Parents and educators in Iowa’s Senate District 1 had reason to celebrate this week when Catelin Drey was sworn in to represent them in the state legislature. Drey pulled off a resounding victory in a highly contested special election for the state senate seat on August 26.
District 1, which lies in the northwest part of the state and includes most of Sioux City, has trended “red” in the past few election cycles, and supported Donald Trump by a 10 percent margin in the 2024 presidential election. But just eight months later Drey, a Democrat, won here by an impressive 11 percent margin.
The outcome of the special election was “emotional,” but not entirely surprising to high school English teacher Shawn Olorundami, who spoke with a lot of voters as he knocked on doors as a volunteer canvasser for Drey.
“A lot of people I talked to are frustrated with vouchers and seeing resources pulled away from public schools and all the unfilled teaching positions. Catelin was the candidate who was speaking about the issues that are really important to voters who live here,” says Olorundami.
“And I think more of them are waking up to what happens when you vote for people who don’t have your community’s best interest at heart, and supporting public schools is central to that.”
“Iowa’s Senate Needs More Moms!”
After state Sen. Rocky DeWitt passed away in June, the local Democratic and Republican parties held county nominating conventions to choose their candidates to run for the seat.
Shawn Olorundami was one of three candidates who sought the nomination of the local Democrats. But after Drey won the nomination, Olorundami threw his energy into working to get her elected, knocking on doors every weekend and posting videos on social media.
“Iowa’s Senate Needs More Moms!” exclaimed the Drey campaign materials distributed by volunteers. While campaigning, Drey described herself as a “regular person”: a proud Sioux Citian for more than two decades, the daughter of a teacher, and a working mom who supports fully funding public schools and making housing and childcare more affordable.
“These are the issues that affect most of us every single day,” says Olorundami. “The other candidate was not offering anything that people were even remotely excited to hear.”
The GOP candidate, Christopher Prosch, is a far-right political strategist who had only lived in Sioux City for a few years. He introduced himself to voters as “a businessman, not a politician” who wants to roll back taxes and regulations, crack down on immigration, and curb transgender rights.
It is well-documented that before entering the political arena Prosch circulated dangerous conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the 2020 election and posted offensive content comparing abortion to the Holocaust, for example—though his social media accounts were scrubbed once he became a candidate for the Iowa state senate seat.
The Drey campaign spent little time focusing on Prosch himself, instead talking to voters about how Republicans—who have controlled the state legislature for nearly 10 years—had failed Iowans on education, health, and economic issues alike.
Catelin Drey and her volunteers threw their energy into having one-on-one conversations with voters, knocking on an estimated 170,000 doors and making roughly 30,000 phone calls to listen to voters’ concerns and discuss Drey’s approach to fixing them. Iowa State Education Association (ISEA) members engaged in a Weekend of Action, hosting a postcard writing party and a neighborhood canvass.
Restoring Balance
When Catelin Drey won, she broke the veto-proof Republican supermajority in the state legislature that resulted from the 2022 general election.
“We really emphasize to our members that this is important because it means that Senate Democrats now have the numbers to block gubernatorial nominations,” explains Morgan Miller, political director at ISEA.
Drey will have to run again in 2026 to keep the seat she just won this summer. In that midterm election, Iowans will also elect a new governor and a U.S. Senator.
Shawn Olorundami is hopeful that candidates who are clear about how they will support public schools will do well in the midterm elections, in Iowa and across the country.
“I think the union has done a good job educating people in general about how catastrophic the policies that are being passed in states like Iowa and at the federal level are for schools, whether they are in rural, urban, or suburban communities,” he says.
“We don’t have to convince voters that there are problems with these policies. They see it, they know it, and they are ready for change.”
