How can a Democrat win a marquee statewide race in Iowa anymore — especially against the likes of Sen. Chuck Grassley?
Abby Finkenauer says she knows.
“By talking about how I grew up and who I’m fighting for,” the 33-year-old Dubuque-reared Democrat said. “By getting out there.”
Finkenauer’s been running for the Senate practically since she lost her House seat in 2020 to TV newswoman Ashley Hinson. She upset Trump acolyte Rod Blum in the white-coated women’s wave of 2018 but she couldn’t hold the seat.
Why? What happened?
There was the pandemic. No door-knocking. Still, she turned out 35,000 more votes than her first run. Hinson turned out more in the Trump tide that swept Iowa. Finkenauer was close in an area drifting red.
Finkenauer has raised nearly $2 million and won a string of union endorsements. Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral, hasn’t raised half as much. Two other Democrats, Dr. Glenn Hurst and Bob Krause, are running.
Finkenauer, now of Cedar Rapids, says she can win from Dyersville to Denison by talking about her steamfitters union father wringing sweat out of his belt after a day of welding. She is the Anywoman by heritage, with a degree from Drake University.
“He’s the reason I ran in the first place. I saw the people I grew up with forgotten about,” Finkenauer said during an interview stop in Storm Lake on her way to Sioux City last week.
It’s that story she’s selling in the primary campaign, with lots of notes about her new husband, Daniel Wasta, former Iowa political director for Elizabeth Warren. She portrays the image of being just one of us.
She says she has not courted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or the D.C. elite. She is trying to run as an outsider against a system that keeps throwing Chuck Grassley at voters over an entire half-century.
“It’s about time somebody retires this guy,” she said. “Just look at what’s happened to his hometown of New Hartford while he’s been in office, or rural Iowa. Remember what he hasn’t done. … He’s never had a real race before.” (That may be true, it’s hard to remember.)
She said she favors term limits. Grassley may have said he favored them at one time or another. So do a lot of people until lunch is served in the Senate dining room. She insists on it, saying she will limit herself to two terms (12 years).
“I have no desire to spend my life out there,” she said.
They get dug in left and right, ensconced by the power and money, and hence get nothing done. She said she was able to work across the aisle on infrastructure and agriculture programs. But then she got term-limited early by Hinson.
That’s the question on Democratic minds: Who can win? And how?
The polls say an overwhelming percentage of Iowans don’t want Grassley to run again. He is. And when you put a Democratic name up against him, like Finkenauer, they get clobbered in the hypothetical.
Finkenauer will door-knock. She is all over Facebook and Twitter. We get more emails from her than anybody else but Trump, asking for money and talking about her union dad.
The 2020 election was something of an aberration, she said. She shattered expectations by beating Blum, a prominent Dubuque MAGA businessman. Polls are not predictive. Big names can fall hard — Dick Clark beat incumbent Republican Jack Miller in 1972 by walking across the state.
She has the heart and desire, tearing up as she recalls her father’s toil. She can raise the money, proven. Franken is freaky smart and has a resume to kill for but he didn’t gain traction last time, and she has the big fish in her bowl. She doesn’t back down in an argument. She says strong races by Rep. Cindy Axne, former TV newscaster Liz Mathis against newscaster Hinson, and Christina Bohannon against Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks will buoy her. Grassley already feels her footsteps, she said.
“They’re terrified.”
Grassley has nearly $4 million in the bank already.
Art Cullen is publisher and editor of The Storm Lake Times. He won the the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2017 and is the author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.” Email times@stormlake.com.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2022
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