| New in-depth reporting from the Des Moines Register details Zach Nunn’s losing campaign strategy against mom and minister Sarah Trone Garriott: pushing false, despicable attacks against her Christian faith and service, which reporting finds are “backfir[ing] with some Iowa voters.”
Sarah Trone Garriott speaks about how she spent her life of service, showing up for her neighbors as a hospital chaplain, parish pastor for congregations in rural Virginia and suburban Iowa, leader at the largest faith-based food pantry in Des Moines, and State Senator – and how her “faith calls [her] to help [her] neighbors.”
As Nunn and his allies repeatedly attack Sarah as a “‘so-called’ or ‘fake’ minister” and compared her to “Judas, who betrayed Jesus,” the Register reports that Iowans say “the Republican attacks don’t jibe with the pastor they know.”
NOTABLY: A “Registered Republican” who “voted twice to send Nunn to Congress” said he was ashamed of voting for Nunn after hearing Nunn’s attacks on Sarah’s faith.
“Frankly, I heard that, and I’m ashamed that I voted for him after hearing that,” [he] said. “It’s like, let’s get to the issues that affect Iowans and not fabricate stuff to try to have the ultimate attack ad.”
The Register also fact checked and contextualized the numerous false smears Nunn and his allies have pushed about Sarah, following previous reporting fact checking several of these attacks as “lie[s].”
Read the reporting for yourself:
Des Moines Register: Why GOP keeps targeting Iowa Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott’s faith
- Piano notes filled St. James Lutheran Church as self-described “free-range” pastor Sarah Trone Garriott led congregants in worship.
- Wearing a traditional white alb as she stood before the churchgoers in Johnston, the Lutheran minister and state lawmaker came equipped with a Sunday school jingle to impart a lesson straight from the Gospel.
- “I’m gonna teach it to you,” she said in an April Sunday service. “So are you ready to sing? So this is your part: Baaaaa.”
- Her bleat was met with laughter before several dozen congregants joined in with a chorus of baaaaing before she segued into a lesson about Jesus as the Good Shepherd — and about recognizing a voice worth following.
- It was a sermon about faith, not politics. But it parallels the themes Trone Garriott extols on the campaign trail about leadership, public service and trust — and about leaning on community to discern the right path.
- As the 48-year-old Democratic state senator from West Des Moines seeks to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn in south-central Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, she routinely points to her faith as a guide for her approach to governance.
- In one of the nation’s top battleground matchups in the 2026 midterm elections, Trone Garriott is encountering a steady drumbeat of attacks from the right over how she expresses her faith and what it signals about how she would govern.
- Nunn has joined the critiques.
- But Trone Garriott and churchgoers who have known her for years say those attacks don’t square with the way she practices her faith in public life or in the traditional, structured religious settings where they’ve seen her work.
- “Faith is about how we live together,” Trone Garriott said. “So is politics. So, of course, faith should speak to our politics, but it’s wrong to use religion to try to gain power over other people or enrich yourself or hurt other people. And my faith teaches me that, that the true calling of faith is to love my neighbor.”
- Trone Garriott argues criticism of her faith has intensified because she has taken aim at Nunn’s positions on legislation gutting federal Medicaid spending, protecting sweeping global tariffs and upholding the president’s war powers in Iran.
- She contends the attacks repeatedly twist her positions and past remarks in a “desperate attempt to hold on to power.”
- Democrats decry the tactic as “pushing despicable lies to attack Sarah’s lifelong, deeply-held Christian faith,” said Katie Smith, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ campaign arm.
- “Iowa voters know you won’t always agree on everything, but Nunn is trying to divide Iowans by dictating how they should practice their faith because he thinks it will score him political points,” Smith said. “It’s a desperate attack from a desperate politician, and one of the many reasons he will lose in November.”
- Trone Garriott, an ordained Lutheran minister since 2008, considers her faith and public life to be deeply intertwined and seeks to use faith leadership to help others do the same.
- Trone Garriott grew up Lutheran but came to ministry after an AmeriCorps VISTA year in New Mexico, where she worked on domestic violence issues and saw people struggling to reconcile personal crises with their faith communities.
- The experience led her to Harvard Divinity School and later chaplaincy work in Philadelphia and Chicago, where she encountered people during some of the most difficult moments of their lives — after car accidents, gunshot wounds and other traumatic events.
- That, she said, reinforced the importance of service and relationship-building across differences.
- “I really learned from that experience that to serve a community well, you have to show up,” Trone Garriott said. “And that’s how you build trust and those relationships.”
- Attacks backfire with some Iowa voters
- [Jerry] Wylie, the treasurer on the St. James church council, was a Republican for 45 years until about 2016.
- Wylie said he votes for candidates who match his values, regardless of party. He plans to vote for Trone Garriott because she practices what she preaches: being kind, listening and serving others.
- Churchgoers who have long known Trone Garriott in faith settings who spoke with the Register said the Republican attacks don’t jibe with the pastor they know and instead reflect the toxicity and polarization of modern American politics.
- John Brown, 71, a registered Republican from Johnston who attends St. James Church, has known Trone Garriott for nearly 15 years, and said he voted twice to send Nunn to Congress since his first bid in 2022.
- He has become disenchanted after hearing Nunn’s comments in an interview with conservative radio host Simon Conway criticizing Trone Garriott as “preaching down to Iowans.”
- “Frankly, I heard that, and I’m ashamed that I voted for him after hearing that,” Brown said. “It’s like, let’s get to the issues that affect Iowans and not fabricate stuff to try to have the ultimate attack ad.”
- Laurie Politzer, 52, of Waukee, an anti-Trump Republican who previously had Trone Garriott as a pastor at Faith Lutheran Church, watched on as Vance and Nunn took jabs at Trone Garriott in May. She said the remarks signal “politics is way off the rail at this point.”
- [Politzer]…questioned GOP efforts to define who is a “real Christian.”
- “You hear these ads against someone you know and it doesn’t resonate with the person you know, and it just feels so weird and gross,” Politzer said.
- In a statement, Nunn’s campaign didn’t directly answer questions on whether he worried that criticism of Trone Garriott’s faith expressions may alienate voters, including those that said it was inappropriate to use rhetoric that questions the legitimacy of a candidate’s faith.
- Trone Garriott said the attacks are unlikely to stick with voters in a community where she has long woven her faith into her public service.
- “I live that out in a way that respects my neighbors who have different beliefs and stand up for the rights of my neighbors who see the world differently than me and really centers the dignity of all of my constituents,” Trone Garriott said. “And that is, I think, a fulfillment of my faith — as I said, that calling to love God and love my neighbor. There is no one who is not my neighbor.”
Read the fact checks:
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