U.S. Senator John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) reacts as he speaks with members of the media outside the Senate chamber, following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and top Republican congressional leaders at the White House (REUTERS)
MS NOW analyst Steve Benen says the year 2025 ended on a note that should have Republicans quaking in their boots.
“While 2025 was ostensibly an off year for elections, the year proved to be filled with fascinating and important contests, culminating in one final race earlier this week,” Benen said. “The last special election of the year was in Iowa, where voters in a Des Moines-area district were tasked with choosing a new state senator.”
It was an urban Democratic district that Kamala Harris won by 17 points in 2024. Nevertheless, Republicans desperate to expand their majority in the state house to a supermajority took the race seriously and invested in it.
“That didn’t happen,” said Benen, pointing out that West Des Moines City Council Renee Hardman, who is Black, received a lopsided 71.4 percent of the vote in the special-election race for state Senate District 16. Republican candidate Lucas Loftin received only 28.5 percent of the vote, despite Des Moines being only 12 percent Black, and the district encompassing a suburban jurisdiction with no Democratic commitment.
“In other words, Hardman, the first Black woman ever elected to the Iowa Senate, didn’t just win, and didn’t just deny Republicans the supermajority it was seeking, she also overperformed to a significant degree,” said Benen, adding that Hardman had “a lot of company.”
“In elections throughout 2025, Democrats overperformed in ways that should make Republicans quite nervous ahead of the 2026 midterm election cycle,” Benen said. “Around this time a year ago, as Donald Trump prepared to reenter the White House, the conventional wisdom was that Republicans had entered an era of electoral dominance. Trump had successfully realigned the American electorate to put the GOP in a position to control the nation and its future.”
The same argument claimed the Democratic Party was not just defeated, but shattered, with a “demoralized and disheartened base, filled with voters who were prepared to withdraw from civic life for a long while,” said Benen.
The Democratic “brand,” according to critics like California Gov. Gavin Newsom was “toxic.” Others, like Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), told NBC News that his party’s brand was “problematic.” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) warned that the party was on the verge of being “a permanent minority.”
But as the year closed out its final special election, Benen said “there’s been a lot less talk along these lines lately.”
Read Benen's full MS NOW analysis at this link.