As Democrats prepare to spend millions of dollars to flip the open Senate seat in Iowa, Republicans see education as a major opening for them to leverage, both against the Democrats’ nominee — State Representative Josh Turek — and more broadly.
When it comes to Turek, Republicans are already highlighting his 2024 vote against the Iowa History Initiative, which “mandated Iowa K-12 schools teach students about the structure of the U.S. government, the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizens, and a range of concepts, people and events in U.S. history, including the flag and national anthem, [and] the country’s founding documents.”
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R., Iowa), who is favored to maintain the open seat for Republicans, is using Turek’s vote against him on the campaign trail. “Josh Turek is siding with radicals who are ashamed of America instead of proud of it,” Billy Fuerst, Hinson’s campaign communications director, told the Washington Reporter. “Iowans love this country and believe America’s story is worth celebrating and teaching. When given the chance, Josh Turek voted against that — let’s not find out what he’d do with a vote in the Senate.”
Turek’s campaign, for its part, defended his vote against the measure, saying that he “joined with three Republicans to vote against this bill because he believes we owe it to our veterans to teach the history of our great country accurately and without politicization.”
But Turek’s vote against the Iowa History Initiative isn’t the only vote that Republicans are likely to use against him. The Washington Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson and Peter Hasson previously reported that Turek “voted against a trio of anti-DEI bills between April 2024 and May 2025, including two that became law. In April 2024, he opposed SF 2435, which prohibits public universities from hiring DEI officers. Less than a year later, in March 2025, he voted against HF 269, which would have prohibited public colleges and universities from requiring students to take any ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory related course’ to graduate. And in May 2025, Turek voted against HF 856, which barred state funding for DEI offices and initiatives at the college and K-12 levels.”
Throughout her time on the campaign trail, Hinson has leveraged Iowa Democrats’ high-profile education blunders against them, to argue that Republicans are more responsible on education.
In one instance, the head of Des Moines’s public schools systems was an illegal immigrant who was arrested and sentenced to jail time. “This suspect [Ian Roberts] was arrested in possession of a loaded weapon in a vehicle provided by Des Moines Public Schools after fleeing federal law enforcement,” ICE ERO St. Paul Field Office Director Sam Olson said at the time. “This should be a wake-up call for our communities to the great work that our officers are doing every day to remove public safety threats. How this illegal alien was hired without work authorization, a final order of removal, and a prior weapons charge is beyond comprehension and should alarm the parents of that school district.”
Hinson was one of the first Iowa lawmakers to call of Roberts’s immediate deportation at the time of his arrest. “He should have never been anywhere around Iowa kids in the first place,” she said at the time.
