Summary
Joni Ernst — a combat veteran and the first woman Iowa has sent to Congress — is up for her first reelection. Republicans see her in a good position, but Democrats are also pouring money into Iowa as they hope to flip it. While Iowa is still seen as a fairly conservative state, Democrats were able to win a couple of key congressional districts in 2018, and Ernst’s approval rating fell 10 points in the past year, according to a recent poll from respected Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.
The DSCC-backed Greenfield won her June 2 primary, beating out a field of challengers. Theresa Greenfield is a real estate developer in Des Moines and has Iowa roots; she grew up on a farm as the daughter of a crop duster. Greenfield has emphasized issues including health care and strengthening social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.
What are the odds? Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both rate this Lean Republican.
Vox by Ella Nilsen on June 11, 2020
OnAir Post: Iowa – US Senate 2020 Election
News
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst will win Iowa’s Senate race, NBC News projected early Wednesday.
The first-term senator is expected to defeat Democrat Theresa Greenfield, who acknowledged in a statement early Wednesday that she “came up short.” In a statement of her own, Ernst said she is “honored by the opportunity to serve Iowa for another 6 years.”
The projected result further reduces the chances of Democrats flipping in the Senate in the 2020 election, after the GOP flipped Alabama’s Democratic-held Senate seat and notched projected wins in Texas, South Carolina and Kentucky. Democrat John Hickenlooper is projected to defeat Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in Colorado, while several other key races are undecided, according to NBC.
Iowa Public Radio News , – September 11, 2020
Candidates U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R – Red Oak, and Theresa Greenfield, D – Des Moines, will answer questions from reporters and discuss their platforms, concerns and future plans. David Yepsen, host of Iowa Press on Iowa PBS, will moderate the debate that begins at 7 p.m.
The debate, hosted by Iowa PBS’ Iowa Press Host David Yepsen, begins at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sep. 28.
Inside Climate News, – September 10, 2020
Erratic, destructive weather, the GOP senator says, has nothing to do with human-driven warming. Her opponent, Theresa Greenfield, says the science can’t be denied.
The state has been battered by a succession of droughts, floods and heatwaves in recent years. Then in August, a freakish series of hurricane-force “derecho” storms swept across the central part of the state, decimating 10 million acres of crops, or about 40 percent of the state’s output.
The state’s farmers—largely conservative and resistant to the science of climate change—have had to accept that something is, indeed, happening.
Ernst, who has repeatedly said she doesn’t believe that human-caused emissions are fueling a warming atmosphere, does not connect that erratic, destructive weather to climate change.
Iowa Public Radio News , – August 28, 2020
The two major party candidates for U.S. Senate in Iowa disagree on whether there should be a statewide mask mandate. Earlier this month, President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force recommended to state leaders that they implement a mask mandate.
Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, who is running her first re-election campaign, does not think a statewide mask mandate is necessary to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in Iowa. She says it’s about personal responsibility.
“I don’t think the government should be all do all end all and tell us how to live our lives,” Ernst said. “I think they should encourage it and we should use our best judgment when and where we wear a mask.”
Ernst says she wears a mask in public.
Ernst’s Democratic challenger, real estate executive Theresa Greenfield, says a mask mandate in Iowa would make sense.
“That kind of mandate would really make it clear to all Iowans the kind of actions that they can take to help themselves and help our communities be safe,” Greenfield said.
Both Des Moines and Iowa City have issued citywide face-coverings mandates. The cities of Dubuque, Mount Vernon and Muscatine have also issued mask mandates. More than 30 states currently have them.
Ernst and Greenfield made their comments during interviews that aired this week on Iowa Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
PBS NewsHour – August 26, 2020 (04:02)
Why the Iowa Senate Race Is Suddenly Competitive
Theresa Greenfield’s strategy to defeat Joni Ernst could show Democrats how to swing rural America away from the GOP.
ELAINE GODFREY
JULY 3, 2020
1more free article this month
Sign inSubscribe Now
BLOOMBERG / CAROLINE BREHMAN / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC
Link Copied
Theresa greenfield was 24 years old and four months pregnant with her second child when a priest rang her doorbell with terrible news: Her husband, Rod, a lineman at the local power company, had been killed in an accident at work. Greenfield, a Democrat who is challenging Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa this year, tells the story at every virtual campaign event she holds, but she generally leaves out the smaller details: how, just hours before, she’d packed a Snickers bar in Rod’s lunch box as a treat. How the clergyman sat with her on the sofa and held her hands as he explained that Rod had been electrocuted. The way that the panic, in those first few days, consumed her: As a single parent with no income, how would she survive?
Greenfield’s answer came in the form of Social Security survivor’s benefits, a regular check that she and her sons subsisted on for many months, along with Rod’s union benefits. Her family didn’t get rich, she is careful to note, but they survived. Greenfield went on to get a degree in urban planning, and became the president of a Des Moines-based commercial real-estate firm. The story provides the foundational message of her Senate campaign: She argues that she will protect Social Security, organized labor, and the social safety net, even as Republicans like Ernst try to tear them apart. “Social Security gave me the ability to pay the rent and put milk in the refrigerator and fall asleep at night,” Greenfield told me in a Zoom interview this week from her kitchen in Des Moines, a slight glare bouncing off her plastic-rimmed cat-eye glasses. “It gave me that second chance.”
MORE STORIES
White Voters Are Abandoning Trump
DAVID A. GRAHAM
The One Way That Iowa Looks Like the Democratic Party
RONALD BROWNSTEIN
What Really Brought Down Steve King
ELAINE GODFREY
In emphasizing these core Democratic tenets, Greenfield is trying to convince Iowans—especially rural, older white ones—that her party has had their back all along. They may be starting to believe her. Just a few months ago, Ernst, the popular incumbent of “Make ’em squeal” fame, seemed like a lock for reelection. But all of a sudden, the sleepy Iowa Senate race has become one to watch: A poll taken in early June showed Greenfield three points ahead of the Republican senator, albeit within the margin of error.
In a Democratic Party that is moving ever leftward—latching on to big ideas like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and defunding police—Greenfield’s focus on Social Security can seem a little retro. But if she unseats Ernst in November, her campaign may offer a lesson for the broader Democratic Party about how it can regain ground from Republicans in rural America, and transcend its reputation as the party of city dwellers.
Ernst and greenfield are bizarro-world versions of each other. Both are middle-aged, self-professed “farm girls.” But the Harley-riding Ernst, with her ruck marching and her tightly fixed hair, is spirited and blunt. Greenfield, soft-spoken with an Upper Midwest lilt, comes across, somehow, as both whimsical and unexciting—like one of the more humdrum episodes of The Great British Bake Off.
Greenfield also wants Iowans to view the two women as opposites on Social Security, the 84-year-old social-insurance program that’s supported by a healthy majority of Americans. Although Ernst has not directly proposed the program’s privatization—a longtime Republican goal—she has expressed openness to the idea. During her first Senate campaign, in 2014, she suggested that young workers could put some portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal savings accounts for retirement. In a town-hall meeting last year, Ernst submitted that lawmakers should go “behind closed doors” to negotiate changes to the New Deal program.
Greenfield made those comments central to her campaign from the beginning. In her debut ad last year, she wears blue jeans and a flannel shirt, and walks like a cowpoke through a small family farm. “Joni Ernst said she’d be different,” Greenfield says. Ernst’s 2014 “Make ’em squeal” ad—in which she explains how her experience castrating hogs will inform her tough approach to D.C.—plays on the screen. “Listen, folks, she didn’t castrate anyone,” Greenfield adds.
Greenfield’s approach could be a savvy one, not just because of Social Security’s popularity, but also because of Iowa’s demographics. One in five Iowans received Social Security benefits as of December 2018, and one in four Iowans over the age of 65 depends on the program as their main source of income, according to the American Association of Retired Persons. These voters are the most reliable ones in Iowa: Senior citizens cast one-third of all votes there in the 2018 midterm elections.
Other statewide Democratic candidates, like the former gubernatorial contender Fred Hubbell, who lost his challenge to the Republican Kim Reynolds in 2018, have failed miserably at winning over the Iowans who live in the rural and ruby-red parts of the state. But Dave Peterson, a political-science professor at Iowa State University, predicts that Greenfield’s prioritization of Social Security and other safety-net programs will likely give her a boost. “Hubbell wasn’t able to connect to rural Iowa; she’s clearly able to do that better,” Peterson told me, pointing to her farming roots. “The way she defines herself and her campaign is not geared at winning Des Moines,” by far Iowa’s biggest city, but at winning the rest of the state.
Read: The one way that Iowa looks like the Democratic Party
“I view Iowans as independent voters and independent thinkers,” Greenfield told me in our Zoom interview, when I asked how she planned on attracting voters in the state’s more conservative parts. She has reason to: You can’t swing a piglet in Iowa without hitting someone who proudly calls themselves “independent.” There are nearly the same number of active, independent voters as there are registered Democrats and Republicans. “I don’t approach anyone asking about who they voted for in the past,” Greenfield said.
John Adams, an 80-year-old retired newspaperman from Arnolds Park, has voted for Republican candidates all his life, including for Ernst six years ago. But Adams watched with disgust as she and other Republicans attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, and later as the president proposed limiting Medicare spending and cutting Social Security disability benefits, despite promising to protect both programs. In 2018, Adams changed his party registration to Democrat, and plans to vote for Greenfield in November. Ernst has become “a lackey of Donald Trump,” Adams told me. “The way the national Republican Party is acting, [this] is a darn good issue for Greenfield.”
Other congressional candidates talk about defending Social Security—it’s part of basically every Democratic campaign. But few candidates have made it the centerpiece of their bid in the same way that Greenfield has, says Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, a nonprofit focused on strengthening the program. The only one that came to mind for him is Conor Lamb, the Democrat whose 2018 campaign flipped a western Pennsylvania district that had voted for Trump two years before. “This is how you win,” Lawson told me. “He literally ran one of the best ads I’ve seen on Social Security.” (Greenfield ran for the House in Iowa the same year, but she dropped out during the Third District’s Democratic primary.)
Ernst’s team strongly contests Democrats’ characterization of her goals. “Joni Ernst has never once voted to cut benefits for seniors on Social Security, and never will,” Brendan Conley, a campaign spokesperson, told me. “Her own parents count on Social Security every month. Greenfield and Washington Democrats’ false attacks are just lies meant to scare seniors.” When I asked David Kochel, a GOP strategist originally from Iowa, about whether Greenfield’s attacks are overblown, he scoffed. Ernst has “never offered any legislation” to cut benefits. “She’s concerned about being able to maintain a safety net that is viable in the long term,” he said.
Bruce Braley, a former U.S. representative from the state’s First District, promised to protect Social Security in his Senate campaign against Ernst herself in 2014, and got crushed in the general election. The strategy didn’t work then, and it won’t work now, Kochel argues.
But the times are different now than they were six years ago. The unusual pressures of 2020—an economic crisis triggered by a global pandemic—are heightening people’s concerns about retirement and their long-term survival, say the politics experts and strategists I spoke with for this story. The pandemic’s effects on Iowa’s farming industry, in particular, have been devastating. “When there’s so much uncertainty and insecurity,” Greenfield’s message “resonates tremendously,” Steffen Schmidt, another Iowa State political-science professor, told me.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who has rooted his three successful campaigns in a full-throated defense of organized labor and the social safety net, told me that the pandemic has demonstrated exactly how the government should intervene to improve Americans’ daily lives. “The congressional response with the stimulus check kept people from devastation,” Brown said, citing recent studies showing that federal coronavirus aid has prevented millions of Americans from falling into poverty.
Read: Sherrod Brown on the coronavirus chaos
Brown is the only statewide elected Democratic official in Ohio, a mostly red state that, like Iowa, voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016. As Democrats try to figure out how they’re going to beat the president in these places—and in the even more crucial battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan—Brown believes that the strategy for doing so is obvious. He cited Joe Biden’s stated commitment to preserve and expand Social Security benefits, and his consolidation of support from many union leaders. “It’s things like that that will help Biden carry Ohio,” Brown said. In Iowa, Greenfield’s emphasis on Social Security could redouble to Biden’s benefit, too.
So this is the new candidate meet and greet. I’m sitting on a Zoom call, in a virtual room full of virtual Democrats—tiny faces in boxes glowing yellow on the screen. Ten or 11 have people signed on; they are white and mostly older, with names like Ron and Nancy and Jan. This group, the Warren County Democrats, usually has its annual summer picnic outdoors, with hot dogs and ice-cold drinks. Instead, they’re on this video call buying time rating local pizza joints. (Fong’s, in Des Moines, offers more creative options, they say, but Ames’s Great Plains Sauce and Dough has the tastiest crust.)
Fifteen minutes into the meeting, Greenfield pops up in a new square, smiling widely in front of a brick wall. I turn up the volume to hear her better. “Hi, folks,” she says cheerfully, before launching into her life story. She grew up in southern Minnesota, she says, just a few minutes north of the Iowa border (which helps explain all the “soh-rrys” and “ya knows”). Her father was a farmer and a crop duster, and she was a “scrappy farm kid,” fond of riding pigs and getting into trouble. In the 1980s farm crisis, she explains, her family was forced to sell everything, and they never farmed again. When she arrives at the story of her husband’s death, in 1988, Greenfield pauses to emphasize her main point: “I’ll tell ya,” she says, “I wouldn’t be here today in this fight without the helping hand of Social Security and union benefits.”
The Warren County Democrats were an easy audience for her pitch. “The issues I deal with now are issues that are protected more by Democrats than Republicans,” Dan Corsair, a 72-year-old retired home builder from Indianola, told me after the call, adding that he currently receives Social Security benefits. He and his wife, Mary, were nodding along vigorously with Greenfield as she warned about cuts to the program. “If Republicans hold enough control in the next cycle, Social Security and Medicare are going to be gone,” Corsair said.
Iowa Republicans, though, say that notion is hogwash. “The reality is, Greenfield is completely unprepared to lead and she will do anything to distract from that fact,” Conley, the Ernst campaign spokesperson, said. They’re hoping that Iowans will see Greenfield as out of touch and amateurish. New ads from the National Republican Senatorial Committee portray the Democrat as a failed and heartless businesswoman, citing her record overseeing real-estate-development projects in Des Moines. In an email responding to my requests for comment, the Ernst campaign linked a YouTube video of Greenfield stumbling over a foreign-policy question.
Read: The fight for Iowa’s white working-class soul
Democrats shouldn’t overestimate Greenfield’s standing in the race. The latest poll showing her ahead could represent a peak for her campaign. At the time the survey was conducted, she’d just won a four-way primary, and received an influx of attention and donations from Democrats and left-leaning groups nationwide. “This is probably the low point of Republican polling this campaign,” Peterson, the Iowa State professor, said.
But Greenfield could be buoyed by a general-election landscape that’s looking more and more favorable to Democrats. In 2016, more than half of adults 65 and older voted for Trump, and among older white voters specifically, Trump outperformed Hillary Clinton by 20 points. Retaining the support of senior voters is absolutely crucial to the president’s reelection, but recent polls have shown his favorability among them slipping, due in part to his handling of the coronavirus crisis and his response to the nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd. Trump is currently two points behind Biden nationally among voters 65 and over, according to new polling from The New York Times and Siena College. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, he is trailing the former vice president by double digits with the same group. No Democratic presidential candidate has won seniors since Al Gore’s bid in 2000.
Another shift that could portend good things for Greenfield: At this point in the 2018 cycle, there were roughly 25,000 more registered Republicans in Iowa than Democrats, but in the two years since, Greenfield’s party has almost entirely closed that gap.
If you look closely, you can see these trends playing out in real time. Adams, the 80-year-old former Republican, explained that he’s spent the past year “working on” other Republicans in his community—encouraging them to abandon the GOP. Arnolds Park, where he lives, situated on the shores of West Okoboji Lake in the northern part of the state, is full of conservative retirees. Already, he told me, his efforts have been successful: He’s managed to persuade three of his Republican friends to support Greenfield. “They think she’s the right person at the right time, and she really is,” Adams said. To win in November, though, Greenfield will need a whole lot more of Iowa’s “independent thinkers” to feel the same.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Elaine Godfrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers politics.
Connect Twitter
About
Our History
Staff
Careers
Contact
Help Center
Contact Us
Atlantic Brand Partners
Press
Podcasts
Social Distance™
Floodlines
The Ticket: Politics from The Atlantic
Crazy/Genius
Subscription
Purchase
Give a Gift
Manage Subscription
Download iOS App
Newsletters
Follow
Theresa Greenfield’s strategy to defeat Joni Ernst could show Democrats how to swing rural America away from the GOP.
Theresa Greenfield’s strategy to defeat Joni Ernst could show Democrats how to swing rural America away from the GOP.
Theresa greenfield was 24 years old and four months pregnant with her second child when a priest rang her doorbell with terrible news: Her husband, Rod, a lineman at the local power company, had been killed in an accident at work. Greenfield, a Democrat who is challenging Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa this year, tells the story at every virtual campaign event she holds, but she generally leaves out the smaller details: how, just hours before, she’d packed a Snickers bar in Rod’s lunch box as a treat. How the clergyman sat with her on the sofa and held her hands as he explained that Rod had been electrocuted. The way that the panic, in those first few days, consumed her: As a single parent with no income, how would she survive?
Greenfield’s answer came in the form of Social Security survivor’s benefits, a regular check that she and her sons subsisted on for many months, along with Rod’s union benefits. Her family didn’t get rich, she is careful to note, but they survived. Greenfield went on to get a degree in urban planning, and became the president of a Des Moines-based commercial real-estate firm. The story provides the foundational message of her Senate campaign: She argues that she will protect Social Security, organized labor, and the social safety net, even as Republicans like Ernst try to tear them apart. “Social Security gave me the ability to pay the rent and put milk in the refrigerator and fall asleep at night,” Greenfield told me in a Zoom interview this week from her kitchen in Des Moines, a slight glare bouncing off her plastic-rimmed cat-eye glasses. “It gave me that second chance.”
Joni Ernst
Current Position: US Senator since 2015
Affiliation: Republican
Candidate: 2020 US Senator
In November 2014, Joni was elected as the first woman to serve in federal elected office from the State of Iowa and also became the first female combat veteran elected to serve in the United States Senate. In Washington, Joni serves on five Senate committees of major importance to Iowans: Armed Services; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; Environment and Public Works; Judiciary; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Joni is focused on growing a vibrant economy and ensuring the government runs effectively and efficiently which means cutting out-of-control spending, reducing taxes, eliminating harmful regulations and balancing the budget.
For more information, see Joni Ernst’s post.
Theresa Greenfield
Current Position: Urban planner
Affiliation: Democrat
Candidate: 2020 US Senator
Theresa Greenfield is a farm kid with farm kid values. She’s running for Senate because it’s time Iowans had a Senator who put us first – not the special interests. Growing up on a farm instilled in her a get-it-done attitude she will bring to the Senate to solve problems for our working families.
For more information, see Theresa Greenfield’s post.
Issues
Governance
Joni Ernst
N/A
Theresa Greeenfield
Politicians in Washington have created a corrupt system – relying on big money from corporate special interests and then making sure that government works for them – not us. So it’s no surprise that Washington passed “tax reform” that was a massive giveaway to huge corporations while saddling us with higher debt, and refuses to take action to reduce the sky high costs of prescription drugs. That’s why Theresa is committed to building a grassroots campaign by Iowans, for Iowans and won’t take a dime from corporate PACs. Theresa has received grassroots contributions from all 99 counties in Iowa, and has been endorsed by dozens of leaders from around the state.
She is also proudly endorsed by End Citizens United, and will fight for reform that makes our government and elections more transparent. That starts with supporting legislation that will root out corruption and make sure our representatives are actually working for us, not the corporate special interests — like banning corporate PAC money, passing lobbying reforms, overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and getting rid of the secret, unlimited cash flooding our elections through dark money groups.
Civil Rights
Joni Ernst
N/A
Theresa Greenfield
Theresa is proud to stand with her LGBTQ+ family and friends, and she will work toward equal rights for all Iowans.
She has spent much of her professional life working in small businesses, and has seen firsthand the strength that comes from a diverse and inclusive workplace. In the Senate, Theresa would proudly support legislation like the Equality Act that would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
Economy
Joni Ernst
In 2008, our country faced a financial crisis that was second only to the Great Depression. Many Americans saw their hours and wages cut back, or worse lost their jobs.
Ever since the events of that time, our economy and the jobs our country depends on, have been slow to recover. We must do more to encourage our small and large businesses alike to grow and thrive. By selling more of what we make and grow in America around the globe, we can boost manufacturing, wages, and jobs, here at home.
Agriculture
Growing up walking beans and feeding hogs on our family farm in southwest Iowa, I experienced firsthand the hard work that goes into production agriculture. Agriculture has long been the bedrock of our national economy and Iowa plays a critical part in ensuring folks in the U.S. and around the world have access to a safe and affordable food supply. In fact, Iowans are a leading producer of corn, soybeans, pork, eggs, and renewable fuels.
Theresa Greenfield
After years of politicians from both parties allowing giant corporations and special interests to influence Washington and tilt the playing field against hardworking families, we must send leaders to the U.S. Senate who will stand up for those they were elected to represent.
Unions built the middle class, and we should be working to strengthen their standing in our communities. When Theresa’s first husband, a union electrical lineman, died in a workplace accident, his union helped Theresa and her kids land on their feet. Theresa is standing up for union rights and has been endorsed by local labor unions across Iowa representing thousands of workers.
Theresa supports a living wage, investing in our workforce, fighting for women to have equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work, and making sure people have the skills and tools they need to succeed in the 21st century workplace. She understands the importance of trade in Iowa’s economy, and supports the USMCA and the benefits it brings Iowa farmers and businesses.
With her small business experience, she is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and startups with issues like increasing access to capital, expanding export opportunities, and cutting through burdensome red tape. Theresa is also committed to investing in our infrastructure to create good-paying jobs and help Iowa’s economy thrive.
See post for more info.
Education
Joni Ernst
As a mother, I believe education should be handled at the state and local level, by Iowans, not Washington bureaucrats.
I supported the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which rolls back many of the failed policies established under No Child Left Behind. This legislation ends the Common Core mandate and other federally prescribed academic standards imposed on our states. In addition, ESSA moves our education system away from a Washington top down, one size fits all system based on test results. These long overdue reforms give our individual states greater flexibility to design and implement their education and accountability standards as they see fit. Although the final bill did not accomplish all of our goals in supporting and empowering local leaders, it took major steps in the right direction.
Additionally, in preparing young people to enter the workforce, it is important that we bridge the gap between employers and students to make sure we are properly preparing students according to the needs of the local job market. In this age of ever changing and advancing technologies, it is vital that we provide opportunities for students to pursue trades and promote career and technical education.
Furthermore, as the cost of higher education continues to rise, we must ensure that students and families are aware of the tools and resources available to help budget and plan accordingly. We also have to make sure student loans are accessible to students and families that finance their secondary education and that the interest rates are reasonable and affordable.
Theresa Greenfield
Theresa is a proud product of public schools and spent time working as a college student to advance her education. When we invest in our kids, our teachers, and our public schools, we all do better. Theresa will always put teachers and students first, not profits.
That starts with everything from expanding public pre-kindergarten to making sure Iowa’s workforce has the right skills for the 21st century, and includes investing in higher education and job training, like apprenticeships where Iowans can earn while they learn. We need to make sure that obtaining an education — often a ticket to a better life for so many Iowans — is affordable.
Theresa is committed to fully funding Pell grants, and ensuring our educators have the compensation, resources, and respect they deserve — including the ability to organize and collectively bargain.
Environment
Joni Ernst
I support an all-of-the-above energy approach that increases America’s domestic production and promotes energy independence. Using our plentiful fossil fuel reserves, increasing utilization of renewables and building on advances in energy efficiency, we have the ability to pursue an energy strategy that creates jobs and provides reliable, sustainable and affordable energy to American families and businesses.
Theresa Greenfield
Climate change is getting worse. We’ve seen it in extensive floods that destroy our fields and wash away parts of our cities.
We can’t afford to have Senators who question and deny the science, who refuse to act when the future of our kids and grandkids are on the line, and who consistently put the needs of Big Oil over Iowans suffering. Theresa is proudly endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, and understands the gravity of our climate crisis requires smart, principled leadership.
In the Senate, Theresa will fight for good-paying clean energy jobs and defend and strengthen our environmental laws that are under attack from the corporate special interests in Washington. She will also be focused on solutions that protect Iowans from the effects of climate change, including securing infrastructure funding to strengthen our defenses against flooding to save communities across Iowa.
Health Care
Joni Ernst
Years ago, President Obama promised health insurance premiums would go down under ObamaCare. They haven’t. Across the country, folks have endured significant health insurance premium increases, as well as increases in out of pocket costs like deductibles and copays. In fact, Iowans looking for health care plans in the exchange saw increases of up to 43 percent in 2017.
Iowans sent me to Congress to focus on patient-centered, affordable health care reforms that enhance competition, increase flexibility, constrain rising costs and ensure folks have a voice over their own health care decisions.
Too many Iowa families and businesses have been hurt by the painful effects of ObamaCare – from rising costs, to losing access to doctors, to hampering businesses’ ability to hire new employees.
Health care reform should be focused on choice, not mandates. Patients, families, and doctors know what best meets their needs, and they are the ones who should be in control of health care decisions, not Washington, D.C. Instead of this Washington-centered approach, we need to look for patient-centered alternatives that increase access to quality health care services at an affordable price.
In addition, I am also working with my colleagues to ensure that rural Iowans continue to have access to the services they need. Much of Iowa is considered medically underserved, and we need to look for new and innovative ways to make certain folks in these areas have access to treatment.
That’s why I have championed the Telemedicine for Medicare (TELE-MED) Act and the Veterans E-Health and Telemedicine Support (VETS) Act to help advance telehealth as an option to serve rural America.
Theresa Greenfield
Health care is a right, not a privilege — but sadly, for too many Iowans, health care is too expensive and not accessible. No Iowan should lose their health care coverage because of a pre-existing health condition, and we should be working to expand access and make health care more affordable across the state and the country. Theresa supports access to quality, affordable health care — no matter who you are or where you live.
That means strengthening our existing laws like the Affordable Care Act, creating a public health insurance option for Iowans to buy into, and working to bring down the cost of co-pays, prescription drugs, and health care as a whole. But in Washington, big money from insurance and pharmaceutical corporate PACs influence policy — meaning common sense solutions, like reducing the cost of prescription drug prices, are stalling in Congress.
Theresa is committed to strengthening and protecting rural hospitals and health care options in underserved rural areas. Theresa isn’t taking money from corporate PACs like those in the health care or pharmaceutical industry, so she is ready to fight for what’s best for Iowans.
Infrastructure
Joni Ernst
The federal government has a significant role to play in developing and maintaining our country’s infrastructure, and along with national defense, it is one of its core functions. Having a robust and efficient transportation infrastructure is vital to the economy.
Our producers and manufacturers must be able to consistently and reliably transport their goods to domestic and international markets. A large number of industries, including our nation’s small businesses, rely on this movement of goods to help create jobs and expand market access, something particularly important for our rural communities.
I support transportation legislation that ensures Iowans are empowered to make decisions over where funding is needed most and which safeguards the flexibility of our states to determine how infrastructure dollars are best spent. That is why I voted for a bipartisan, long-term highway bill in 2015 that provides the kind of investment and consensus solutions for our state and local communities to move forward and implement transportation projects that enhance our nation’s roadways.
Theresa Greenfield
N/A
Immigration
Joni Ernst
N/A
Theresa Greenfield
Our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, politicians in Washington have focused on stoking fears and dividing us instead of focusing on improving our borders, protecting our national security, or putting forward real solutions to fix our broken immigration system.
Theresa is committed to working with both parties on a plan that is true to our American values, fair to taxpayers, tough on workplace enforcement and border security, and rooted in practical solutions like reducing wait times for legal immigration and putting more technology and security on the border.
Theresa will stand up for what’s right, including supporting the DREAM Act, and will focus on keeping families together while implementing policies that grow Iowa’s economy, encourage innovation, and create jobs.
Safety
Joni Ernst
Protecting our homeland from threats, both foreign and domestic, should be the top priority of the federal government. As we learned on September 11th, 2001 and continue to be reminded of by ISIS-led or inspired terrorist attacks around the world, we must remain vigilant in defending our citizens and our way of life.
Accordingly, it is vital that we provide our military and law enforcement officials with the tools they need to protect Americans from potential threats. We must also secure our borders in order to ensure that anyone entering our country is doing so in accordance with the law. In addition to illegal immigration, the law enforcement personnel stationed on our borders must confront drug smuggling, human trafficking, and the threat of terrorism on a day-to-day basis. More must be done to fully secure our borders and ensure the integrity of our immigration system, prevent the exploitation of children, protect our nation against terrorism, and stop criminal drug rings.
America has been, and always will be, a nation of immigrants. However, we are also a nation of laws and it is essential that we enforce those laws, which is why I supported efforts to block overreaching executive amnesty. Additionally, I supported efforts to address the issue of “sanctuary cities” to make sure that local law enforcement cooperates with federal immigration authorities when they discover people in our country illegally.
Finally, while ensuring our border is secure is critical, we must also work to modernize our broken immigration system by enacting reforms to promote improved legal avenues for workers and families.
Theresa Greenfield
From the gun violence crisis to the opioid epidemic, politicians have failed us. We can’t wait any longer to take action — when we say “enough is enough,” we mean it. Theresa won’t sit by or stay silent when it comes to saving lives, reducing crime and keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.
In the Senate, Theresa will fight for legislation that keeps our kids and our communities safe. Whether it’s working to expand background checks, funding critical gun violence research, keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and other criminals, such as those on the No Fly list, she will bring people together to find commonsense solutions to ensure we address gun violence.
Our communities in Iowa are also suffering at the hands of the opioid epidemic, and have seen a failure to act from Washington. Theresa is committed to working with community leaders to ensure they have the support they need to compassionately treat those who need help overcoming addiction.
Social Security
Joni Ernst
Promises made must be promises kept when it comes to protecting Iowa seniors’ Medicare and Social Security. While maintaining that promise, we must also recognize that reforms are needed to ensure that these programs remain on viable footing for the future. I am committed to working with my Senate colleagues to find bipartisan solutions that will strengthen and secure Medicare and Social Security for seniors today and tomorrow.
Theresa Greenfield
While politicians in Washington are talking about cutting Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and special interests, Theresa believes that Social Security and Medicare are promises we must keep to our seniors. She opposes the privatization of both programs as they are crucial to the livelihoods of countless Iowans. Theresa will never let anyone lay a finger on them while she is in the Senate.
Veterans
Joni Ernst
Here in the Senate, we have an incredible responsibility to not only make sure our country is protected, but to ensure we live up to the promises made to our veterans.
These men and women have selflessly sacrificed in defense of our freedoms, and our way of life. We must ensure that our veterans are prepared to transition back to civilian life. They deserve nothing less than the benefits they were promised and a quality of care we can all be proud of.
I am grateful for our veterans who defended our nation and protected our freedoms. Upon being elected to the Senate, the first bill I introduced was aimed at assisting veterans with mental health care. It continues to be one of my top priorities.
Some of my main priorities in improving services for our veterans include increasing access and choice for mental health care services at VA and at non-VA facilities, expanding telehealth services for veterans, and continuing to ensure the VA is held full accountable for their actions. We cannot turn our backs on those who served our country or accept failures from the department designed to care for them.
Theresa Greenfield
N/A
