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Sioux City, Iowa — Democratic Senate hopeful Josh Turek was with former Sen. Tom Harkin in a driveway in a small Western Iowa town when the former senator pulled out his phone to show the candidate something.
“Oh my God,” Turek said as he leaned over to glance at Harkin’s phone, which appeared to show the prediction market Kalshi’s odds for the Senate race.
The odds had Turek up over GOP candidate Ashley Hinson, 52% to 48%. But Turek knows the race against Hinson is making out to be one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country. He said as much there in the final hours of the campaign.
“This may very well be the closest election on the entire U.S. Senate map,” Turek said, surrounded by a small crowd of supporters at the canvass launch in Le Mars, Iowa.
He’s pitching the race in Iowa as an opportunity for a “generational change.” After moving right in recent years, a departure from its former status as a battleground, the state could send a Democrat to the governor’s office this year and flip a handful of House seats — along with a closely watched Senate seat left open by GOP Sen. Joni Ernst’s retirement.
A state lawmaker, Turek likens himself to Harkin, whom he calls a “common-sense prairie populist.” And Turek doesn’t eschew things that others in his party might consider a bridge too far, like working with President Trump.
“How will I work with him? In the exact same way that I’ve done in the Iowa legislature,” Turek told CBS News at the campaign stop Monday. “I don’t believe that any party has a monopoly on good ideas. And I’ve said openly that I agree with President Trump that we should have no tax on tips, overtime, Social Security, and driving private equity out of housing, for example.”
Turek said “on a lot of these issues,” he sees an opportunity to find agreement.
Asked about the president’s visit to Iowa for a rally on Sunday, which marked his second in the Hawkeye State in a matter of weeks, Turek said, “I thought it was good for him to come out here” because “I don’t think he understands” the challenges Iowans face.
“I think it was good to see what healthcare cuts are doing to a state with a healthcare and a cancer crisis,” he said. “That it is good for him to see what has happened with the tariffs and with the war in Iran, because both have hurt Iowa more than any other state.”
Some of Turek’s supporters say they like his willingness to work with the president. At another campaign stop in Onawa, Iowa, earlier Monday, Doug Zima lauded the openness.
“I’m 76 years old, I have never seen the United States so divisive,” Zima said. “I’ve never seen families not get along because of this silly Republican-Democrat division, and it needs to stop.”
On the airwaves, Turek’s closing message to Iowans has centered on high gas and diesel prices, which he has tied to his opponent, whom he argues hasn’t done enough to fight the president on tariffs and the Iran war. He also highlights the state’s high cancer rates.
And on what will be among his final stops on the campaign trail, the Iowa Democrat invoked a Republican former president in his closing pitch.
“My message is a similar message to what Ronald Reagan said when he first ran for office in 1980, and that is, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ Are you better off? Are Iowans better off than they were two years ago, four years or six years ago when Ashley Hinson first ran?” Turek said.
For her part, Hinson has pitched herself to Iowa as a fighter for the state, often speaking of being a minivan-driving mom who is ready to get things done for Iowa. And while she pledged to be the president’s “top ally” early on in the campaign and has campaigned with Mr. Trump, she’s tweaked that message in recent weeks, promising to push back on Mr. Trump when needed.
More broadly, Hinson argues that Turek is too liberal for Iowa, and pledged to work with members of both parties to get results. She has called in recent weeks for the Iran war to come to an “immediate and successful end” in order to bring down energy prices, breaking with the president.
In a recent interview with CBS News, Hinson called herself an “Iowa common-sense conservative” who is “pro-Iowa … no matter who’s the president.”
On the campaign trail Monday, Turek said Iowans “are hurting more than almost any other state.” He rattled off a laundry list of troubles facing the Hawkeye State, pointing to a contracting economy, as well as healthcare, cancer and water quality crises. He cited the public education system, farmers who are going into foreclosure, unpopular tariffs, the war in Iran and high energy prices.
“Every single way it’s going in the wrong direction,” he said. “And there’s a better way to do this.”
Turek, a former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player who grew up with spina bifida that he attributes to his father’s exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, said he’s pushing to be a fighter for Iowans like him, who have experienced economic and health-related struggles.
“There’s a lot of people in D.C. that come from wealth and privilege. I don’t think there’s that lot of places like where I come from, Council Bluffs, Iowa,” Turek said. “I think when you’ve experienced that yourself firsthand, you’ll have a different level of understanding, a different level of compassion, a different level of empathy, and a different level of fight.”
The sentiment resonated with one voter, Dan Hicks, who said he’s an independent. But he said he supports Turek because he “actually talks more like me than a politician.”
Speaking alongside Harkin, the last Democrat to be elected to the Senate in Iowa, Turek argued that Iowans want a senator like they had in the Iowa Democrat. Harkin, who represented the state for three decades and has appeared with Turek on campaign stops throughout the state, spoke of returning to “some better representation in the United States Senate.”
It’s a possibility that seemed unthinkable at the start of the cycle. But like a number of states that supported Mr. Trump by double digits in 2024, it now appears on the table for Democrats heading into Election Day.
As he rallied volunteers to knock on doors, Turek said, “We just got today and tomorrow.”
“But if we do this, if we win this election here in Iowa, we will not only make a generational change to the state of Iowa,” he said, “we will change this country.”
