Barack Obama, the only Democrat to win Iowa in a presidential election in the last quarter-century, famously loves basketball. Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee in the state’s high-stakes Senate race, does, too — he was a two-time Paralympic gold medalist on the U.S. men’s wheelchair basketball team.
So for one of the former president’s first endorsements of the midterm elections, he appeared in an endorsement video shooting hoops with Mr. Turek, a centrist state lawmaker who is seeking to become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Iowa in more than a decade.
Last week, Mr. Obama joined Mr. Turek at a gymnasium in Chicago, where they filmed a two-and-a-half minute video while playing a game of IOWA, a variation of HORSE, the shoot-around game.
Democrats are trying to flip the seat held by Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican who decided not to run for re-election. Mr. Turek faces Representative Ashley Hinson, a moderate Republican running with President Trump’s endorsement.
“Let’s go, we playing HORSE or what?” Mr. Obama, who had the White House tennis court modified so it could also be used for basketball, says from the sidelines in the opening moments of the video, released Wednesday.
Mr. Turek replies with a grin, “We’re playing IOWA.”
“I know a little something about winning Iowa,” says Mr. Obama, who upset Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race for president in 2008 and carried the state in the general election that year.
He also won Iowa in the 2012 presidential election. But the state swung sharply in 2016. Mr. Trump carried it by nearly 10 percentage points. Thirty-one Iowa counties pivoted, the most of any state.
Republicans have since maintained a hold on Iowa, and Mr. Trump won it comfortably in 2020 and in 2024.
But Iowa’s farming-heavy economy has struggled under Mr. Trump’s tariff policies in his second term. Democrats see the state as one of their top pickup opportunities in their quest to reclaim the Senate.
Opinion polls show the race between Mr. Turek and Ms. Hinson essentially tied. Mr. Turek has argued that the state is ready to elect a “common-sense” Democrat, and has pointed to his bipartisan record in the Iowa Legislature.
In the video, Mr. Obama asks Mr. Turek how his campaign is going.
“Everywhere we go — urban areas, rural areas — people are ready for change,” Mr. Turek says.
Mr. Obama says that “of all the things I’ve done in politics, Iowa was my favorite thing,” describing “a magic about regular folks showing up in gyms” for the state’s caucuses.
Mr. Turek tells Mr. Obama that people in the state say they are feeling “hope” for the “first time in a long time.”
Mr. Obama replies, “That’s my sense.”
Ms. Hinson’s campaign dismissed the endorsement.
“Another liberal endorses Josh Turek — shocking,” Billy Fuerst, a campaign spokesman, said in a six-word statement.
Mr. Obama has endorsed few candidates in the midterm elections, which are still three months away. But in May, he joined James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in traditionally red Texas, to get tacos at a campaign event that was filmed and turned into a glossy video.
Mr. Obama’s video with Mr. Turek shows a series of swishes by the two left-handed Democrats and the former president badly missing a midrange bank shot from the wing. (“The bank was closed,” Mr. Obama says).
It includes a discussion of the greatest basketball players of all time. (Both men put Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls guard, atop their lists.)
The video leaves some ambiguity about who won the game of IOWA, though Mr. Obama says he was “whooped” and describes Mr. Turek as “somebody who knows how to win.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, Hannah Hankins, declined to say who won, saying simply that they had fun and had a good conversation.
It was not the first time the former president had met Mr. Turek. Mr. Obama welcomed him to the White House in 2016 to celebrate the U.S. Paralympic men’s basketball team’s Olympic gold medal victory in Rio de Janeiro.
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