Wendy Larson will be the newest Republican in the Iowa House, after winning the December 9 special election in House district 7 by a margin of 2,817 votes to 1,201 for Democratic candidate Rachel Burns (70.0 percent to 29.9 percent). Larson’s victory brings the GOP majority in the chamber back to 67-33. Her predecessor, State Representative Mike Sexton, stepped down in September to take a senior position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The special election outcome was almost a foregone conclusion in one of the state’s reddest legislative districts. House district 7, covering Sac, Pocahontas, and Calhoun counties, plus some rural areas of Webster County, contains more registered Republicans than Democrats and no-party voters combined. Donald Trump received nearly 75 percent of the vote here in 2024, well above the 55.7 percent he received statewide in Iowa.

Still, I was closely watching the race to see what the results might tell us about voter enthusiasm and changing preferences going into the 2026 midterms.

It’s hard to draw any broad conclusions from this election, but I have a few takeaways.

Voters in Iowa House district 7 will elect a successor to Republican State Representative Mike Sexton on Tuesday, December 9. Governor Kim Reynolds announced the special election on September 24, five days after Sexton resigned to become the next leader of Iowa’s Rural Development office in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s the same position former U.S. Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield held during the Biden administration.

Sexton had served in the Iowa House since 2015; he previously served a term in the Iowa Senate, starting in 1999. Most recently he chaired the House Agriculture Committee; House leaders have not yet named his successor in that role. He endorsed Carly Fiorina before the 2016 Iowa caucuses but was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and attended several Trump rallies in Iowa in 2023.

This race will be the fifth special election for an Iowa legislative district in 2025. But Democrats should not expect another upset win here; House district 7 is among the state’s most solidly Republican districts.