The senate race in Iowa that could signal a blue wave for the 2026 midterms

He has compared abortion access to the Holocaust and pushed conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 2020 presidential election and climate crisis. Christopher Prosch is betting that Maga still rules in the US heartland.

On Tuesday, the far-right Republican will take on Democrat Catelin Drey in a special general election for Iowa state senate district 1 after the previous incumbent, Republican Rocky De Witt, died in June.

A victory for Drey would break Republicans’ supermajority in the state senate and deny governor Kim Reynolds the ability to stack agencies and courts with Maga loyalists. It would also give Democrats fresh hope that a blue wave is forming before next year’s midterm elections.

State legislatures rarely gain the limelight but have emerged as vital power players in recent years on issues such as abortion rights and, this week, gerrymandering in Texas and California. They have also become petri dishes for the Republican party’s embrace of extremism in the age of Donald Trump.

Prosch is founder of Felix Strategies, a public relations firm based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, whose work includes “strategic communications for Christian conservative leaders and organizations”. He was a canvasser for Kristi Noem in her congressional race in 2010 and has consulted on numerous campaigns since.

“He is deep in the Maga Trumpland,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC). “He is the kind of candidate that not that long ago would have never seen the light of day on a ballot. He said … a litany of all the Maga perspectives and points of view and beliefs.”

Following his nomination, Prosch reportedly began deleting contentious posts from his social media and affiliated accounts, according to the Iowa Starting Line news site, which took screenshots and published several of them.

Hosting a podcast two years ago, Prosch equated the Holocaust with reproductive freedom. “Who was worse?” he asked. “The Nazi Germans who killed 10 million Jews and many other people? Or the left’s policies to target an entire generation of babies to death.” He also opined that victims of rape or incest should carry pregnancies to term.

Prosch has used social media to share conspiracy theories about the safety of vaccines and a cover-up of what caused the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

He has championed the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden and, in 2022, his firm Felix Strategies posted a message that said: “Global cooling..global warming..climate change…whatever they’re calling it, it’s all a lie!”

Prosch’s own website describes him as “a strong pro-life conservative who believes life is a precious gift from God that must be protected”. It also expresses support for Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, drive “woke” ideology out of schools and bar transgender athletes from school sports.

The Republican proposes eliminating Iowa’s state income tax and “is dedicated to raising his children in a loving, strict Christian home”, the site says. “Christopher believes that leaders should be guided by the principles found in the Bible and the Constitution.”

Prosch did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

His opponent, Drey, is a 37-year-old marketing executive and founder of the group Moms for Iowa, a grassroots organisation focused on curbing gun violence and championing reproductive rights. She has served on local boards and statewide political committees and wants to increase state education funding in the district.

Speaking from Sioux City, which is at the heart of senate district 1, Drey said: “The No 1 concern that folks in senate district 1 right now have is Iowa’s affordability crisis and I think folks across the country would feel that. We’ve seen policies come down from the federal level, as well as the state level, that are making it very difficult for people to make ends meet here.”

Iowa’s Republican administration has made it harder for local municipalities to spend money to benefit their communities, Drey added, with middle and working classes paying more than their fair share in taxes and struggling to afford a house.

Democrats have been soul searching since they lost the White House and both chambers of Congress last November. A range of voices from the centre and left of the party have coalesced around a focus on the cost of living, likely to be exacerbated by Trump’s tariffs and tax-and-spend legislation known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

But the party, whose approval rating is at a historical low, is also wrestling with an image problem of being seen as too elitist and out of touch. On Friday, the thinktank Third Way urged Democrats to stop using words such as “microaggression”, “safe space”, “existential threat”, “birthing person” and “Latinx”, which it argues make the party seem out of touch with regular voters.

Drey said: “The biggest frustration for the working class is certainly feeling left behind by the ‘coastal liberal elite’ and, as much as I may identify with the overall policy goals of said coastal elites, I am a regular person who lives and works in this community. I see the way that bad policy affects my family and my neighbours.

“If the Democrats can get back to a message that is, ‘We are of you and from you and we understand what it is like to want to strive for a beautiful life,’ then I think that is what resonates with people. Trying to convince folks that things are actually better when they’re not feeling that is tone deaf, to be quite frank. This is a party that can work from the bottom up in terms of shifting the balance of power and making life better for the folks that need it.”

Drey has valuable support on the campaign trail from JD Scholten, an Iowa state representative who is also a professional baseball pitcher for a minor league team, the Sioux City Explorers. Art Cullen, a leading newspaper editor in Iowa, said: “He’s popular in Sioux City and he’s been door knocking for her.”

Cullen believes that the election will be more of a referendum on the governor, Reynolds, than on Trump. “People are sick of Kim Reynolds,” he continued. “People are getting tired of the wackiness: banning books, making a big to-do over trans people.

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“Republicans are concentrating on all that stuff and not on, how good are our schools and why are our property taxes so high? The Republican-dominated legislature punted and went home without addressing rising property taxes.”

Senate district 1 has a history of swinging between parties, with Democrats winning it in 2018 and Republicans reclaiming it in 2022. Last year, the district supported Donald Trump by an 11-point margin. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district by 38% to 31%.

Republicans had a two-thirds supermajority in the state senate prior to the death of De Witt at the age of 66. If Democrats prevail on Tuesday, they would have the ability to block the confirmation of Reynolds’ picks for cabinet positions and judges.

Democratic candidates have over-performed in recent state legislative elections, flipping Trump districts in Iowa and Pennsylvania. A third win would continue the momentum before next year’s midterm polls for the US House of Representatives and Senate.

Williams of the DLCC said the party is looking to Tuesday to demonstrate that “Democrats can win elections – we can connect with voters on economic issues and they can trust us on them – and that Republicans are in trouble. This president’s policies and approach are deeply unpopular and Republicans will not be rewarded at the ballot box for it.”