Fox News reports that Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medallist and Iowa state legislator now running as the Democratic candidate for a US Senate seat, missed more than half of his 2026 votes in the Iowa House while continuing to collect the state's daily legislative per diem. According to records cited in the article, his absences were sometimes clustered around campaign events and covered several high-profile bills, which the piece frames as evidence that Turek has struggled to balance his legislative duties with his Senate campaign to succeed the retiring Republican Senator Joni Ernst.

Between 12 January and 3 May 2026, Turek reportedly missed 261 votes, or nearly 60% of the chamber's votes, while claiming the maximum available per diem of $201 per day, tax-free, totalling $20,100; Iowa law allows legislators to draw the per diem up to 100 times per session. The article notes that Turek has built his campaign around an underdog narrative — born paralysed from the waist down, he won Paralympic basketball golds in 2016 and 2020 — and has pledged to defend government programmes such as VA health coverage and free school lunches. It also highlights his relatively modest fundraising of $3.4 million from July 2025 to the end of May, contrasting this with the nearly $26 million raised by former Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.