I want to focus in on two news items today.
The first is the report that Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) will soon announce she will not run for re-election. This isn’t a total surprise. There were signs this was coming. But it’s still an important development and one that signifies something larger. She’s now the second Republican senator up for reelection next year who has opted to retire. The first was Sen. Thom Tillis in North Carolina. Not long after this Ernst news was reported, we learned that conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is also opting not to run for reelection next year. It’s hard for me to imagine that Ernst’s final decision wasn’t impacted by Tuesday’s blow out win by Catelin Drey in an Iowa state senate special election race, in what is normally a strongly pro-Trump district.
It goes without saying that both Ernst and Bradley likely realized that these were at least going to be difficult races — Democrats have won four of the last five Wisconsin court races. And quite possibly they’d lose. But this also reminds us that one of the usual factors in a blow out or wave election cycle is that a non-trivial number of incumbents see what’s coming and retire. That tends to magnify the wave party’s advantage because the in-party has an even harder time holding a seat without the power of incumbency.
Now I’m not predicting a wave election. Iowa certainly will still be a very challenging race even without Ernst in it. My point is simply that a lot of the building blocks of a wave get determined well before any votes get counted. The people who speak with the most credibility and authority about the political environment going into 2026 are Republican incumbents. And they’re starting to speak pretty clearly. It started with the Spring town halls, or the lack thereof.
