One of these two Democrats could flip Iowa…
Watch my latest interviews with Josh Turek and Zach Wahls on the Hawkeye State’s U.S. Senate race
Democrats have a bit of a soft spot for Iowa. The state elected Barack Obama twice, in 2008 and 2012, and for years it was genuinely competitive up and down the ballot. Then Trump’s coalition took hold, and the state that once felt like a bellwether started to feel like an uphill battle. This year, two Democrats are betting it doesn’t have to be that way: State Sen. Zach Wahls and State Rep. Josh Turek are both running for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, and I sat down with each of them for this week’s episode of Gloves Off.
Although they’re locked in a fierce primary battle at the moment, Wahls and Turek seem to agree on more than they disagree. Both want campaign finance reform, term limits, and a ban on members of Congress trading stocks, and both are running explicitly against an establishment they believe has failed Iowa. “Politicians and diapers should be changed regularly and for the same reason,” Wahls told me, quoting Mark Twain. Turek sounded a similar note: “We can have oligarchy or we can have democracy. We cannot have both.”
Where the two candidates differ is a bit more telling: Wahls has been unequivocal since day one that he will not vote to keep Chuck Schumer as his party’s Senate leader, while Turek has declined to take a position, and is reportedly the top choice of the DSCC. What really separates them and their supporters, though, is their belief about what it will take to actually win statewide in Iowa in November.
That electability question is one that Democrats of all stripes are grappling with in primaries across the country, and Iowa voters will answer at the polls for themselves in just a few days: their primary election is on Tuesday. Give the episode a watch and share it with your friends and family in Iowa to ensure they vote in the primary on or by Tuesday!
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