better use this :
<?php
$html='<td width="33%" align="left" class="MID"><a href="ShowDOTCoByState.cfm?STATE=US&PHY_ST=IA">IOWA</a></td>" id="blabah" >help</a>';
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($html);
echo $dom->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->nodeValue;
this will get the value of the text written for link.
demo here : https://eval.in/202356
or if you are so fond on using regex :
<td.*?class="MID"[^>]*[\s\S]*?<\/td>
demo here : http://regex101.com/r/aS9pV1/1