Democrat Patty Judge, a former Iowa lieutenant governor and agriculture secretary, will announce this weekend that she will run for Senate against Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The Des Moines Register later confirmed that Judge will launch a challenge to Grassley.
Judge’s entrance into the race would come as Democrats try to use Senate Republicans’ refusal to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as political leverage. Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would typically hold hearings for the nominee, and the Iowa senator has been adamant that he will not hold a hearing for Obama’s nominee.
Judge last week criticized Grassley’s approach to the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
“I don’t like this deliberate obstruction of the process,” she told the Des Moines Register. “I think Chuck Grassley owes us better. He’s been with us a long time. Maybe he’s been with us too long.”
Great !!!
I didn’t even know Grassley was up for re-election. I assume that’s because his was considered a ‘safe’ seat.
And, for what it’s worth, me thinks Obama’s political team’s fingerprints are all over this one!
This is great news; though it will still be a tough race to win. She gets a big boost if Obama actually nominates Jane Kelly to the Court, which I hope he does.
Interesting that this comes out the same day that TPM reports that Obama is vetting Judge Jane Kelly, an Iowan and someone Grassley has strongly supported in the past, for Scalia’s vacancy. So Obama may nominate a Judge who will put Grassley in a difficult situation, at the same time that a Judge is running for Grassley’s Senate seat. Nice parallelism!
Trump: I encourage her to run. We need to beat the establishment Republicans. They are after us.
FOX: This is working out well for Trump and Democrats.