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Dem House Hopeful Attacks Iowans After Backlash to Muslim Prayer Controversy in State Senate

Dmitri Bolt
Dmitri Bolt  |  May 06, 2026 4:30 PM

An unearthed clip of Sarah Trone Garriott, a member of the Iowa State Senate and current Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, has been circulating on social media in which she defends her decision to begin a day in the legislature with a Muslim prayer. She not only described the act as one of inclusivity, but also accused Iowans who sent her hateful messages of harboring “horrible animosity towards our Muslim neighbors.” 

The most striking part: she is an ordained Lutheran minister and pastor.

"So the Senate begins every day with prayer, and the majority of members in the Senate are Christian, and they almost always share Christian prayers," Garriott said. "Right now, because of COVID, we can't invite religious leaders to come pray on our behalf, so we're praying our own prayers, and for me, it's really important to make sure that the diverse religious communities here in Des Moines get to have their voice heard. And so I've made a commitment to only be praying prayers from those other communities."

"And so the first person I thought of was a good friend, a young woman who was a wonderful poet, and I asked her to write a poem, a prayerful poem, for us to begin the day, and it used many attributes of God and used the Arabic language," she continued. "And so I thought it was just a lovely way to begin the day. And I did not hear any negative feedback from my colleagues in the Senate, but then it got picked up by a pretty hateful website called Jihad Watch, and then I started to get these very negative emails and pieces of mail, mostly saying that I didn't understand what I had done and that I was praying to a different God."

"And I feel very strongly that if we are going to have prayer, it needs to be open to all people in our community, and I think that there's just some horrible animosity towards our Muslim neighbors," Garriott added. "And we have a significant Muslim population in this metro area, and those voices deserve to be heard."

This comes as Garriott is currently ahead of the incumbent Repbulcian, Zach Nunn in recent polling.

On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance held a campaign event with Nunn, slamming Garriott’s policy proposals, including allowing men to compete in women’s sports, as well as what he described as a lack of plans to increase take-home pay or address rising housing costs. He went on to laud the Trump administration and Republicans for their progrss on those efforts.