(Radio Iowa) – Candidates from BOTH parties who’ve been campaigning for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat say Republican Joni Ernst would have faced backlash over her voting record if she had run for a third term in the senate. Josh Turek of Council Bluffs, a Democrat who’s currently a member of the Iowa House, says the “yes” vote Ernst cast for President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was a liability.

“There is no way she was going to be able to defend slashing and gutting health care to children and to disabled individuals and cutting food assistance just to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Turek says. Republican Jim Carlin of Sergeant Bluff, a former state legislator, has criticized Ernst for failing to IMMEDIATELY support Pete Hegseth when President Trump nominated him to be defense secretary.

“You know, in the last few years we’ve seen that President Trump does need some allies,” Carlin said. Ernst, a combat veteran, ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth, but she initially raised concerns about Hegseth’s comments that women should not serve in combat. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Nathan Sage of Indianola, the former head of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, says having an incumbent exit the race makes Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat attainable for Democrats.

State Senator Zach Wahls of Coralville, one of the other Democrats running to the U-S Senate, says Ernst was a vulnerable incumbent. “Republicans in Iowa are now running scared,” Wahls said, “and we know that we have the chance to defeat whoever the Republicans nominate.” Des Moines School Board president Jackie Norris, a Democrat who entered the race a few weeks ago, says Iowans are ready for change and Ernst saw the writing on the wall.

Carlin — the Republican who announced in June he intended to challenge Ernst in the 2026 Primary Election — says Ernst’s decision NOT to run isn’t a surprise. “I talk to a lot of people and they were all kind of thinking, you know…’I don’t think she’s going to run,'” Carlin said. “I heard that over and over and over again.”

Carlin says Ernst should be credited for fulfilling a promise from her 2014 campaign — that she would serve no more than two terms in the U.S. Senate.