Judge: Iowa voters have clear choice for president, Senate

MANCHESTER - Patty Judge knew challenging a six-term Republican U.S. senator would be no easy task.

But deciding who to vote for shouldn't be hard, the former Democratic lawmaker and Iowa secretary of agriculture said in Manchester on Friday.

'This is not a race - the presidential race and the U.S. Senate race - are not races where the people of Iowa are going to have to say ‘Gee, there's just no difference between these two people. I guess I'll just have to flip a coin,'” she told about 10 people who gathered at the Bread Basket restaurant over the lunch hour.

'Uh, uh. Clearly, the philosophical differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and between me and Chuck Grassley are deep, and it really comes down to what is your vision and where you stand,” judge said.

Judge, who served as Gov. Chet Culver's lieutenant governor from 2007-11, likes where she stands 108 days before the Nov. 8 election.

Polls - that range from showing the race to be a virtual tie to Grassley leading by as much as 8 percentage point - are 'very encouraging,” she said.

'The good news is that no one has ever been that close to him before. He usually wins his re-elections by more than 20 percent,” Judge said. 'So the fact that we are in single digits and still got a large block of undecided votes to look at is encouraging. If they haven't decided after 36 years whether they ought to vote for him, the chances are that if I can get a chance to get my message to them, those voters will choose me.”

Grassley campaign manager Robert Haus said Judge is trying to paper over what has been a 'very rough July,”

'She's had a shake-up in her senior campaign management, anemic fundraising, and Democratic leaders around the state are openly complaining that she's nowhere to be found on the campaign trail,” he said. 'Her solution? To run one of the most negative campaigns in Iowa history. It's not working.”

Judge said it also will help her that Grassley has 'absolutely failed his responsibility” regarding the vacancy on the Supreme Court. She suggested that if Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, doesn't want to hold a hearing on President Barack Obama's nominee, he could use that time to address the growing college debt crisis, make improvements to the Affordable Care Act to allow the government to negotiate prescription drug prices, or raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next four to six years.

'Don't be cowardly about it,” she said.

Haus rejected her characterization of Grassley's work effort, pointing out that 10 bills Grassley moved through the Senate Judiciary Committee have been signed into law by Obama and two more await his signature.

Judge called on supporters to reject the 'absolute darkness” projected by the just-completed Republican National Convention.

'We do have problems, very severe problems ... problems that Chuck Grassley has not been addressing,” Judge said. 'But there is hope. ... We do have an opportunity to do things right and get the country going on track.”