(Radio Iowa) – An Army and Marine Corps veteran who’s executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce is launching a campaign for the Iowa Democratic Party’s 2026 nomination for the U-S Senate. Nathan Sage, a native of Mason City, did three tours of duty in the Iraq war. Sage says he’s running to fight for working class Iowans. “I’m excited to actually get out and go,” Sage said. “My big thing is I don’t want to talk to Iowans, I want to listen to Iowans. I want to understand what they’re going through, what are the problems they’re facing, what things can be done at the federal level to make their lives better right now. Not 10 years from now, 20 years from now. Right now.” Sage says Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who’s also a veteran, hasn’t done enough to push back against Veterans Administration cuts devised by Elon Musk’s DOGE team.

Sage also faults Ernst for voting to confirm Pete Hegseth as U-S Defense Secretary. “I think she’s been towing the line for Republicans and doing exactly what she’s been told to do and hoping that she gets something out of it, either corporate backing or more millionaire money, I don’t know, but that’s the path that she’s gone on this whole time and I don’t see her straying from that.” Sage used his G-I benefits to earn a journalism degree from Kansas State University and got a job as an overnight announcer at radio stations in Knoxville and Indianola, working his way up to station management. “I learned a lot,” he says, “you know, the ins and outs of what business owners were dealing with and what they were going through.”

Nathan Sage is launching a campaign for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat. (photo provided by Sage campaign)

He was hired to lead the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce in May of 2023. Sage says his work with small businesses and working Iowans prompted him to consider and now launch a campaign for the U-S Senate. “Somebody needs to step up for the people that built this country, working for this country, doing all they can to make this country run,” Sage said, “and all they get out of it is trying to survive instead of thriving.”

Sage’s dad was a factory worker, his mom was a day care teacher and his family lived in a trailer park in Mason City. Sage says his parents tried their best for their four children, but it was a hard life and he joined the Marines in 2003.