State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat seeking to flip one of the most competitive congressional seats in the country, is facing renewed scrutiny this week over a 2021 video showing her reciting a Muslim prayer on the Iowa Senate floor, and a separate interview in which she described Iowa as insufficiently diverse and implied constituents harbor “horrible animosity” toward Muslims.
Garriott, an ordained Evangelical Lutheran Church in America minister, offered the Islamic prayer as part of what she described as a personal commitment to amplify non-Christian voices in the chamber. “I’ve made a commitment to only be praying prayers from those other communities,” she said at the time.
Iowa is 93% Protestant, Catholic, or unaffiliated, according to Pew Research Center data. Less than 1% of the state’s population is Muslim, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
The prayer resurfaced after a YouTube appearance Garriott made on British Muslim TV, where she told host Mohammed Shafiq that Iowa lawmakers represent “a long way to go” on diversity. “It’s not a very diverse group of leaders. We don’t have people from many religious backgrounds – it’s mostly white, mostly Christian,” she said.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Zach Kraft called the comments disqualifying. “It is downright shameful to go on a foreign television show and call Americans racist and backwards, but this is exactly how Sarah Trone Garriott has risen up the ranks in the Democrat Party,” Kraft said.
Garriott’s opponent, Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) addressed the remarks at a campaign event Tuesday. “I don’t need a lecture from someone who pretends to preach from the pulpit while at the same time doing things like tell Americans that they’re too white and too racist, or wag their finger to say ‘hey, most of Iowa is bigoted,'” Nunn said. “I don’t believe that’s true.”
Nunn won re-election in 2024 by just 3.9 percentage points. Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District is among the 16 most competitive House races in the country heading into the 2026 midterms, according to the Cook Political Report.
