Big Ag Wins Again in Iowa—For Now

Iowa is one of 12 states that choose the ag-secretary post by election. Among food-and-agriculture policy wonks, the race was probably the most-watched down-ballot contest of the entire 2026 election season. Iowa is our most farm-intensive state, and the corn-soybean-hog complex that dominates nearly its entire landscape counts as perhaps the globe’s most formidable example of industrial agriculture in action. Despite the industry’s dominance, Iowans are starting to blame air and water pollution from its vast operations for playing a role in the state’s spiraling cancer crisis. “Nearly half of Iowa's 99 counties now have cancer rates higher than Louisiana's Cancer Alley,’ a heavily industrialized stretch long infamous for its extraordinary cancer risk,” The Des Moines Register’s Nick El Hajj reported in September. In a New Republic feature last year, I teased out the science linking Big Ag pollution to Iowa’s ongoing cancer tragedy and talked about it on an Unconfined episode with Christine Grillo soon after.  

Issues of cancer, water quality, and agriculture pollution swirled around the ag-secretary race, which pitted two-time Republican incumbent and former Monsanto lobbyist Mike Naig against Democratic nominee Chris Jones, a retired University of Iowa water scientist and prolific Big Ag critic and writer. Jones’ insurgent campaign drew plenty of attention and crowds as he barnstormed the state. An avid fisherman, at one point he paddled 100 miles down the Des Moines River between events to draw attention to Iowa’s grim water quality. Jones bluntly broke a long-held Iowa taboo by calling for regulation of ag practices known to pollute water; at the same time, he offered a fair deal for Iowa farmers based on crop diversity and regional markets. Naig, meanwhile, defended the status quo. In June, just after the primaries solidified the Jones-Naig showdown, Nina Elkaldi and I teased out the context of the race in a Politico Magazine article. As we made clear in that piece, Jones’ bid was a long shot from the start.  

Alas, the blue tsunami that swept many Republicans from office across the country, including in Iowa, did not lift Jones’ boat. Naig won a third term by five points. Jones came much closer than the Democratic contender did four years ago in 2022, a race Naig took by 22 points. In 2026, his campaign raised $1.2 million, bolstered by big donations from Republican PACs. Jones drew in about half of that amount—an impressive haul for a grassroots, small-donor effort that (unlike Naig’s) didn’t receive financial support from the party he represents. 

In our conversation, Jones spoke frankly about his disappointment in the outcome; talked about how his campaign represented a sharp departure from the Iowa Democratic Party’s traditional friendliness to Big Ag; and suggested that while his bid for political leadership came up short, his overall message has legs. Both Naig and the new Democratic governor-elect, Rob Sand, favor the same voluntary, taxpayer-funded efforts to rein in ag pollution that have failed for a generation, Jones said. He predicts that without fundamental ag-policy reform, the state’s water-quality woes will continue. He wondered aloud, clearly still processing his defeat: “We had something like 600 volunteers and 7,000 donors— could that infrastructure be mobilized in a way to press for change here in Iowa?”  

His question reminded me that in 2016 and again in 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders ran unsuccessfully for president by promoting universal healthcare and denouncing the power of “the billionaire class.” Those ideas, initially beyond the pale, now animate much of the Democratic Party, particularly its younger wing. Some failed political campaigns have long afterlives.