$re = '/<td.*?class="MID"[^>]*[\s\S]*?<\/td>/';
$str = '<td width="33%" align="left" class="MID">
<a href="ShowDOTCoByState.cfm?STATE=US&PHY_ST=IA">IOWA</a>
</td>';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php