Mike Zimmer

The Challenge: The January 2025 special election race for Iowa State Senate District 35, a district won by Trump by 21 points in November 2024, seemed like a long shot. In addition to the typical confusion and lack of awareness that accompanies special elections, Democrats were feeling generally pessimistic and disengaged after Trump’s recent win. Compounding the challenges, the race was announced on December 23, 2024 – right before Christmas, with the special election taking place only a month later on January 28, 2025.

Our Solution: Foundation Blue Media was the only vendor on the team, and worked directly with the Iowa State Senate Democratic Caucus (the Caucus). Given the short timeline of the campaign and the importance of the race, we hit the ground running late on Christmas Eve by working with the Caucus to set up the candidate’s Facebook page for political advertising. Additionally, as an a la carte firm, we were well situated to assist the Caucus with all their creative without necessitating charges to the Caucus for creative production. For example, our in-house production team worked with the Caucus to help the Caucus film and produce quality videos themselves instead of paying us to produce videos. Foundation Blue Media created all static creatives and placed all ads in a way that integrated with the timing and targeting of the field and the Caucus in-house mail program. Through the use of our Geographic Addressable technology, we were able to reach the specific households that were getting knocks and mail pieces. As the messaging at the doors evolved throughout the campaign, so did our static creative. We continually updated creative for placement, even making changes up to the day before the election. This ensured there was one sight, one sound between all paid and field communications to help break through.

The Result: This was the first state legislature seat to flip from red to blue in 2025, and a huge victory for Eastern Iowa! This is a district that Trump won by 21 points in 2024 and the Republican won by nearly 25 points in 2024.