Following a redistricting of Johnson County Board of Supervisors seats as a result of a change in state law, newcomers and incumbents in the county are facing this election season from a different landscape. Primary elections will take place on June 2, where all five seats are up for reelection.
The districts, which were announced in December 2025, are the result of a new law requiring the three counties that host regent universities to change the way they elect supervisors, electing by district instead of at large. The decision came after legislators called for increased access for rural voting populations in
the state.
Prior to the law, all supervisor candidates would appear on the ballot and all Johnson County residents would be able to vote on any supervisor. Now residents will vote by district, with district one including most of North Liberty, District Two including parts of Iowa City and Solon, District Three including parts of Coralville and Tiffin, District Four including parts of Iowa City, and district five including parts of south and west
Iowa City.
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The new districts placed several sitting board members in the same district, including Rod Sullivan and V Fixmer-Oraiz in District Four, and Mandi Remington and Jon Green in District Two. Rather than run against her colleague, Remington chose to move to District Five, where she remains unopposed for the time being.
Remington, who was elected in November 2024, will have to run again this year due to the new districts and spoke about her frustrations with the new law.
“I should not have to run for another two years,” she said. “That’s a huge impact, cutting my term in half.”
Remington also said having supervisors running directly against each other for the first time felt different than having candidates running for all five seats.
“It’s deeply frustrating,” she said. “It’s another of many examples of erosion of local control, and it’s really taking rights away from Johnson County residents.”
Sullivan and Fixmer-Oraiz remain in the same district and will run against each other in District Four. Fixmer-Oraiz said that while they respect Sullivan, the differences in their voting history were important.
“My opponent, Rod Sullivan, has held his office for 20 plus years, and I deeply respect the work that he has done for our community,” Fixmer-Oraiz said. “We do agree on a lot of things, but not everything, and our differences matter.”
Fixmer-Oraiz listed differences in voting on issues like funding for the Community Violence Intervention Program, size and scale of a new county jail, and training for county employees on what to do if approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Fixmer-Oraiz said the districting was “out of their hands”, and they would carry on supporting and working for the residents of Johnson County.
The two other counties affected by the lawsuit are Story County, which hosts Iowa State University, and Black Hawk County, which hosts the University of Northern Iowa. Johnson County drew new districts based on the 2020 census and will redraw them in 2030 using the results from the 2030 census.
Before the law passed, Johnson County residents voted on all five potential supervisors, and the changes in this process prompted a lawsuit from a group of voters from the affected counties.
The lawsuit, which names all supervisors in each of the three counties, Gov. Kim Reynolds, and Secretary of State Paul Pate as defendants, claims the new law violated voters’ rights and is unconstitutional.
James Larew, the Iowa City attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit’s goal is to stop the law from moving forward by asking for a temporary and permanent injunction.
“Senate File 75 personally affects constitutional rights as voters of those who live in each of the three counties,” Larew said. “It diminishes the strength of their vote when compared to the strength of the voters in all of the other 96 counties.”
Sue Dvorsky, a newcomer candidate in District Three who served as the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party from 2010 to 2013, said that the redistricting was unprecedented.
“There was never a time when you could just make a law for one school district or, you know, one county. So those times, clearly, are in our rear view,” she said.
Dvorsky said that never again would Johnson County residents vote for all five supervisors at once and said it was important to take this opportunity to examine the level of county government.
“I know what they’re doing,” she said. “But the joke would be on them if here, with this remarkably politically engaged electorate, we could actually turn this into an opportunity to truly examine this level of government.”