Iowa Republican Joni Ernst tried to make it sound like something other than what it is, but at a debate in her campaign for Senate, she repeated her opposition to having a federal minimum wage at all and to raising Iowa's minimum wage. Let's look at
her answer:
I do believe that is something that needs to be set by the states, because our Iowa cost of living is very low. Currently it is at $7.25 an hour, and I’m someone that worked the minimum wage way back when, when it was much lower.
"Needs to be set by the states" translates to "no federal minimum wage. "Because our Iowa cost of living is very low." Lower than Manhattan or San Francisco? Absolutely. But you'd still need to work
73 hours a week at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Iowa. "Currently it is at $7.25 an hour"—it almost sounds like Ernst is saying the cost of living is $7.25 an hour, but of course it's not (remember that 73 hours). "... and I’m someone that worked the minimum wage way back when, when it was much lower." Hey, it was too low then, too! Based on Ernst's age, if she worked at the minimum wage as a teenager, as she suggested in a follow-up, that was during the
long slide of the Reagan years.
But the way that we can combat this and do better for Iowa families is by growing our economy and making sure that we have good-paying jobs to go out to, making sure that our college graduates are finding jobs.
Combat what? The fact that Joni Ernst once worked a minimum-wage job? Iowa's supposedly low cost of living? This is a particularly unpolished switch from talking about the minimum wage to trying to imply that it's irrelevant because Joni Ernst is going to be some kind of job-creation unicorn. So bear in mind, here and in the two sentences more she spent insisting she wants good jobs, she is not talking about what she was asked about. She has said what she had to say about the minimum wage and that is that there should not be a federal minimum wage and Iowa's should remain at $7.25 an hour.
Joni Ernst is just another Republican who wants to keep American workers stuck at poverty wages, and is trying to keep voters from noticing that. At least until she's elected.
And let's make sure Iowa has fair voting by chipping in $3 to Iowa Secretary of State candidate Brad Anderson.