Josh Turek Is Going The Extra Mile For Voters
Iowa Rep. Josh Turek tells a story about how he approaches voters, and he has a video to prove it.
Turek has a lifelong disability as a result of spinal bifida. When he approaches a voter’s home, he climbs out of his wheelchair, scoots up the home’s steps, pulls the wheelchair behind him, places himself back in the wheelchair, and rings the doorbell.
He says that the first thing voters often ask when they see him on their porch, is “how the hell did you get up here?” And he replies that he climbed up those stairs because that person’s vote is so important to him.
Raised in a working-class household in Iowa, Turek competed in four Paralympics, winning two gold medals and a bronze medal. He also played for professional wheelchair basketball teams in Europe for nearly two decades.
He decided to return to Iowa and ran for the state legislature. Turek climbed up voters’ steps in winning his first legislative race in 2022 by only six votes. He won again in 2024 by a 5% margin. His state legislative district has voted for a Republican in every presidential election since 1968.
In the Iowa state legislature, Turek was the primary sponsor of legislation to remove Medicaid income and asset limits for employed Iowans with disabilities. He also supported bills to raise the minimum wage and to protect workers’ right to organize. He was successful to enacting bills to strengthen veterans’ homestead tax credits and to make it easier for disabled Iowans to repair wheelchairs and other assistive devices.
Josh supports the PRO Act to strengthen collective bargaining, proposes to increase the minimum wage and to increase that wage regularly based on increases in inflation, and supports investing in job training programs and apprentices.
His opponent, Rep. Ashley Vinson, is a former TV anchor. She opposed collective bargaining rights for public employees when she served in the Iowa state legislature. She defended that vote by claiming that the law “had gone in favor of labor unions.” In Congress, she has supported Trump’s tariffs, has voted against clean energy tax credits, and has voted against expanding ACA subsidies. She has referred to the ACA as the “unaffordable care act,” and has voted in favor of cuts to Medicaid and to food assistance programs.
Her campaign website contains just one sentence describing legislation she supported in Congress. She received a 0% rating from the AFL-CIO in 2025, and only a 8% lifetime rating from the labor federation. Instead, her website prominently states that Pres. Trump has endorsed her in every election in which she has competed, back to 2020. That website contains the full text of Trump’s endorsement of her in 2025, and states that she “is fighting alongside President Trump every single day to Make America Great Again.”
Trump’s endorsement will probably not help Vinson, as his approval rating in Iowa is only 36.8%. He has a negative 46% approval rating on prices and inflation, a negative 25% rating on jobs and the economy, and a negative 23% rating on trade with other countries, a key issue for Iowa farmers.
Nationally, Trump’s approval rating among rural voters dropped by 34% between March 2025 and May 2026. He had 20% positive net approval rating among rural voters in March 2025, and a negative 14% net approval rating in May 2026.
Turek has a 2% lead over Vinson in the latest Senate poll. He has been endorsed by the Iowa Federation of Labor, by six of Iowa’s largest labor unions, and by VoteVets, because of his father’s military service. Turek is determined to reach out to every Iowan, to ring every doorbell, to flip the Senate for Democrats.
Written By Barry Roseman, SU4W Board Member
