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To hear Zach Wahls tell it, his main opponent in next month’s Iowa Democratic Senate primary isn’t really state Rep. Josh Turek. It’s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“I don't answer to Chuck Schumer,” Wahls told me in a Substack Live interview on Thursday afternoon. “I don’t owe Chuck Schumer anything.”
Wahls, who has been in the Iowa state Senate since 2018, insists that his decision — when he announced his campaign last summer — to declare that he would not support Schumer as party leader if elected has led to the New York Democrat to exact revenge on him.
“This is a a super PAC that has very close ties to Senator Schumer and if you look through the FEC reports you can see the consultants that are doing all the ads — there is one U.S. Senator who they work with [and] that U.S. Senator is Chuck Schumer,” said Wahls
What Wahls is referring to is a multi-million dollar ad campaign — Wahls says the group has spent almost $7 million — from a DC-based group called VoteVets that has boosted Turek.
VoteVets typically gets involved in races featuring military veterans, which Turek is not. “Josh Turek is a fighter who knows firsthand the costs military families experience when our sons and daughters are sent to war,” said a spokesman for the group. “Our nation needs Senators like Josh who will fight for veterans and military families like his — and who know how to win, which Josh does.”
Whatever the reason for VoteVets involvement, it seems clear that the group has tipped the race toward Turek ahead of the state’s June 2 primary. The most recent poll — released by Turek’s campaign, it’s worth noting — shows him ahead of Wahls by 26(!) points.
Wahls dismisses the poll as a “sugar high from a grotesque amount of outside spending that I think is designed to manufacture the appearance of momentum.”
The winner on the Democratic side will move on to face Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in November. Iowa is seen as a potentially critical state as Democrats try to net the four seats they need to retake the Senate majority.
Watch my full interview with Wahls above.
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