Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, has drawn a new Democratic challenger after she dismissed a suggestion that her party’s proposed cuts to Medicaid would lead to constituents dying.
J.D. Scholten, a Democratic state representative best known for his unsuccessful 2018 campaign against Representative Steve King of Iowa, said on Monday that he had felt compelled to enter the race against Ms. Ernst because of her comments.
On Friday, when a town hall attendee yelled that “people are going to die” because of the proposed Medicaid cuts, Ms. Ernst responded, “Well, we all are going to die.” She then mocked her critics in a video on social media over the weekend.
Mr. Scholten’s announcement that he would run for the Senate came before his campaign had built a website, filmed a kickoff video or sent fund-raising solicitations. He made a spur-of-the-moment decision, he said, because Ms. Ernst had been “disrespectful to Iowans.”
“I’m not a politician who plans things,” Mr. Scholten said in an interview on Monday. “This race was not on my radar at the beginning of the year. But I thought, ‘I’ve got to take this fight.’”
Several Democrats are likely to compete in a primary field to face Ms. Ernst, who will remain the favorite given Iowa’s rightward lean. One candidate, Nathan Sage, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and currently leads the Chamber of Commerce in Knoxville, Iowa, was in the audience for Ms. Ernst’s town hall on Friday. Zach Wahls, a Democratic state senator, has been preparing to announce a campaign.
