Democrats got a prominent Iowa Senate candidate on Thursday when former Rep. Abby Finkenauer announced that she would take on incumbent Chuck Grassley, a seven-term Republican who has not yet revealed his own 2022 plans. No matter what the senator does, though, Team Blue will have a very challenging task prevailing in a longtime swing state that has swung hard to the right over the last decade and where Donald Trump prevailed 53-45 last year.
Finkenauer was elected to the state legislature in 2014 and decided to seek a promotion four years later by campaigning for the 1st Congressional District, a northeastern Iowa seat that had dramatically shifted in 2016 from 56-43 Obama to 49-45 Trump. The Democrat went up against Rep. Rod Blum, a two-term member whom national Republicans left for dead until late in the campaign, and unseated him by a 51-46 margin during that wave year. Finkenauer was 30 when she was sworn in months later, which made her the second-youngest woman to ever serve in the House (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who also prevailed that same cycle, is 10 months younger).
Republicans, though, quickly set out to make Finkenauer one of their top 2020 targets, and they successfully recruited state Rep. Ashley Hinson to take her on. Major outside groups on both sides ended up spending $8 million between them, but while Democrats hoped that this part of Iowa would swing back to the left, that’s very much not what happened: Trump’s 51-47 victory in the 1st District was little different from his 2016 performance, and while Finkenauer ran ahead of the ticket, she still lost 51-49.
Finkenauer kicked off her new campaign by focusing on the Jan. 6 attack in the Capitol and arguing that, after so long in office, Grassley has “lost touch” with both Iowa and democracy. She refrained from focusing, however, on the vast generational gap between her and the incumbent, who will be 89 on Election Day.
Grassley has pulled off landslide victories during each of his six re-election campaigns, but there is some evidence that Iowans may be tired of the veteran senator. Last month, a Selzer & Co. survey for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom Iowa pegged his approval rating at 45-39 among adults―his worst showing in this poll since 1982. President Joe Biden, though, was in worse shape with a 43-52 score, which is the type of negative rating that would present a serious obstacle to any Democratic nominee.
Grassley himself recently said that he’d decide between Labor Day and Nov. 1 if he’d run again, and his recent fundraising doesn’t give us a good idea which way he’s leaning: The senator hauled in $415,000 during the second quarter of 2020, and he ended June with $2.5 million. That was dramatically better than Grassley’s primary foe, far-right state Sen. Jim Carlin, who had a mere $9,000 in the bank.
The only notable Democrat who entered the race before Finkenauer was former Crawford County Supervisor Dave Muhlbauer, who raised $45,000 from donors during his first quarter in the race, self-funded another $20,000, and had $60,000 to spend. A few others have made noises about running, though: The most prominent potential contender is Rep. Cindy Axne, who has also expressed interest in challenging GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds.