Do we like Josh Turek?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A kind, clean record and real work for disabled Iowans, held back by a late ad backing a ban on taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care.
Turek is a Council Bluffs local who made his name in wheelchair basketball: two Paralympic golds and a bronze for the US, then a stint playing pro in Europe. He was inducted into the National Wheelchair Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023. Before politics he worked in assistive technology, helping people get wheelchairs and mobility devices.
He came home and won an Iowa House seat in 2022 by six votes, 3,403 to 3,397, and became the state's first legislator with a permanent, visible disability. House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said of his arrival: “We were able to see through his eyes just how inaccessible the chamber was.” He also held a Medicaid forum in Council Bluffs.
The big stoush is the ad he released on 24 October. In it he opposes “males competing in female sports” and says “I'm against taxpayers paying for sex changes too”. PinkNews reports the proposal appears to cover adults as well as minors. One Iowa Action said it unequivocally condemned the ad and accused him of breaking assurances he had given the group.
State Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, Iowa's first openly trans legislator and a fellow Democrat, said: “You don't need to throw people under the bus to win elections.” Turek's campaign didn't answer her. It sent statements from supporters, one of whom said he disagrees with the ad but can talk to Turek. Where you land depends on whether you read the ad as a pragmatic pitch to swing voters or as trans Iowans being used as a wedge.
On showing up, the news is worse. He missed 261 of 445 Iowa House floor votes in the 2026 session, about 58%, and PolitiFact rated Hinson's claim about it True. A Statehouse reporter called it “utterly meaningless”, given he was campaigning, while an analyst called it unusual. On the other side, KCRG found he voted with at least one Republican on 90.4% of votes, the third-highest rate in the House.
Our searches found no court cases or misconduct allegations against him, and the record on how he treats people is thin but clean. The good is real: a Paralympic champion who has spent his career on access and disability policy. The mark against him is that, in the last week, he chose to run on a line that trans advocates say hurts the people he had stood with.