldn’t be coming unless they knew that this race was winnable for us,” Turek said.
Democratic groups are spending a lot on Turek as well, identifying his race as a top pickup opportunity in a cycle where Democrats need to net four Senate seats to retake the majority. Hinson said Trump’s visit will help remind Iowans why they voted so strongly for him in 2024, the third straight cycle the state backed him.
“Look back to where things were two years ago, before we had President Trump securing our border,” she said. “Iowans found the choice that they have in this election: somebody who wants to again go back to those policies of two years ago or move our country forward and continue working.”