(Radio Iowa) – Five Democrats are now running for the U-S Senate seat Republican Joni Ernst holds. Josh Turek, a state representative from Council Bluffs, says he’s a moderate Democrat who’s battle tested after winning two campaigns in an Iowa legislative district that supported President Trump in 2024. “I am the Democrat that is representing the reddest part of this state,” Turek said. “I am in a county that Trump won by 20 points and a city that Trump won by 11 points and I won by nearly six points and that is because I have got the grit, the hard work, the determination to go out every single day and have conversations with Republicans and independents and talk about the kitchen table issues that actually matter.”

Turek, who is 46, was born with spina bifida. He won gold medals in wheelchair basketball representing the United States at the Paralympic Games in 2016 and 2020. Turek says people want legislators who work in a bipartisan way for the middle class and working families. “My philosophy is country over party. I am a genuine prairie populist,” Turek said. “…I am going to fight for raising the minimum wage. I’m going to fight for affordable housing. I’m going to fight for affordable and accessible health care, which I can speak to with credibility having gone through an enormous amount of adversity in my life, having 21 surgeries before I was even 12 years old due to my disability.”

Turek says his political hero is former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin. “I am someone that knows and understands the impact a senator from Iowa can make. It was because of Senator Harkin and his work with the Americans with Disabilities Act that has allowed me to have the success in my life that I’ve been able had,” Turek said. “Had it not been (for the Americans with Disabilities Act), I never would have had the economic, the educational or the occupational opportunities to be successful in my life.”

Turek played professional wheelchair basketball in Europe and Australia for 17 years and, since 2021, he’s worked for a company that sells wheelchairs for children and adults as well as rehab technology to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. Turek’s current competitors for the Democratic Party’s U-S Senate nomination are Jackie Norris of Des Moines, Nathan Sage of Indianola, J.D. Scholten of Sioux City, and Zach Wahls (like “walls”) of Coralville.