Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek won his Senate primary Tuesday, a victory for national Democrats who helped boost him as they seek to flip the critical seat.
He will face Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP nominee, to compete in what has become one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races, as both parties battle for control of the upper chamber.
Turek, a wheelchair basketball player who was on teams that won two Paralympic gold medals, defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls in a chaotic primary election that turned into a proxy war between the Democratic Party’s leaders and its anti-establishment wing. Wahls frequently accused Turek of being beholden to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who didn’t formally endorse in the race but whose leadership PAC maxed out to Turek’s campaign — and outside groups like VoteVets, which spent more than $10 million on advertising for Turek. That figure is more than three times the combined spending from Turek’s and Wahls’ campaigns.
In the end, that money — in cohort with Turek’s “prairie populism” pitch focused on building up the working class — helped him prevail.
Turek also boasted significant backing from Democrats in the state, including former Sen. Tom Harkin, the last Democrat to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate. He enters the general election in a deadlock with Hinson, with preprimary polling showing the two in a statistical tie.
Democrats have not elected a senator to Washington since 2008, when Harkin was elected to his final term. But they view this cycle as a golden opportunity, thanks to a sagging economy and growing frustration with the Trump administration’s tariffs, which spiraled Iowa’s agriculture sector into chaos.
And Turek, who was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 2022, has been through tough races before: In that first election, he defeated a Republican opponent by just six votes.