Josh Turek wins Iowa Democratic primary for Senate

State Rep. Josh Turek soundly defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls on Tuesday in Iowa’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, the Associated Press projected. The primary was one of the party’s most closely watched races as Democrats seek to regain control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections.

Turek had 62.6% of the vote, compared to 37.4% for Wahls, with more than 98% of the expected votes counted, according to MS NOW.

Turek, 47, will now vie to become the first Iowa Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate since Tom Harkin in 2008.

Turek will square off 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 the Republican Senate primary on Tuesday by a margin of about 48 percentage points.

Turek now has the difficult task of winning in a state that President Donald Trump took by 13 percentage points in 2024 and where there are nearly 200,000 more registered Republican voters than Democrats. But Democrats are bullish on picking up the seat as Trump’s approval rating sinks amid the Iran war and the state’s economy struggles.

Farm bankruptcies are up across the state. Tax revenue is on the decline. And tariffs and the Iran war have hit soybean and other farmers hard.

Meanwhile, Morning Consult in a poll released in May found Trump has a -7 approval rating in Iowa, lower than in February before the Iran war began. The same poll rated the Senate race as “likely” a Republican victory.

The battle between Turek and Wahls was emblematic of a larger struggle within the Democratic Party between its more moderate and progressive wings, and became a referendum on Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The general election for Iowa’s Senate seat could be crucial for Democrats’ push to retake the chamber. To do so, they’d need to flip four states that Trump won, such as Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, and Maine, while also successfully defending seats currently held by Democrats in states such as Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

“The big fight right now among the Democrats is who’s more electable,” Timothy Hagle, a University of Iowa political science professor, said ahead of the primary. “Which way are we going to go? The Republicans, of course, want Wahls because he’s so far to the left that it’s going to probably turn off the no-party voters. And a lot of Democrats are saying, ‘We need Turek because we need to have a fighting chance at this election.'”

Turek was seen as the establishment candidate, with endorsements from Harkin, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and a handful of sitting senators. Turek, who lives in Council Bluffs, on the state’s western border with Nebraska, is a two-time gold medalist Paralympian in wheelchair basketball who flipped a seat in the state legislature that Republicans had long held.

“I’m the only candidate in this race who has even run against a Republican, let alone beaten one,” Turek posted to X in May. “I’m battle-tested and ready to take on Ashley Hinson — and win.”

Wahls was seen as the more progressive candidate and had been endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. During his campaign, he promised not to support Schumer as the party’s leader if he was elected. He lives in Coralville, a suburb of Iowa City, which is a college town in the Democratic stronghold of Johnson County.

“Ashley Hinson is Donald Trump’s choice for this seat. My primary opponent is Chuck Schumer’s choice. But this seat doesn’t belong to them — it belongs to the people of Iowa,” Wahls wrote in a Substack post on Monday.

Iowans on Tuesday also voted in primaries for races in three of four congressional districts and to select the Republican gubernatorial nominee in a five-way race that included GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra.

Feenstra had earned Trump’s endorsement, but narrowly lost to Zach Lahn, a businessman who has aligned himself with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

In November Lahn will face Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor, who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor.