A World Without Chuck Grassley in the Senate?
The long-serving Senator Chuck Grassley is, for lack of a comparison closer to home, Iowa’s Queen Elizabeth II. This is partly a matter of sheer longevity. At 89, the senator is older than John Deere’s first self-propelled combine, which appeared in 1947. He was 26 when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash in 1959. The year Kevin Costner filmed Field of Dreams in Dyersville, 1988, Grassley was 55.
Age aside, Grassley is simply a part of Iowa’s political furniture—many voters in the state have never known a time without him. When I was born, in 1993, he’d been the state’s senior senator for 12 years; he has held elected office—first in the state House, then in the U.S. House and Senate—since my father was 4 years old. For many Iowans, the day when Grassley would be their senator has been
