Why the Iowa Senate Race Is Suddenly Competitive

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