Democrats made inroads into traditionally conservative farm country during the midterm elections, a foothold that could shift the political dynamics of Congress’ agriculture committees.
A new generation of Democrats won Senate races and House seats across the Midwest and Deep South in a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Trump had lost his edge with rural voters through a series of unpopular moves: trade wars with major agricultural partners like Canada and high diesel and fertilizer prices due to the war in Iran in particular outraged many farmers, according to William A. Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings who studies rural voting.
“This is one of the only elections I can remember in my lifetime where the causal link between a president’s policies and economic consequences that people don’t like is as clear as it is right now,” Galston said.
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Democrats won a flurry of House and Senate seats across rural America, including in Iowa, Kansas, Texas, South Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, taking down Republican members of both chambers’ agriculture committees. Democrats will now have the opportunity to fill those seats with representatives from agricultural states and districts.
“I think the Senate will be a lot stronger to have bipartisan representation from rural America, at a time when rural America is under the kind of pressures they are under right now,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat in line to lead the Agriculture Committee. “I hope we bring all of them on the Agriculture Committee because we need their perspective.”
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said in a statement that while the House Agriculture Committee is still taking shape, she’s “excited about the fresh perspectives our new colleagues from farm country and rural districts will bring to our work.”
“With Democrats in the House majority next Congress, I look forward to working with them to put forward meaningful policy that actually helps farmers and rural Americans,” Pingree said. “That means lower costs, stable markets, and real support for family farms.”
In Iowa, Democrats flipped three House seats — including Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister, defeating Rep. Zach Nunn, who is a member of the House Agriculture Committee. Garriott served on the Natural Resources and Environment Committee in the Iowa state Senate, and has vocally opposed Trump’s tariff policies and called to stabilize trade relationships with key import and export partners.
Democrat Denise Powell, a small business owner and political organizer, flipped Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, held by outgoing moderate Republican Don Bacon, by 15 percentage points. “You helped send a clear message to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Powell told supporters during her victory speech. “Nebraska will not play second fiddle to your billionaire buddies and your corrupt backroom deals.”
Democrats are also sending farmer Jamie Ager to replace Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards in North Carolina’s 11th District. On the campaign trail, Ager was critical of the corporate consolidation that has shaped the agriculture and ranching industries in recent years, arguing they squeeze out small family farms and other small businesses.
“Right now in this country we have too much power in the ‘Big Four’ companies,” Ager said in a video on Facebook, referring to the four meatpacking companies that control about 85% of the beef processing market. The companies have received scrutiny as beef prices hit record highs this year.
Iowa also sent Democrat Josh Turek to the Senate, and Kansas elected Adam Hamilton, a pastor of a large church outside Kansas City who will be the first Democrat to represent the state in nearly a century. Hamilton made supporting Kansas agriculture a key pillar of his campaign despite not being a farmer himself, and he advocated for protections for farmers from tariffs and expanding their access to foreign markets.
“I would like for Kansas producers to not have to think about Washington D.C. every day,” Hamilton told the Farm Journal. “They deserve stable, predictable policies that enable them to feed the world, make a living and pass their farms to their children if they wish. Producers have enough to worry about without wondering if a tweet is going to upend markets that day.”
Democrats also had Senate victories in Texas, South Carolina and Ohio and maintain a very slim lead in Mississippi over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Sen.-elect James Talarico of Texas and Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown of Ohio positioned themselves squarely against the Trump administration’s decision to import beef from Argentina and Brazil and the administration’s tariffs, moves that upset farmers and ranchers across the country.
Democrats will now take the gavel of the House and Senate agriculture committees, with these new members being prime candidates to join.
John Hansen, the longtime president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, told The Washington Sun that there hasn’t been enough rural Democrats to populate the House panel: “We haven’t had rural representation in Congress from the Democrats.”
The victories create new competition for rural voters and farmers that Hansen believes has been lost in recent years. Hansen pointed to influential Democratic agriculture lawmakers like former Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Tom Harkin of Iowa, who represented their states well into the 2000s and 2010s.
“You had a very different dynamic in ag policy,” Hansen said. “When you have all one party, there’s no competition for the hearts and minds in rural communities.”
Democrats now have an opportunity to reestablish themselves as a competitive force in rural America, but political insiders and farmers alike wonder if they will take it.
“Democrats have managed to reestablish a beachhead in rural America, but as with all beachheads, they only last if they’re reinforced,” Galston said. “I think Democrats are now on notice that if they don’t have a rural agenda to back up these rural victories, then the pushback could overwhelm the beachheads.”
Ryan Marquardt, vice president of the Iowa Farmers Union and a former Democratic candidate for the Iowa state House of Representatives, hopes Democrats govern effectively and force Trump’s hand to veto popular legislation, rather than the endless investigations that marked the second half of Trump’s first term.
“I hope they can figure out a reasonable way to govern, and to have coherency in their governance,” Marquardt said. “I’m glad there’s a check on the president; I think we needed that, because clearly Republicans don’t know how to do that.”
Marquardt’s view has been echoed so far by at least one incoming Democrat.
“I do not want to spend the next two years in trials; I want to spend the next two years doing everything we can to help the people in Kansas and the people in our country,” Hamilton said on “CBS Mornings.”
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