In Iowa GOP Senate race, Ernst tells Jacobs ‘bring it on’

CORALVILLE - Joni Ernst can see herself as a U.S. senator.

It's living and working in Washington that the Republican U.S. Senate hopeful is having a hard time envisioning.

'When my husband retired from the Army, we moved back to Iowa. Immediately,” said Ernst, a second-term member of the Iowa Senate. 'D.C. is not appealing to me.”

Although her heart 'will always be here in Iowa,” the Iowa National Guard battalion commander from Red Oak said she feels called to serve.

'We're at such a critical juncture in our nation's history that if I believe I can make a difference I am going to step in and try and make that difference,” she told about 20 people at a Coralville coffee shop Tuesday morning. Later, she met with supporters in Cedar Rapids.

Before she gets to the Senate, Ernst needs to win the Republican nomination.

'It is going very well,” she said about her campaign in the five-way race for the nomination. 'A couple of months ago most people across the state wouldn't have known who I was. We've been steadily climbing, gaining momentum.

'I am currently in the lead,” Ernst said referring to a Loras College Poll that shows she's 12 points up on Mark Jacobs.

'He's come out swinging very hard. That's what you do when you're down 12 points,” she said about his advertising and comments he made in a forum Monday. 'I can take it. We're going to push back a little bit.”

Jacobs hit her for missing votes in the Iowa Senate and voting the wrong way on a proposed gas tax increase that was not enacted.

'It was a mistake,” Ernst said Monday and again Tuesday about the gas tax vote. 'I was wrong on that. I own up to that.”

However, she fired back at Jacobs' attacks on her absences from the Iowa Senate. Some, she said, were for National Guard duty.

However the Jacobs campaign cited a review by The Gazette showing that 10 percent or 12 of 117 missed votes were on days when Ernst was on active duty.

'Only in government can you skip almost 40 percent of work and still ask for a promotion,” Jacobs' spokeswoman Alissa Ohl said in a news release Tuesday. 'Ernst in the past five months has already missed more than three times the number of votes Sen. Chuck Grassley has missed in the past 33 years.”

Ernst defended her absences by citing Grassley's absences from the Legislature when he was campaigning for a seat in the U.S. House.

As for the attack ads, Ernst said it goes with the territory.

'I'm a candidate. I'm a big girl. Let him bring it on,” she said.

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