Iowa Democrats' U.S. Senate nominee skipped 261 legislative votes in four months while collecting $20,100 in taxpayer-funded per diem, and campaign records show he was raising money in Los Angeles and Washington during key absences.
Josh Turek, a state representative from Council Bluffs, missed nearly 60 percent of all votes held in the Iowa state House between January 12 and May 3 of this year, Just the News reported, citing an analysis of voting records first published by Fox News. The 261 missed votes span the heart of the 2026 legislative session, the period when Iowa lawmakers were deciding funding for veterans' services, rural health care, education standards, and the state farm bill.
Turek won the Democratic Senate nomination in June with 63 percent of the vote. He now faces Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst. The race is one of the most closely watched in the country: a Fox News poll cited in its reporting showed Turek leading Hinson 50 percent to 46 percent, within the margin of error. That a candidate asking Iowa voters for a promotion to the U.S. Senate couldn't be bothered to show up for his current job nearly six out of every ten votes is now the central vulnerability of his campaign.
The attendance problem is not just a raw number. Campaign finance records and voting records, cross-referenced in the Fox News report, show a pattern: Turek's absences lined up with out-of-state fundraising trips.
Between March 25 and March 31, Turek missed 12 House votes. During that same week, his campaign raised approximately $43,000 from donors in Southern California. Campaign records listed hotel expenses in Los Angeles. One of the votes he missed that week involved legislation on rural health care and medical licensing, bread-and-butter Iowa issues.
Between February 17 and March 23, Turek missed another 16 votes. His campaign raised roughly $36,500 from Washington, D.C., donors during that stretch and reported hosting an event at a D.C. address. Among the votes he skipped: consideration of an education standards bill.
At one point in March, Turek missed 30 consecutive votes.
Through it all, the Iowa House chief clerk's records show Turek collected $20,100 in legislative per diem payments, $201 per legislative day for 100 days, tax-free, during the January-to-May period. Per diem is meant to cover a lawmaker's living expenses while serving at the Capitol. Turek collected the money. He just wasn't there for the votes.
One absence stands out. Turek skipped an Iowa House vote on an appropriations bill that would have allocated nearly $13 million to the state Department of Veterans Affairs, including funding for veteran nursing homes and housing assistance, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Where was he? At a "Veterans Happy Hour" hosted by VoteVets, a left-wing group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
VoteVets has spent nearly $9 million in outside spending to support Turek's campaign, despite the fact that Turek is not a veteran. The group has received approximately $31 million from Schumer's Senate Majority PAC since 2014 and has consistently backed Schumer's preferred candidates. So Turek skipped a vote to fund Iowa veterans in order to attend a cocktail event thrown by a D.C. super PAC that uses veterans as a brand while funneling Schumer money into Senate races.
A Turek spokesperson insisted the candidate "is, always has been, and will continue to be a staunch advocate for our nation's veterans." The voting record tells a different story.
Hinson's campaign spokesperson laid out the scope of Turek's absences in a statement:
"Not only did Josh Turek skip the vote to fund the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs... he also skipped votes on the Iowa Farm Bill, rural health funding, child abuse investigations and, in 2023, gender transition procedures for minors."
Hinson herself put it more bluntly. "The truth is out," she said. "He's an absentee legislator. He accepted more than $20,000 in per diem benefits, but hardly showed up."
The attendance gap extends beyond 2026. Breitbart reported that Turek was absent for a March 2024 Iowa House vote on House File 2608, which concerned state residency and citizenship status in determining eligibility for public assistance. He also missed a March 2025 vote to verify the citizenship status of Iowa voters. Hinson's communications director, Billy Fuerst, said the missed vote "tells you everything you need to know, he doesn't care about election integrity."
Turek's team tried to flip the attendance issue onto Hinson. A campaign spokesperson offered this response:
"Just last week, Ashley Hinson skipped votes on the annual defense funding bill to attend a ritzy D.C. fundraiser. Meanwhile, Josh Turek is ranked one of Iowa's most bipartisan and effective lawmakers and has regularly worked with Republicans to cut taxes for Iowa families and keep dangerous criminals off the streets."
A separate Turek campaign statement went further, calling Hinson "a multi-millionaire who skipped votes on the annual defense funding bill to fundraise and wasted $50,000 in taxpayer funds to pay for her luxury D.C. apartment."
Hinson's campaign countered that she holds a 98.8 percent lifetime voting record since taking office in 2020. Whether Hinson missed a particular vote last week is a fair question, but a single alleged absence against a 98.8 percent record is a different universe from missing 261 votes in four months.
Turek's nomination itself was shaped by national Democratic spending. He defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls in the June primary, winning 63.1 percent of the vote. The Washington Examiner reported that VoteVets alone spent nearly $10 million boosting Turek in the primary. Neither Schumer nor the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee formally endorsed in the race, but Schumer-aligned groups spent heavily on Turek's behalf.
Wahls, Turek's primary opponent, had tried to draw a contrast on exactly this kind of vulnerability. "We need to win back the trust of rural and blue-collar voters who were written off and lost by Chuck Schumer," Wahls said during the primary campaign. Iowa Democrats picked the candidate with the Schumer-linked money instead.
Now the general election is a test of whether Iowa voters will send to the Senate a man who couldn't show up for the job they already gave him. The Senate Leadership Fund has reserved roughly $29 million in Iowa advertising for the fall. Senate Majority PAC has reserved about $13 million. Both sides see the seat as critical to control of the chamber.
The core facts are simple. Turek held a seat in the Iowa House. Between January and May, the House held hundreds of votes on legislation that affected Iowa veterans, Iowa farmers, Iowa schools, rural health care, and child welfare. Turek missed nearly six in ten of those votes. He collected more than $20,000 in per diem while doing so. During some of his longest stretches of absence, he was in Los Angeles and Washington raising money from out-of-state donors for his Senate campaign.
His campaign's defense, that he is "one of Iowa's most bipartisan and effective lawmakers", asks voters to ignore the record and trust the branding. Effectiveness requires showing up. Bipartisanship requires casting votes. Turek did neither at a rate that would get most people fired from most jobs.
Iowa voters will decide in November whether a man who treated his current office as optional deserves a bigger one. The attendance record suggests they already know the answer.
