Grassley predicts re-election, GOP to hold Senate

CEDAR RAPIDS - Sen. Chuck Grassley says he doesn't put much stock in the polls, but the six-term Iowa Republican is paying enough attention that he knows he is unlikely to win re-election by his usual margin.

Speaking at a GOP breakfast Monday, Grassley recalled that polls on his re-election earlier this year showed him under 50 percent.

'Now you may be looking at a poll that looks a little better,” he told the Linn Eagles, a Republican fundraising group. 'Don't count on it. This is a very unpredictable election.”

In fact, he said, Democratic challenger Patty Judge may give him the 'most serious challenge since I beat Sen. John Culver in 1980.”

He won that election 53 percent to 46 percent. Since then he's been re-elected by margins of 32 percent, 43 percent, 38 percent, 42 percent and 31 percent. Grassley isn't expecting that to continue.

'I've won re-election by big margins. I'm not going to win re-election by a big margin this time,” he told reporters. 'I'm going to win, but it's been a tough pull.”

Grassley said the difference this time is not his opponent, but the attention he has received for his refusal as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

'You know, if Justice Scalia hadn't died, nobody would be paying any attention to my race,” Grassley said.

'Oh, I would,” Sen. Joni Ernst interjected before Grassley went on to say that Patty Judge was recruited not by Iowa Democrats, but the Washington establishment.

'They are after me because they don't want a farmer from Iowa holding up Supreme Court nominations in the future,” he said.

That was a reference to a statement former Iowa 1st District Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley made when he was running against Ernst for an open Senate seat in 2014. At a fundraiser with fellow lawyers, Braley said: 'You might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

He was accurate, Ernst told the Eagle, and it's worked out well. The committee has passed 30 bills with bipartisan support under Grassley's leadership and 13 have been signed by Obama.

'You know, that's a pretty darned good record - for a farmer who's the chair of the Judiciary,” she said.

Grassley has argued the Supreme Court hearings should be postponed until a new president takes office in order to give voters a voice in the selection of the next justice - a justice who could change the balance of the court.

'This is an election about the direction of the Supreme Court for the next 40 years,” he said. 'There already is one vacancy that will turn it leftward, so that it becomes more of a super-legislature.”

If voters disagree with him and his colleagues, 'you can vote members of Congress out of office,” he said. 'You can't override lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court.”

Still, the New Hartford Republican believes Republicans are to control the Senate, 'maybe by a tighter margin, but we're still going to control the United States Senate.”

Regardless of which presidential candidate wins the election, Grassley said the Senate is going to continue to 'do our constitutional job of making sure that we work with the president when we can work with him and be a check on the president when we think they are going in the wrong direction.”