Des Moines: who represents it, and who is running

U.S. general election (federal, state and county offices) votes on 2026-11-03. It elects u.S. Senator (Ernst seat, class 2 — open); U.S. Representative IA-3; Governor and Lieutenant Governor (joint ticket — open); Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer, Secretary of Agriculture, Attorney General; even-numbered Iowa Senate districts (incl. SD-18 at city hall) and all 100 Iowa House seats (incl. HD-36); Polk County offices; judicial retention; public measures. No City of Des Moines offices — city elections are in odd years (next November 2027)..

Holding office14

the sitting council

On the ballot10

2 sitting members running again

The official candidate list ↗ · What Des Moines is like — the /local page

Congressional district (city hall): Iowa's 3rd congressional district (city hall, T.M. Franklin Cownie City Administration Building, 1200 Locust St; coordinates 41.58519, -93.63238); IA-3 covers all of Des Moines — Zachary Nunn (Republican)

Mayor

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Connie Boesen ✉️ Elected	Mayor	Independent		City of Des Moines

Council Member

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Carl Voss ✉️ Elected	Council Member	Independent	At-Large	City of Des Moines
Joe Gatto ✉️ Elected	Council Member	Independent	Ward 4	City of Des Moines
Josh Mandelbaum ✉️ Elected	Council Member	Independent	Ward 3	City of Des Moines
Linda Westergaard ✉️ Elected	Council Member	Independent	Ward 2	City of Des Moines
Mike Simonson ✉️ Elected	Council Member	Independent	At-Large	City of Des Moines
Rob X. Barron ✉️ Elected	Council Member	Independent	Ward 1	City of Des Moines

Auditor of State

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Chris Cournoyer Elected	Lieutenant Governor → Running for Auditor of State	Republican		Office of the Governor of Iowa

Governor

Name	Office	Party / slate	Source
Kim Reynolds Elected	Governor	Republican	Office of the Governor of Iowa
Rob Sand ✉️	Governor Running	Democratic	Warren County Auditor
Zach Lahn ✉️	Governor Running	Republican	Warren County Auditor

Lieutenant Governor

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Dave Muhlbauer ✉️	Lieutenant Governor Running	Democratic		Warren County Auditor
Derek Wulf	Lieutenant Governor Running	Republican		Warren County Auditor

State Representative — HD-36

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Austin Baeth ✉️ Elected	State Representative	Democratic		Iowa Legislature

State Senator — SD-18

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Janet Petersen ✉️ Elected	State Senator	Democratic		Iowa Legislature

U.S. Senator

Name	Office	Party / slate	Source
Chuck Grassley Elected	U.S. Senator	Republican	@unitedstates congress-legislators (legislators-current.json)
Joni Ernst Elected	U.S. Senator	Republican	@unitedstates congress-legislators (legislators-current.json)
Ashley Hinson ✉️	U.S. Senator Running	Republican	Warren County Auditor
Josh Turek ✉️	U.S. Senator Running	Democratic	Warren County Auditor
Thomas Laehn	U.S. Senator Running	Libertarian	Warren County Auditor

U.S. Representative — IA-3

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Zachary Nunn Elected	U.S. Representative → Running	Republican		U.S. House of Representatives
Sarah Trone Garriott	U.S. Representative Running	Democratic		Union County Auditor

Notes on this record

How the lists were read, and what could not be.

Municipal: City of Des Moines council page (dsm.city, robots allows all), retrieved 2026-10-22. Mayor, 2 at-large and 4 ward members; official dmgov.org emails as printed; no phones copied. Des Moines has no other city-wide elected office. Next city election: Iowa regular city elections are held in November of odd-numbered years, so November 2027 (2 Nov 2027 by the first-Tuesday-after-first-Monday rule — computed, not printed). Terms expiring January 2028: Mayor, Voss (at-large), Ward 2, Ward 4.
Federal: senators and representatives from the CC0 @unitedstates legislators-current.json; Nunn confirmed on house.gov/representatives (Iowa, 3rd). senate.gov not used. Census geocoder (coordinates endpoint) on a 13x14 grid (~1.4 km) gave 118 points inside the 'Des Moines city' place: all in Congressional District 3 and Polk County. TIGERweb was not used (it answered 'Request Rejected' even to robots.txt).
State: same grid — 4 Iowa Senate districts (15, 18, 17, 20 in point-count order) and 8 House districts (29, 30, 36, 39, 33, 35, 34, 40) cover the city; only SD-18 and HD-36 (city hall) are recorded, from legis.iowa.gov member lists (robots disallows only /chambers/). Governor and Lt. Governor from governor.iowa.gov.
Candidates: Iowa Secretary of State (sos.iowa.gov) robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai and Claude-Web (Cloudflare-managed) — not used. Polk County (www.polkcountyiowa.gov) answers Akamai 'Access Denied' 403 even to robots.txt — not retried. So statewide races are from the Warren County Auditor's 'Candidate List — General Election November 3, 2026' (last updated 9/11/2026), and IA-3 from the Union County Auditor's official 2026 general sample ballots (Warren County is in IA-1; Union is in IA-3). Dallas County's 2026 list has county offices only; Madison County's sample-ballot file returned 403 outside its viewer (not worked around); guthriecounty.gov is a Cloudflare block.
Not captured: 2026 candidates for Iowa Senate District 18 and House District 36 — they appear only on Polk County lists, which were unreachable. Primary results were not used as a substitute (not a general-election candidate list). Petersen and Baeth therefore carry status 'elected' only.
Open seats: U.S. Senate (Ernst not on the list), Governor (Reynolds not on the list). Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer is on the list for Auditor of State (recorded incumbent-running with runningFor). Rep. Ashley Hinson (IA-2) is the Republican U.S. Senate nominee — recorded as 'running' because IA-2 does not cover Des Moines. Other statewide offices (SoS, Treasurer, Agriculture, AG, Auditor) are on the ballot but outside this brief's scope and not recorded as rows.
Privacy: the county list prints home/mailing addresses, phones and some personal-looking emails — none of the addresses or phones were copied; only campaign-domain emails were kept (gmail/hotmail/outlook dropped). City hall address appears only in 'ridings'. standsFor is null for everyone (no candidate statements read). No write-ins.

Sources

Prepared 2026-10-22. Nomination papers are never opened: they carry home addresses. After voting day a candidate list becomes a result; these rows are reconciled, not deleted.