Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds won’t seek re-election in 2026

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Friday she will not seek re-election, a decision that means the Republican’s time as governor will come to an end just shy of the 10-year mark after the 2026 election.

“Serving as your governor has been the greatest honor of my life, an opportunity that not so long ago I never could have imagined,” Reynolds said in a video posted to social media.

“After a lot of thought, prayer and conversations with my family, I have decided I will not seek re-election in 2026,” she continued. “This wasn’t an easy decision because I love this state and I love serving you.”

Reynolds has been a fixture in Iowa Republican politics for years. She joined then-Republican gubernatorial nominee Terry Branstad’s ticket as his running mate during their successful 2010 campaign, and eventually stepped up from the lieutenant governorship to take over as governor when Branstad became President Donald Trump’s ambassador to China in 2017.

She’s won two elections at the top of the ticket since then, and she has championed conservative issues like school vouchers, curbing legal protections for transgender people, promoting abortion restrictions and cutting income taxes. More recently, she’s pushed for a state version of the Department of Government Efficiency helmed by billionaire Elon Musk in Washington.

Her decision not to run again will create an opening in a state that’s shifted to the right over the last two decades.

Democrats last won a gubernatorial race in Iowa in 2006 and haven’t won a Senate race there since 2008. The state’s congressional delegation is all Republicans, though there are a few hotly contested battleground seats, and a Democrat hasn’t won a federal House race there since 2020. Still, Democrats believe there’s an opening in the state to run against the years of total Republican control of government, running a playbook similar to the one that has helped them gain ground in Kansas.

Looking to her party’s political future, Reynolds said she had “no doubt that Iowa and our Republican Party will remain in great hands” and praised the “next generation” of conservative leadership in the state.

Pastor and former GOP state Rep. Brad Sherman is the only major candidate in the race right now, but that’s expected to change now that the incumbent is no longer running. As Reynolds alluded to, there’s no shortage of prominent Republicans in the state who could be interested in the bid. On the Democratic side, state Auditor Rob Sand told Pluribus News earlier this year he’s weighing a gubernatorial bid.

While Reynolds has no shortage of allies in conservative circles and was especially popular among Republicans for much of her career, she’s faced some tough political trends from within her own party in recent years.

Reynolds was one of just a handful of prominent Republican officeholders to back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid against Trump, a coup for DeSantis and a blow to Trump in the early nominating state.

Speaking about Trump in 2023, she told NBC News: “I believe he can’t win … and I believe that Ron can.”

But DeSantis lost Iowa, big. And in the months after her endorsement, Trump used his bully pulpit to criticize her and call her “the most unpopular governor in America.”

While Trump’s comment was an overstatement, Reynolds has seen lackluster favorability numbers in recent years.

Morning Consult’s new polling of the nation’s governors, released this week, found her disapproval rating at 49% (and an approval rating of 44%). That is the highest disapproval rating of any governor polled, for the fifth quarter in a row in Morning Consult’s polling, and she’s the only governor with a higher disapproval rating than approval rating in the poll.