Iowa Democratic US Senate candidates Josh Turek, left, and Zach Wahls.
Getty Images
District Attorney Josh Turek soundly defeated Sen. Zach Wahls of the district on Tuesday in the Iowa Democratic US Senate primary, the Associated Press predicted. The primary was one of the party’s most closely watched races as Democrats seek to regain control of the Senate in the November midterm elections.
Turek had 62.6% of the votes, compared to 37.4% for Wahls, with more than 98% of the votes counted, according to MS NOW.
Turek, 47, is running to become the first Iowa Democrat to be elected to the U.S. Senate since Tom Harkin in 2008.
Turek will compete against Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican who represents the state’s 2nd congressional district, to fill the seat that GOP Sen. Joni Ernst will vacate at the end of this year.
Hinson, 42, easily defeated Jim Carlin in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary by about 48 percent.
Turek now has a tough job winning a state that President Donald Trump carried by 13 percent in 2024 and where there are nearly 200,000 more Republican voters than Democrats. But Democrats are poised to pick up the seat as Trump’s approval rating plummets amid the Iran war and the country’s struggling economy.
Farm bankruptcies are rampant across the country. Tax revenue decreases. And prices and the war in Iran have hit soybeans and other farmers hard.
Meanwhile, Morning Consult in a poll released in May found that Trump has an approval rating of 7 in Iowa, which is lower than in February before the start of the Iran war. The same poll rated the Senate race as a “likely” Republican victory.
The battle between Turek and Wahls was a sign of a larger struggle within the Democratic Party between its moderate and progressive wings, and it was the poll of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y.
The general election for the Iowa Senate seat could be very important for Democrats to retake this position. To do that, they will need to flip four states that Trump won, such as Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, and Maine, while successfully defending seats held by Democrats in states such as Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire.
“The biggest battle right now among Democrats is who’s going to be the most electable,” Timothy Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, said before the primary. “Which way are we going to go? Republicans, of course, want Wahls because he’s so far to the left that it’s probably going to turn off voters who don’t have a party. And a lot of Democrats are saying, ‘We need Turek because we need to have a fighting chance in this election.’
Turek was seen as a candidate for the establishment, with the endorsement of Harkin, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and a number of senators. Turek, who lives in Council Bluffs, on the state’s western border with Nebraska, is a two-time Paralympian gold medalist in wheelchair basketball who is running for a seat in the state legislature long held by Republicans.
“I’m the only person running in this race who has ever run against a Republican, let alone been beaten,” Turek posted to X in May. “I’m tested and ready to face Ashley Hinson – and win.”
Wahls was seen as a progressive candidate and endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. During his campaign, he promised that he would not support Schumer as party leader if elected. He lives in Coralville, a suburb of Iowa City, a college town in the Democratic stronghold of Johnson County.
“Ashley Hinson is Donald Trump’s choice for this seat. My main challenger is Chuck Schumer’s choice. But this seat is not theirs – it’s for the people of Iowa,” Wahls wrote in a Substack post Monday.
On Tuesday, Iowans voted in primaries in races in three of four congressional districts and to choose the Republican gubernatorial nominee in a five-way race that included GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra.
Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor, is a Democratic candidate for governor.
