CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — When state Rep. Josh Turek dragged his wheelchair up Tracy McPartland’s front steps on Tuesday afternoon, she was an undecided voter in the state’s hotly contested Senate Democratic primary.

Turek quickly got to the meat of his pitch: “The biggest difference” between himself and his opponent, state Sen. Zach Wahls, “is about electability,” he said. He’s won tight elections as the lone Democrat representing rural, Republican-dominant western Iowa, he said, while Wahls represents a Democratic stronghold in the state’s east.

“If you’re going to win statewide, it’s a math problem,” said Turek, a four-time U.S. paralympian and former professional wheelchair basketball player. There’s “something specific” about his life story, he said, that “really resonates with folks in rural communities.”

Winning statewide feels like an existential necessity for Iowa Democrats in 2026, after President Donald Trump clinched Iowa three times with an expanding working-class voters base. That’s why Turek and Wahls are scrambling to seize the “most electable” superlative ahead of the June 2 primary — Turek points to his electoral history and personal story, while Wahls casts himself as the anti-establishment warrior willing to castigate leaders in both parties and tapping into the anger coursing through the Democratic base.

Electability, a subjective obsession among out-of-power Democrats, “is obviously the number one thing here,” said former Iowa Rep. Dave Loebsack, who has endorsed Wahls.

It’s the buzzword on Democratic voters’ minds and candidates’ lips in 2026, as the party stares down a challenging Senate map this fall. Even so, electability — how you define it, who can claim it and whether it’s laced with preexisting biases of what a candidate should look and sound like — is fiercely debated inside the Democratic Party. Just like it did during the 2020 presidential primary, the electability obsession is popping up in the nonstop social media chatter, where it’s reached meme-worthy heights. Indeed, a topical clothing shop in Des Moines is selling T-shirts emblazoned with the word “Unelectable.”

The 2026 primary season, from Texas to Maine to Michigan, is serving up a preview for the much bigger electability fight to come: the wide-open Democratic presidential primary in 2028.

In Iowa, while Democrats are tied up with a messy primary, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson instantly cleared the field for her own bid to replace Sen. Joni Ernst, who announced her decision to not run for reelection last summer. Hinson’s war chest already totals more than $6 million.

Nonetheless, Democrats see an opening in Iowa, as gas prices climb and anger at Trump spikes.

Wahls makes his own case for electability by tapping into that anger. Voters, particularly those who voted for both Barack Obama and Trump, are enraged at both parties, Wahls told NOTUS. They see all politicians as “complicit” in creating and perpetuating a broken system. That’s why he’s attacking leaders in his own party, declaring he won’t back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership.

“It is self-evident to me that being willing to run against the establishment in Washington is the more electable position,” Wahls said in an interview at the Teamsters Local 90 union hall, one of more than a dozen unions that’s backing Wahls. “Maybe it’s not a coincidence that some of the establishment figures have convinced themselves that, actually, that’s not a liability at all, and maybe that’s related to the fact that they keep losing in states like Iowa.”

For his part, Turek told NOTUS he’s “not measuring the drapes” and would decide on his party leadership vote only after he’s won in November.

Backing or rejecting Schumer has turned into its own litmus test in 2026, akin to what some House Democratic candidates did in 2018, when they promised to vote against Nancy Pelosi. Spurning Schumer has turned into rhetorical shorthand for capturing the anger coursing through the Democratic base. Mallory McMorrow, a state senator running in the Michigan Senate primary, and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer on a glide path to the Democratic nomination in Maine, have also pledged to not back Schumer’s leadership.

“No question, the base is upset with Schumer, so it’s a strategy that could very well work. Platner’s really used it to great effect,” said Loebsack, but “it’s not going to be all-powerful.”

Allison Biasotti, a spokeswoman for Schumer, told NOTUS in a statement that “Leader Schumer’s focused on one thing: taking back the Senate to stop Trump’s reign of devastation, chaos, and high costs for Americans.”

Loebsack and other Wahls backers also cited the senator’s work in the Republican-controlled legislature as evidence of his ability to get things done.

Wahls’ anti-establishment attitude appealed to Sammi Ladd, a 36-year-old nurse from Des Moines, who said she “love[s]” how Wahls is “calling out everybody” who “rolls over for others in their party and doesn’t hold true to their convictions.” Ladd joined a union-sponsored roundtable with Wahls and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has endorsed Wahls and rallied with him last week.

“To me, that’s the end of the electability question: It’s, who are you really going to fight for?” Warren said, when asked by reporters about Wahls’ electability in the red-leaning state. “When the people of Iowa see who Zach fights for, I think that’s the guy they want.”

Both Wahls and Turek can point to compelling examples of how they’ve already proven to be fighters in a primary that’s been defined far less by ideology than by biography and style, a half-dozen Iowa Democratic operatives and elected officials said.

Wahls’ passionate defense of his lesbian mothers before the Iowa state legislature went viral when he was just 19 years old. After Wahls got elected to the state legislature in 2018, he fought against private equity buying up mobile-home communities and jacking up rents — a cause that connected him with Warren.

Turek, too, achieved moderate virality for his announcement video last year. He told voters about going from a childhood beset by health and economic challenges to winning gold medals at the Paralympics. Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns and is not involved in the primary, called it “the best video of the cycle.”

The biggest shift in the race didn’t come from either of the candidates, but from an $8 million blast of outside spending from VoteVets, a veterans-focused organization that’s backing Turek, even though he is not a veteran. VoteVets points to Turek’s spina bifida, which he said was caused by his father’s exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War — but some Democrats have still criticized the group for its move.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a senior adviser to VoteVets, said in a statement that the group is backing Turek “because he knows firsthand the generational costs of war.”

“Zach started with an early lead, but the VoteVets spending changed all of that for Turek,” said a Democratic operative who has worked on Iowa campaigns but is not affiliated in the Senate primary. “That was the boost he needed to change the dynamics here.”

Public and private polling mirrors that flip, Iowa Democrats said privately. Wahls, meanwhile, has used the spending to double down on his own electability argument, saying that Washington Democrats, who prefer Turek, are meddling in the primary.

“Senator Schumer is trying to send a signal that if you speak out against my leadership, I will drop $10 million on you in a primary, and I don’t care,” Wahls said. “He’s not changing my position, because I can’t be bought.”

Wahls did not offer specific evidence for this claim, and a spokesperson for VoteVets denied any coordination between Schumer and the group on this race.

Another dark money group called Iowa Action is now boosting Wahls with a TV ad buy. “D.C. insiders are spending millions to stop him, because they know he’ll be a pain in their side,” the ad’s narrator says. It’s not clear who is paying for the ads, as Federal Election Commission filings are not yet required.

After the group popped up, Wahls called for Turek to join the “People’s Pledge,” which calls on both candidates to reject super PAC spending on their behalf.

Some of Wahls’ pushback is reaching voters. Sophia Joseph, a 43-year-old business owner who greeted Turek at her door in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, told him her “biggest concern” was getting a progressive into office, and she wondered why he was known as the “establishment” candidate.

Turek ran through his own story — born in Council Bluffs with a disability, represented the United States as a Paralympian, got involved in politics four years ago — concluding that he sees himself as “completely the opposite” of the “establishment.”

“I’m like an outsider,” he said.

In an interview with NOTUS later that day in Iowa City, Turek acknowledged there “certainly is a place to be angry,” adding that he’s “angry of what I’m seeing happening to my state.” But when confronted by Wahls’ anti-establishment frustration, Turek said, “you’ve got to inspire people, and I think you’ve got to give them hope, and that’s what I’m trying to lean into.”

Turek’s backers scoff at the establishment tag, pointing to Wahls’ 2018 election to the Iowa state legislature, where he’s also served in leadership positions. “It’s disingenuous at best,” said state Rep. Jennifer Konfrst, who has endorsed Turek.

Turek first ran for office in 2022, in a conservative state legislative district in Pottawattamie County, which voted for Trump by 17 percentage points in 2020. Turek won it by six votes. By 2024, he’d expanded his margin, despite significant GOP spending, to 5 percentage points — “and that’s his electability case,” Konfrst added.

“Josh won twice in a hard Republican district, and that is a fact. Zach has never run against a Republican and he’s never run in a general election. That is a fact,” said Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic Party chair, who has endorsed Turek.

Several high-profile endorsers have been swayed by those facts. Earlier this month, former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin endorsed Turek. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who won a disputed Iowa caucus in 2020, also backed Turek.

Another convert came in Tracy McPartland, the retiree who spoke with Turek at length on Tuesday afternoon. After Turek made his case about his electoral record, retold his story of “representing my country with gold medals” and recounted “dragging my wheelchair upstairs to be able to win elections,” he concluded, it “resonates” with rural voters, and “I know I can win them over.”

McPartland, nodding, said: “I believe that.”