Council Bluffs Democrat Turek still in mix for U.S. Senate, decision coming soon

State Rep. Josh Turek talks with then 6-year-old Hayes Hofmeister in Des Moines during a recent summit on advocacy for people with disabilities. (Photo By Douglas Burns)

Council Bluffs State Rep. Josh Turek, a Democratic legislator who outperformed the top of his party’s ticket in a challenging southwest Iowa district last November and is widely seen as an elected official with statewide potential, is evaluating a run for the U.S. Senate.

"I am certainly still considering it and considering it seriously," Turek said in an interview with The Iowa Mercury Monday. "But for something like this you really need to do your due diligence. The position is of too much importance. It's too important, not only to the state of Iowa, but the country. The soul of the state, and really the soul of the country, is on the line with this 2026 election. I don't think a decision like this can be made quick or easy or glib."

Turek said he has been meeting in person and talking with Democrats in his home district, around Iowa and Washington, D.C. "on a daily basis" about a potential U.S. Senate race in 2026. Incumbent Republican Sen. Joni Ernst is seeking a third term. There are two announced Democrats in the race. Knoxville Chamber of Commerce executive director Nathan Sage, a military veteran, has been keeping an aggressive early schedule. And State Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, announced his U.S. Senate campaign Monday. More candidates are likely —whether Turek enters or not.

Turek said he expects to announce a decision soon.

"There is certainly a deadline that is going to be involved with this just in terms of functionality, and also personally," Turek said. "My goal would be certainly at some point in the summer whether that is July or August to make a hard decision."

Top Iowa Democrats, including former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, with whom Turek is close, have spoken highly of his prospects in a potential statewide race.

Turek said the state of Iowa is not as conservative as many in it, and pundits outside of Iowa, make it out to be.

"We have a state that has masqueraded as far more red than what we are," Turek said. "I still believe that in our essence we are a purple state."

Turek said Democrats must field the best candidate to challenge Ernst because of the state of the nation.

"If I am not indeed that person then I will do all that I can to support whoever that candidate ends up being," Turek said.

In the interview with Iowa Mercury, Turek strongly criticized Ernst, 54, of Red Oak, for a response last week to a shouted audience question in a Parkersburg, Iowa forum about potential Medicaid cuts resulting in deaths. "Well, we all are going to die," Ernst said at the forum.

She then followed up with a weekend video billed as an apology, but filled with snark.

"It was a terrible lack of empathy and to me demonstrates how broken the moral compass is of the modern Republican Party," Turek said.

"One doesn't have to operate with great malice to do great harm," Turek added. "The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. I think that really sums up how I feel about what she said."

The Council Bluffs legislator, who grew up working class in that city, said Ernst may have done the seemingly unthinkable historically. Ernst showed greater disregard for everyday working people, those literally struggling to put food on the table, than the 18th century Queen of France Marie Antoinette did during bread shortages in her country, Turek said.

"Even 200 years ago when Marie Antoinette said, 'Let them eat cake,' let them eat something, the modern Republican Party and Joni Ernst are just saying 'Let them die.' It was callous and heinous."

"It's a lack of lived experience, or who knows, maybe intellectual curiosity," Turek said of Ernst.

Born with Spina Bifida, Turek had 21 surgeries by the age of 12. He went on to earn two gold medals playing basketball for the United States in the Paralympics, and is now a two-term Iowa legislator.

Turek said there are 22,000 Iowans with disabilities on the waiting list for basic services through Medicaid.

He’s thinking about those people and what they need as he mulls a run for higher office.

"We need representatives that are out there that care about the people that aren't doing this for the position or the power or for the fame," Turek said.

In the 2022 race Turek climbed and "crawled"while he dragged his wheelchair behind him — the latter his own description — to 14,000 doors in Iowa House District 20. He won the seat by just six votes — 3,403 to 3,397.

In this last cycle, 2024, according to analysis from Bleeding Heartland's Laura Belin, who knows Iowa politics by the numbers as well as anyone, Turek earned the title of most over-performing Democratic state legislator in Iowa electorally as he bettered the top of the ticket, presidential candidate Kamala Harris, by more than 13 points in his Council Bluffs-Carter Lake district.

About The Iowa Mercury

(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )