Senator Joni Ernst has her first declared 2026 primary challenger. Joshua Smith announced on X/Twitter on December 5 that he plans to run against Ernst as a Republican in 2026. The “blue-collar, working-class veteran” and father of seven promised he would be “the most pro-life, pro-family, small government candidate running for a federal office” next cycle.

So far, Smith’s campaign looks more like a bid for online engagement than a serious threat to Ernst’s career. But in a December 9 telephone interview, he explained why he’s confident he can build a strong GOP primary campaign.

A LIBERTARIAN TURNED REPUBLICAN

Smith is a Navy Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran who first became involved in politics working on Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. He was a Libertarian activist for years and has recorded nearly 250 episodes of the Break the Cycle podcast, where he boasted that he has “had so much success turning people into Libertarians by trolling them.” He announced on his YouTube channel in 2023 that he would seek the Libertarian nomination for president, and asserted in an April 2024 video that he was the “only truly Prolife candidate” in this year’s presidential race.

Speaking to Bleeding Heartland by phone, Smith said he is a “Libertarian at heart” but recently changed his voter registration to Republican. Over the past year and a half, he had more doubts about the Libertarian Party’s effectiveness. At the same time, “I see this growing movement for liberty in the Republican Party,” and he has an affinity for GOP politicians such as U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, U.S. Senator Rand Paul, and Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s also friends with State Representative Jeff Shipley.

Although Smith doesn’t agree 100 percent with the GOP, he thinks “we can be more effective as liberty-based Republicans” than as Libertarians. He said he was outspoken about supporting Donald Trump for president after Chase Oliver won the Libertarian Party’s nomination this summer, and speculated that he had helped push a lot of Libertarians to vote for Trump in November.

In August, Smith filed as a Libertarian candidate in Iowa Senate district 16, covering Clive, Windsor Heights, and most of West Des Moines. He told me he agreed to run after confirming no Republican planned to file there, and thought “not having the R next to my name” might make it easier to run in a blue district. After raising no money and holding no campaign events, Smith received about 30.7 percent of the vote to 67.8 percent for Democratic State Senator Claire Celsi.

Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of the precinct-level results from Senate district 16 shows that Kamala Harris carried the district with about 57.7 percent of the vote to 40.5 percent for Donald Trump. The breakdown in the third Congressional district race was similar, with Democratic challenger Lanon Baccam receiving about 57.6 percent of the vote across the Senate district 16 precincts, while Republican Zach Nunn received 42.1 percent.

AN “AMERICA FIRST CANDIDATE”

In a written statement provided to Bleeding Heartland, Smith said he “puts the liberty, prosperity, and freedom of Americans first and foremost as a primer to all of his policy proposals.”

During our interview, he said he sees a growing number of people upset with Ernst’s votes, noting that “the MAGA Republicans” aren’t happy about her views on some of Trump’s nominees. Smith said Ernst has voted with Senate Democrats 40 percent of the time, and criticized her support for $96 billion in aid to other countries when “30 percent of the population of the United States can hardly put food on the table.”

In recent social media posts, Smith has promised to be an “America first candidate” who will “not vote to continue to send American taxpayer money overseas,” and will “diligently work to rout out foreign influence over American politics.” He has pledged not to “take a single dollar from AIPAC or other foreign agent PACs” and to “expose just how deep the foreign influence over American politics goes.”

Ernst has repeatedly expressed her support for Israel and U.S. military aid to that country. The Jerusalem Post reported in September that Ernst “has been to Israel and the Middle East more times since October 7 than anyone else in Washington, barring Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Biden administration’s team of ceasefire negotiators.”

Smith has also called for abolishing all firearms regulations and replacing Ernst with someone who “understands the everyday plight of the American working class better than anyone else there.”

A longer post on December 6 outlined his “America first platform” in more detail:

I will author bills aimed at ending all federal gun laws from the US Senate if the people of Iowa help me win Joni Ernst’s seat.

I will push to end all US involvement in foreign wars and entanglements and ensure that we have a strong military at home that is able to protect the American people from invasions.

I will push hard to end foreign aid to welfare parasite countries using the American taxpayers as piggy banks.

I will work on bills that end, permanently, the influence of foreign countries over the American federal government.

I will work to end the backward and corrupt instituion of the federal government subsidizing state governments for seperating families in family courts.

I will vote no on ALL new taxes and regulations.

I will work to put the duty back on congress to actually declare wars instead of neglecting their duty and shoving it off on the executive branch.

I will work to end the Patriot Act and all unconstitutional domestic spying on citizens.

I will work to get rid of the AUMF forever.

This is what an America first platform looks like.

Follow me to watch us make history in 2026, when we beat Ernst in the US Senate primaries in Iowa. #Smith4Senate2026

GRIEVANCES ALONE CAN’T BEAT AN INCUMBENT

Smith pushes a lot of buttons popular in MAGA world. This video from November 9 is a good example.

America first pic.twitter.com/MoGO7k0LZ0

— Joshua Smith from Break The Cycle (@JoshuaAtLarge) November 10, 2024

But it’s one thing to string together grievances. It’s another to build a winning campaign against a two-term incumbent with massive institutional support and nearly $2 million in the bank already. (Smith is currently looking for a campaign treasurer.)

In the telephone interview, Smith acknowledged it’s “not normal” to unseat a sitting senator, but expressed confidence that he can raise the resources to mount a primary campaign, thanks in part to “a really great national network” of people he’s gotten to know over the years. He said he plans to continue his podcast while also doing other media appearances, and set a goal of visiting all 99 counties.

For those who may question his qualifications to serve in the Senate, Smith told me, his answer is that he’s a “working-class guy” who knows how to read bills and how legislation works. “Why aren’t we sending the construction worker that knows how to read bills” to Congress, Smith asked. “We should be sending people that actually understand the everyday issues that we face.”

To qualify for the GOP primary ballot in 2026, Smith will need to collect at least 3,500 signatures on nominating petitions, including at least 100 signatures from at least nineteen counties.

Any alternative on the ballot in 2026 would draw some support, given the level of MAGA antagonism toward Ernst. State Senator Jim Carlin raised little money and still received about 26.5 percent of the Republican primary vote against Senator Chuck Grassley in 2022.

But it’s a long way from there to unseating a senator in a primary. Conservative talk show host Steve Deace is correct that beating Ernst would require “high name ID, connections, and funding potential.” It’s probably not possible without an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Ernst has been working hard to curry favor with the president-elect. She traveled to Mar-a-Lago with Governor Kim Reynolds for his election night party. She met with Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk in late November. Most recently, Ernst put up X/Twitter posts on December 9 praising Kash Patel (Trump’s pick for FBI director) and Tulsi Gabbard (his nominee for director of national intelligence).

The 2026 Republican primary for Senate bears watching. But Joshua Smith has a long way to go to demonstrate he can defeat Ernst.