A Paralympic champion with spina bifida is one step closer to capturing the U.S. Senate seat that was once held by a key architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Josh Turek became the Democratic candidate for Senate in Iowa this week by defeating state Sen. Zach Wahls in a hotly contested primary race.
Turek, a state representative, attributes his spina bifida to his father’s exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He has competed at four Paralympic Games and won two gold medals in wheelchair basketball.
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With the primary settled, Turek will face Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson on the ballot in November. The two are vying for a Senate seat currently held by Republican Joni Ernst, who is retiring.
Though Iowa often is viewed as a red state, political watchers believe that Turek could flip the seat. After his win this week, the influential Cook Political Report switched its position on the race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican.”
Turek is running as a moderate. On the campaign trail, he is known for dragging his wheelchair up stairs to reach voters.
“My story is truly the American dream,” Turek said in his victory speech this week. “In no other country on earth can someone born into a working class family in Council Bluffs, Iowa who went to the Goodwill, who shared clothes, had the wrong color lunch ticket, who was born with my disability of spina bifida due to my father’s exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, who had 21 surgeries before the age of 12, be able to represent the United States in four Paralympic Games and bring home two gold medals and represent their community in the legislature. Only in America is that possible and I am running for the United States Senate to protect that American dream for future generations.”
Turek said he was motivated to get into politics while working in the healthcare field and seeing an increase in denials and delays for people with disabilities and other conditions which he attributed to the privatization of Medicaid.
Turek has been open about the significance of his disability in the race. Prior to Ernst, the Senate seat he’s vying for was held for three decades by Tom Harkin, a Democrat who was the chief sponsor of the ADA.
“Sen. Harkin and his work on the ADA gave me and so many other disabled Americans an on-ramp onto society,” Turek said in a statement when Harkin endorsed him last month. “It will be beautifully poetic when the man who takes back Sen. Harkin’s seat is only here because of his work.”
