A Paralympian and ‘prairie populist’: How this Iowa Senate candidate is trying to spark a rural revival for Democrats
State Representative Josh Turek
Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) — Theresa Weeks was making spaghetti when a Senate candidate came knocking on her door.
“I was just watching your commercial,” Weeks said, extending her arms to give Josh Turek a hug on her front steps. “I’m delighted to see you.”
Turek is not only running to replace Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who is retiring after two terms. He is also testing whether Democrats can still win a Senate seat in Iowa – for the first time since 2008. The party is seeking to capitalize on voter discontent and economic anxieties that are also coursing through races for governor and Congress.
Weeks has lived in Iowa for 40 years, so she well remembers when sending a Democrat and Republican to the Senate was commonplace. The midterm election may signal whether Iowa has slipped deeply into the column of a red state, she believes, or whether Democrats can stage a revival.
“I’m hopeful there is this quiet sentiment of change that will erupt and we will see that change come to fruition,” Weeks said, standing outside in her stocking feet, as Turek’s visit came without warning. “I’m on a tightrope. I’m on pins and needles as to what our future holds.”
As she talked, Turek listened from his wheelchair on a recent afternoon he spent navigating sidewalks in her leafy neighborhood, climbing up stairs and knocking on doors. He’s intent on showcasing a physical disability, which he believes can be a political strength.
“There’s nothing like face-to-face interaction,” said Turek, 47, who was elected to the state legislature after winning two gold medals for the US men’s wheelchair basketball team. “You’ve got a guy in a wheelchair that crawls up the stairs to get your vote. It means a lot.”
In the primary election on Tuesday, Turek faces state Sen. Zach Wahls, 34, in a fight to become the Democratic nominee for US Senate. The winner is expected to challenge Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
‘Ready for change’
The fall election will measure whether voters in Iowa – and a handful of states across the country – have an appetite to elect Democrats in places that have repeatedly sided with Trump over the last decade and trended Republican at most levels of government.
“We’ve been in one-party rule for the better part of a decade,” said Josh Ladd of Des Moines, who called himself a moderate Democrat, eager for a new direction. “It feels different right now. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but your gut says it’s different.”
The president’s name is not on the November ballot, but Democrats are trying to make the election a referendum on his policies. Voter anxieties over inflation, the cost of gas, Medicaid cuts and tariffs are among issues contributing to a low approval rating for Trump.
“I think people are ready for change,” Wahls told CNN. “People want fighters who are going to go to bat for people that, you know, the establishment in Washington has written off.”
The spirited contest between Turek and Wahls is the latest in a series of Democratic primaries across the country in which the party’s voters are trying to find the most electable candidate for a general election. In Iowa, the fight is less ideological, given the rivals have similar records, but more about biography and geography.
Turek is from Council Bluffs, a working-class city in along the Missouri River in western Iowa and Wahls is from Johnson County, a deep-blue region home to the University of Iowa. Wahls first gained national attention when he spoke out against a proposed ban on same-sex marriage by talking about being raised by his mothers, who are lesbian, and delivered a speech to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
VoteVets, a national Democratic super PAC, has put its thumb on the scale in Iowa by investing nearly $10 million to promote the candidacy of Turek, a Paralympian, who first drew attention after winning a legislative race by six votes in 2022 in a conservative district.
That amount – an unusually large outside investment by Iowa standards – is far more than what the candidates have collectively spent on the race.
Wahls has been sharply critical of the outside spending, accusing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of trying to indirectly influence the primary through the group. Wahls is also among the Democratic candidates across the country calling for Schumer to step down as leader.
“Chuck Schumer is not meeting the moment,” Wahls said, “and Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy.”
Schumer has denied any role in the spending decisions of VoteVets, a group that typically supports veterans running for office. Turek did not serve in the military, but said his spina bifida disability stems from his father’s exposure to Agent Orange during his Naval service in Vietnam.
“There’s no doubt that it’s helped to raise name recognition,” Turek told CNN. “I think that I am really an example of the generational consequences of these forever wars, which I think has really resonated with people.”
Asked whether Iowans cared about the deluge of spending from a so-called dark money group that does not disclose its donors, Turek replied: “I think what voters care about is winning this election. And I think this comes down to electability.”
Testing its role as a battleground
Not since 1968 has Iowa seen a wide-open race for governor and Senate at the same time, which is one of the factors driving the state’s fiercely competitive election cycle.
The decision by two of the state’s top Republicans, Gov. Kim Reynolds and Ernst, not to seek third terms has created a rare opening for Democrats.
While it may still be an uphill climb in a state where the Democratic Party has atrophied and Trump easily carried three times, several Republican strategists, donors and party leaders tell CNN they are more concerned about their Iowa prospects than they have been in years.
“Democrats may have a tarnished brand, but Republicans could pay the price for the economy and what looks like another farm crisis on the horizon,” a longtime Republican official told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to frankly discuss challenges facing the party.
One of the headaches for Republicans is playing out in a messy primary in the governor’s race, with five candidates on Tuesday’s ballot. A series of local issues have loomed large in the race, including water quality, eminent domain and high cancer rates.
The president waited until Friday afternoon to weigh in and endorsed Rep. Randy Feenstra, who represents the most conservative corner of Iowa. He had long been expected to be the leading candidate, but struggled to catch on with Trump’s base.
“Randy is MAGA all the way!” Trump wrote in a social media post.
Feenstra had skipped all of the debates, which featured his rivals: Zach Lahn, a businessman, state Rep. Eddie Andrews, former state Rep. Brad Sherman and Adam Steen, a former state administrator. Several of the candidates have placed Trump at the center of their campaigns by pledging to fully support his agenda.
If none of the candidates hit 35% on Tuesday, the contest will be decided at a state Republican convention.
Yet even though Trump won the state by 13 percentage points in 2024, Republicans acknowledge headwinds. The administration’s tariff policies have complicated trade for the state’s corn and soybean farmers, which along with soaring cost of gas, diesel and fertilizer, have contributed to deepening economic worries.
Rob Sand, the Iowa auditor who is the only Democrat currently holding statewide office, is running unopposed for the party’s gubernatorial nomination. He has raised more money than his GOP opponents combined and is aggressively working to win over independents and moderate Republicans with a slogan, “Not redder or bluer, but better and truer.”
It’s the only path Democrats have to win here, considering Republicans outnumber them by more than 195,000 voters.
As of early May, voter registration data from the Iowa Secretary of State shows 692,089 registered Republicans, 496,219 registered Democrats and 588,500 voters not affiliated with either major political party.
A state that Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012 has become a Republican stronghold ever since. Iowa had the most counties of any state in the nation – 31 of 99 – that twice went for Obama and shifted to Trump in 2016, in a vivid display of White working-class voters abandoning the Democratic Party.
The November elections will test the party’s ability to win them back.
“We don’t have to win this 100-0. I know this from representing a really red district,” Turek said. “There really is a lot of tribalism in this, but in a state like Iowa, where you’ve got 35 or 37% of the voting bloc that are going to be independents, they’re the kingmakers in the process.”
An Iowa path to a House majority
For Iowa Democrats, the last election cycle worth celebrating was 2018, the midterm election of Trump’s first term. Democrats won three US House seats in the state and came within striking distance of winning the governor’s race.
This year, the fight for control of Congress could also run directly through Iowa. Two House districts are among the most competitive in the country, while a third seat is in the next tier of races that both parties are closely tracking.
Republican Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks are locked in tossup races against expected Democratic challengers Sarah Trone Garriott, a state senator and Lutheran minister, and Christina Bohannan, a law professor at the University of Iowa.
Two years ago, Bohannan came within about 800 votes of defeating Miller-Meeks in the state’s 1st Congressional District, even as Trump won by eight points. In 2020, Miller-Meeks won her seat by only six votes in one of the slimmest margins in any House race on record.
Hinson, a three-term Republican congresswoman from eastern Iowa is running for the Senate, leaving an open seat in the state’s 2nd District. The candidates for that race – and how competitive the race becomes – will come into sharper focus after Tuesday’s primary.
A national investment for Senate seat
The Senate race in Iowa is emerging as one of the contests that could determine whether Republicans maintain control of the upper chamber of Congress. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to capture a majority.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC working to elect Republicans, announced an initial investment of $29 million to boost Hinson in hopes of keeping the seat in GOP hands. The Senate Majority PAC, the group’s Democratic counterpart, has made a $13 million commitment for the fall.
Democrats have not won a Senate seat in Iowa since former Sen. Tom Harkin was reelected in 2008. When he retired from the Senate, Ernst won his seat and has held it for two terms.
Yet once again, Harkin is at the center of the political conversation in the state.
It’s a mix of Democratic nostalgia for what Iowa once was, back when he served in the Senate from 1985 to 2015, and for what it could be. After 30 years in the Senate, Harkin rarely weighs in on Democratic primaries, but earlier this month broke that tradition and endorsed Turek for his old Senate seat.
“There’s a saying that rough weather makes good timber,” Harkin said in a statement, explaining his decision to weigh in on the race. “Josh has had some pretty rough weather in his life, and he is good timber.”
It was a particularly notable sentiment, considering Harkin officiated the wedding of Wahls to his wife, Chloe. Wahls downplayed Harkin’s endorsement, telling CNN: “Iowans, frankly, care a lot less about endorsements than they do about a message that is resonating with them and with their neighbors.”
One of Harkin’s most enduring legacies is the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, which he championed in the Senate, before it was signed into law in 1990. He delivered a speech on the Senate floor in sign language as a tribute to his brother, Frank, who was deaf.
It’s a point that Turek, speaking from his wheelchair, makes at every campaign stop.
“Every single bit of success that you’ve heard me talk about here, I owe to Senator Harkin,” Turek said. “I do believe that it is going to be something beautifully poetic that the man who is coming to get Senator Harkin’s seat back is only there because of the work that he did on the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
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CNN’s Jeff Simon and David Wright contributed to this report.
