You could be forgiven for ignoring the recent political goings-on in Iowa. The state, which was once a violet-hued hub of unpredictability, has lately elected and reelected Republicans.
In last night’s primaries, though, Iowa Democrats nominated the kind of candidates the national party has struggled to find. Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist with a record of winning red areas, is the party’s nominee for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. And Rob Sand, the affably idiosyncratic state auditor who didn’t have a challenger, is officially up for governor. Which means that national Democrats and Republicans are now grappling with a development that, until this week, had registered as little more than a quiet observation in the broadcast-standard English of farm country: Iowa is competitive again.
Let’s start with Turek, whose primary, in the end, wasn’t even close: He beat Zach Wahls, a 34-year-old Democratic state legislator, by more than 25 points. This isn’t because Turek is better-known or more beloved. It’s because he was perceived by Iowa Democrats as more electable. And the perception of electability is everything to Iowa Democrats right now, as they sense victory like sharks smell blood in the water.
Turek was the Senate candidate that Iowa Republicans did not want, which is, of course, exactly why Democrats had to have him. Turek describes himself as a “poor, disabled kid from Council Bluffs,” a reliably red part of the state. He has previously run against and beaten Republicans in a state House district that also supports Trump. He’s also got a compelling backstory: The 47-year-old was born with spina bifida, caused by his father’s exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and has said he underwent 21 surgeries as a child. Before entering politics, Turek was a wheelchair-basketball player, played in four Paralympic games, and worked at a mobility-technology company. During a visit to Iowa in March, I watched as he dragged his chair up hills and stairs to introduce himself to Iowans. “There’s something compelling about a man in a wheelchair making his way up a staircase,” Kurt Meyer, a state Democratic activist, told me. “It’s a visceral positive reaction when you see somebody that’s just that dog-determined.”
The money helped: Even though Turek hasn’t served in the military, VoteVets, an organization that supports veterans, poured several million dollars into his campaign. Given the group’s alignment with Senate Democrats, Wahls attempted to frame Turek as a Chuck Schumer–backed establishment type. Among primary voters, this argument appeared to amount to very little. Turek has a history of winning, one prominent Iowa Democrat told me last month—“and he wins hard, hard places.”
[Read: The Democrats might actually win Iowa]
Democrats will have to hope so. In November, Turek will be up against Representative Ashley Hinson, the polished former TV journalist who will likely be the best-known and most popular Iowa Republican on the ballot. Hinson, who secured Trump’s early endorsement, once pledged to be Trump’s “top ally” in the Senate, a promise that will continue to feature prominently in Democratic ads. But Hinson doesn’t register as MAGA or far right in the way that many other Trump-endorsed candidates do, and Republicans are hopeful that her presence at the top of the ticket will help pull her downballot colleagues through.
Unlike Turek, Rob Sand has had the Democratic Party’s nomination locked down for a while, even though he seems generally averse to the label. The 43-year-old former prosecutor has positioned himself as a public servant who is frustrated with both parties, an independent who just so happens to have a D next to his name. His strategy to win statewide relies on persuasion and good, old-fashioned Iowan open-mindedness—if such a thing still exists.
But now, in an unexpected twist, Sand will face an opponent that virtually no one was expecting. The GOP front-runner, Representative Randy Feenstra, had been endorsed by Trump, but was sideswiped on Election Day by Zach Lahn, a conservative activist and private-school co-founder whose candidacy only recently gained traction. Lahn won, strategists told me, because he took advantage of the fact that Feenstra wasn’t actually showing up: “He had name ID, a ruby-red district in his hands, and a lot of money, but the campaign for some reason chose to keep him under wraps,” David Oman, a state Republican strategist, told me.
Feenstra might have been a more welcome opponent for Sand, given how little excitement he generated among the GOP base. Lahn seems to energize them: He’s the preferred candidate of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and has pledged to “take on the big ag cartels” as well as Big Pharma.
But Lahn has his own weaknesses. The most obvious is that the “Iowa First” candidate, who was born and attended high school in the state, spent many years living in Kansas and has said he moved back to Iowa only in 2023; he still maintains a Kansas home and flies there regularly. Lahn is also a conservative culture warrior whose ads about resisting “Marxist ideology” and defending the “Western tradition” probably helped earn him the endorsement of former Representative Steve King, who was unseated by Feenstra in 2020 after years of making racist remarks. But the biggest complication for Lahn, who vowed last night in his victory speech to fight “the establishment” at every turn, is that in Iowa Republicans are the establishment.
Iowa has been a red state for a while. And basic math, in politics as in life, so often serves as the great crusher of dreams. So it goes for Democrats in Iowa, who are outnumbered by registered Republican voters by a margin of nearly 200,000.
But Republicans are up against their own set of unfortunate circumstances: Gas prices are high. So is the cost of fertilizer. Trump’s war with Iran isn’t popular, and neither is he. When you add Turek and Sand to the mix, things start to look sunnier for Democrats. The Cook Political Report has recently reassessed both of their races, deeming the Republicans only slightly favored to hold their Senate seat, and the governor’s race a tossup. Three of Iowa’s four House races might also be in play. “We’re going to see two incredibly colorful and interesting general-election campaigns—and maybe three good House races,” Oman, the GOP strategist, told me. “It’ll be a red-letter political year in Iowa.” He paused, then added, “Maybe I shouldn’t say red.”
[Read: ‘We have not seen ugly yet’]
Iowa will now join Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Alaska on the list of states that Democrats are desperate to flip and Republicans will have to scramble to protect in order to keep their Senate majority. Campaign ads will clog the airwaves. Out-of-state money will flood the zone. The national Democrats prepared to invest hundreds of millions backing James Talarico in Texas might even reconsider. Why not spend a sliver of a fraction of that amount for a possibly better result?
Going forward, not much is certain except for this: We’re about to hear a lot more about Iowa.
The post Iowa Is Back on the Map appeared first on The Atlantic.
