NEW: After 21 surgeries and two Paralympic golds, Josh Turek is chasing a Senate upset in Iowa [New York Times, The Athletic]

New York Times: “For Turek, a two-decade athletic career makes for good preparation for the rigors of the campaign trail”

Turek teammate and five-time Paralympian Matt Scott: “[Josh Turek] was our guy when it was time to get it done with the game on the line”

In a new interview with The New York Times’ The Athletic, four-time Paralympian and Iowa State Rep. Josh Turek lays out how his “background as a wheelchair basketball player who has worn U.S.A. across his chest is a key part of his image” and describes how enduring 21 surgeries by the age of 12 and time on Team USA prepared him for the race of his life.

With an “astonishing” work ethic, a record of having “delivered every single time,” and “a reputation for single-minded focus, hard work and high scoring,” Turek “helped the U.S. win gold for the first time since 1988.” Now, with early voting underway and just two weeks until Election Day, Turek is working to “bridge the divide” with a “prairie populist” agenda focused on “raising the minimum wage, growing affordable housing, supporting farmers and improving healthcare access.” 

See for yourself:

New York Times, The Athletic: After 21 surgeries and two Paralympic golds, Josh Turek is chasing a Senate upset in Iowa

• The clock read 19.3 seconds left when Josh Turek lined up for a free throw. The United States was up 47-45 against Turkey in the wheelchair basketball quarterfinal at the 2021 Paralympics; two made shots would all but seal a spot in the semifinals for the Americans.
• It was Turek’s fourth Paralympics. He wasn’t at his peak — “Father Time’s undefeated,” he said in an interview this summer with The Athletic — and he knew this would be his final Games.
• “Entire stadium watching, everybody watching back at home, game’s on the line, everything’s on his shoulders,” teammate and five-time Paralympian Matt Scott recalled. “And he delivered every single time.”
• The U.S. went on to win its second straight wheelchair basketball gold at the Paralympics. It marked the third medal for Turek.
• Five years later, Democrats are hoping Turek can deliver again. He has spent the past year traveling across his home state of Iowa, trying to flip a U.S. Senate seat in a state that President Donald Trump won by more than 13 points in 2024.
• Recent polling looks like that U.S.-Turkey game: tight, with Turek and his Republican opponent, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, locked in a race that falls well within the margin of error in every survey. They have faced off in a pair of debates this month, during which Turek criticized Hinson for voting in support of Trump’s agenda […]
• Turek’s background as a wheelchair basketball player who has worn U.S.A. across his chest is a key part of his image. Athletes have run for national office before, but few in such close races that are drawing as much money and national attention as the one in Iowa.
• With early voting already underway in the state and Election Day on Nov. 3, the four-time Paralympian is trying to do what no Democratic Senate candidate has done in Iowa since 2008: Win.
• Born with spina bifida after his father was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, Turek had 21 surgeries by age 12 and has used a wheelchair since childhood.
• “It’s tough enough to grow up poor, but it’s really difficult to grow up poor and disabled,” the Iowa native said. “Didn’t have a lot of friends, was really struggling with self-esteem, and basketball, adaptive sports, wheelchair basketball, really provided me that outlet.”
• Back on Team USA, Turek developed a reputation for single-minded focus, hard work and high scoring. In 2012, he helped the U.S. to bronze at the London Paralympics, its first medal since 2000.
• “He was always a little bit shorter and a little just right below where the elite elite would be, and I just remember the hours he kept to get to that point. He lived a really Spartan-esque lifestyle,” his college teammate Ryan Martin said. “… When you see somebody reach that level of work ethic and just the devil in the details of how he approached his work, it was really astonishing.”
• Turek was never cut again. In 2016, he helped the U.S. win gold for the first time since 1988. In 2021, the team went back-to-back, securing gold with a win over Japan at the Tokyo Paralympics.
• “He was just always so composed,” Scott said, “and he was our guy when it was time to get it done with the game on the line.”
• At age 42, Turek was ready to retire. Back stateside, he helped lead a nonprofit supporting children’s access to adaptive sports, and worked for a mobility devices company. In Iowa, a state that has seen a surge in claim denials since privatizing Medicaid in 2016, he watched insurance companies deny care to people with disabilities.
• Frustrated with the state of healthcare and lack of disability representation in politics, Turek ran for the Iowa House of Representatives in 2022, representing his hometown, Council Bluffs. He won the election by six votes.
• In 2024, Turek won reelection by five percentage points during a presidential cycle in which Trump won Iowa by double digits. Last year, Turek announced his run for U.S. Senate, billing himself as a “prairie populist,” with an agenda focused on helping the middle class: raising the minimum wage, growing affordable housing, supporting farmers and improving healthcare access. In June, he won the Democratic primary by 25 points.
• In July, Turek released a campaign video featuring an endorsement from former President Barack Obama, whom Turek beat on the basketball court in a spirited game of HORSE (spelled IOWA).
• That same month, Turek traded his basketball wheelchair for a handcycle. Clad in a U.S. Paralympic Team T-shirt, he pedaled 59 miles along Iowa cornfields for the opening day of RAGBRAI, the state’s massive, annual cycling tour. Along the way, Turek shook hands and talked with mostly rural, often conservative voters about why they should cast their ballot for a Democrat. Turek hopes he can bridge the divide.
• “When I was representing my country on the field of play, there’s this real Olympic and Paralympic ideal of … you’re representing your entire country,” he said. “ … When I got involved in politics, I tried not to view it through the prism of, these are Republicans, these are Democrats. I always tried to view it as, I’m representing my community, I’m representing my state.”
• For Turek, a two-decade athletic career makes for good preparation for the rigors of the campaign trail.
• Turek talks about the race like an athlete — “You’re not going to tell me what’s possible and what’s impossible,” he said. “I’m going to go out there and I’m going to do the work and the results will come when I do the work.”
• The stakes are significant. For Republicans, Iowa is one of the races crucial to maintaining a slim Senate majority. For Democrats, Turek’s win could mean flipping the chamber after two years of Republican control of the House, Senate and Presidency. And for Turek, the race means a chance to push at the national level for policies he has advocated for in Iowa, especially on behalf of people with disabilities.
• “We’ve got a once-in-a-generation opportunity to be able to win this Senate seat and change the state of Iowa and change this country,” Turek said.