New district maps for future Johnson County Board of Supervisors elections were released, placing some of the current supervisors in the same district. Due to the way the districts were drawn, the supervisors will now have to either move to a district with no sitting supervisor, or run against each other for the first time.
The redistricting came about after Senate File 75 was signed into law in April by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, R-Iowa. The law requires the three counties that host regent universities to change the way they elect supervisors, electing by district instead of at-large.
Besides Johnson County, which hosts the University of Iowa, the other two affected counties are Story County, which holds Iowa State University, and Black Hawk County, which hosts the University of Northern Iowa.
Before the law was passed, each supervisor was present on ballots and voted on by all county residents. The new law will force a redistricting of the county, meaning supervisors will only be elected by those within a specific district. The new prospective district map was released on Dec. 4.
Supervisors Jon Green and Mandi Remington are sitting in District 2, while Supervisors Rod Sullivan and V Fixmer-Oraiz are in District 4. This means four of the five current supervisors will either have to run against one another in 2026 or move to a district that does not currently have a sitting supervisor.
Remington said she is planning to move to one of the two districts in Johnson County that are currently without a supervisor, Districts 3 and 5, before the upcoming 2026 Board of Supervisors election, where all five seats are up for reelection.
The two districts without a sitting supervisor are District 3, which includes Coralville, Tiffin and the rural southwestern part of the county and district five, which includes portions of south and west Iowa City.
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“I’m a renter, and we had some forethought,” Remington said. “My landlord was very kind and accommodating in allowing me a flexible lease this year.”
Remington and Sullivan said the full board has not discussed what the redistricting will look like.
Sullivan said he was planning on running in the district he is currently in, and that he has not had the chance to speak to Fixmer-Oraiz yet.
“I already indicated I was going to run before we even had a map. So I’m definitely planning on running,” he said.
The new law prompted a group of voters to file a lawsuit against the redistricting. The lawsuit names all supervisors in each of the three counties and lists Reynolds and Secretary of State Paul Pate as defendants.
James Larew, an Iowa City attorney representing the 14 plaintiffs who all reside in the three impact counties, said the lawsuit is asking the courts to declare “the statute that was passed by the legislature is unconstitutional and therefore void.”
The petition said the law would dilute the votes of students in the counties with regent universities and give more power to rural voters, which the petition claims is unconstitutional and in violation of voters’ rights.
Larew said due to the law splitting voters into districts, voters would have diminished voting powers compared to years past, with voters having one-fifth the power of the vote than they have now due to the split.
Because all three boards are named in the suit, including Johnson County, the supervisors are unable to discuss specifics. Sullivan said the board has held closed meetings with the Johnson County attorneys to determine the best way to move forward.
Sullivan and Remington acknowledged there wasn’t much they could do to resist the changes, as they were legally obligated to follow them.
“The legislature decided this is what they were going to do, and we have to follow the law until we’re told otherwise. So that’s all we can do is move forward in that way,” Sullivan said.
Remington highlighted the importance of local elections and how much they impact constituents and their community.
“Local elections really do impact a lot of what happens in our community, and this is a big disruption to our local election system,” she said. “I encourage folks to stay tuned so that they know what is going to be on their ballot and what that’s going to look like when the time comes.”