Meet Mike Franken, Democrat for Senate

DES MOINES — Mike Franken was at a dental appointment when a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters, falsely believing the 2020 election was stolen, began to break into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden as president.

Driving home and listening to the radio, he said he began to figure out what was going on.

“I was going, ‘Oh, for crying out loud,’” he said in an interview in Indianola after a campaign event. “And saw it when I got back home and realized that life will not be the same for us in the political realm.”

Franken, a retired U.S. Navy three-star vice admiral, has said the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol is one reason he ran to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate for a second time. Franken also ran in the Democratic primary in 2020 to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, but lost the nomination to Theresa Greenfield.

He presents himself as an experienced leader, after four decades in the Navy, who has the tenacity to combat threats to American democracy, something he says his opponent, Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, has been complicit in normalizing.

“The biggest fear is for it to be normalized, and capitalized on, and encouraged now,” he said.

Defeating Grassley, a seven-term incumbent who has long had bipartisan support, was seen as a long shot at the beginning of the campaign. But polling shows a tighter margin than Grassley has faced in his six Senate re-election bids, and Franken said he sees a path to victory.

In the last days before the election, Franken is campaigning in nearly 30 counties across the state with the hopes of influencing enough Iowans to put him over the finish line. The tour, on top of a previous 99-county tour, is an opportunity to introduce Franken to voters, he said, who may still be undecided.

“What we found is when people have a conversation and they come to one of our events, they vote for us, at a very high percentage,” he said.

Early voting has already begun. Election Day is Nov. 8.

Bipartisan pitch

Franken is campaigning as a moderate who will unite Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans. He has campaigned on putting “country over party” and “people over politics,” and contends that Grassley has lost his bipartisan streak and lurched to the right.

Franken said Grassley began as a candidate who worked across party lines. But, he added, Grassley has become more supportive of right-wing causes and corporate interests over the interests of Iowans over the past two decades.

“He’s just not a purveyor of bright ideas,” Franken said in an interview. “He’s an amplifier of what he’s done in the past, what his donors have instructed him and nudged him on.”

Franken has attempted to thread the bipartisan needle, offering cautious support to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, but said he’s “not a big fan of bailouts.” He supports permitting reform for oil drilling opposed by many Democrats.

That pitch has worked for Donna and Steve Crow, of Madison County, who were in Indianola to see Franken speak. Both are Democrats, but Donna said she has voted for Grassley in the past. She said she was not going to vote for him this year, though, and liked what Franken had to say about women’s rights, education and foreign policy. She said that Grassley has “aged out.”

“We really had a good balance back in the day when (Tom) Harkin and Grassley, we had one from each side,” Steve Crow said. “And it was a good balance. I thought they both did a great job, but he’s changed.”

Republicans have portrayed Franken as extreme and “too liberal for Iowa.” They point to his support for universal health insurance and proposals to end the Trump-era tax cuts, which provided a cut for all tax brackets but disproportionately benefited higher-income earners.

Inflation

The state of the economy, with inflation rates not seen in decades, routinely tops the list of issues important to voters in this election. Franken said he would work to bring down inflation by fixing supply chain issues, encouraging domestic energy production and capping medical costs.

An ad from Grassley’s campaign features a clip of Franken saying senators have “no role in that whatsoever” when it comes to inflation. But Franken said he has clear plans and has argued that Grassley has contributed to higher costs.

In the sole debate between Franken and Grassley on Iowa PBS in October, Franken criticized Grassley for voting against an amendment to the Inflation Reduction Act that would have capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. His campaign has also pointed to Grassley’s role in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which overhauled prescription drug policies but also stopped Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices.

“We can do a lot as a senator, but it takes long-standing altruism and intellect to make it happen and not be a stooge for big corporations,” Franken said in the debate.

Abortion

In debates and public events, Franken has criticized Grassley for voting for anti-abortion positions over his career. He contrasted that career with his military service.

“Chuck Grassley has made a career since he first announced this in 1972, to go after a woman's right to choose,” Franken said in the debate. “Now, I have a long career supporting people's rights, our way of life internationally and domestically in the United States military.”

Franken said he supports codifying the protections present under Roe v. Wade, which had granted federal abortion rights, into law. He declined in the debate to specify a threshold when he thinks abortion should be illegal, saying government regulation should be removed from the procedure.

He said he would support removing the filibuster to pass an abortion rights law, something Biden said he would be able to accomplish with two more Democrats in the Senate.

For most legislation in the Senate, 60 votes are required to end debate and move to vote on the legislation, effectively requiring most legislation to meet that bar to pass. Biden and some Democrats have proposed removing that requirement for abortion rights.

While he said he prefers to find compromise on policy issues, Franken said he supports removing the 60-vote requirement for “human dignity issues, and freedom of choice issues, and democracy issues.”

He has pointed to immigration policy and voting rights reforms as areas where he would support doing away with the filibuster.

Sexual assault allegations

Franken faces allegations that he kissed a woman, his former campaign manager, without her consent, as detailed in a police report the woman filed in April.

In the report, the woman, Kimberley Strope-Boggus, told police that Franken grabbed her collar and kissed her on the mouth after meeting for drinks after his campaign had fired her. When she pulled away, Strope-Boggus said the interaction stopped and she walked away.

While he said he met Strope-Boggus for a drink on the night in question, Franken categorically denies the allegation, saying he never kissed her. Franken’s campaign has emphasized the police report was closed as “unfounded,” and the county attorney found no case to move forward with an investigation.

Republicans have seized on the issue and pointed to other instances to suggest Franken does not support women.

A 2021 article in The Intercept found that sexual assaults reported under African Command, between 2010 and 2020, were significantly higher than the number reported by the Pentagon. Franken held top posts in the Horn of Africa between 2011 and 2012 and was a top African Command official between 2015 and 2017.

Franken said he didn’t know the details of the discrepancy between the reported cases and the Pentagon’s official numbers, but he said the Pentagon instituted extensive sexual assault prevention training beginning in boot camp.

“In that process, there’s always a reported vs. actuality. And we have been working to try to zero that out,” he said. “I used to talk to every person who served under me and say, ‘These are the standards. We’ve got zero tolerance — zero.”

Naval career

Franken’s blue Navy cap is a ubiquitous symbol in his ads and on the campaign trail, and he frequently points to his military experience as an example of his leadership.

He reached the rank of vice admiral, and in 2015 took over as deputy commander for military operations in the U.S. African Command. Before that, he was director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency under President Barack Obama and has worked on Capitol Hill both in U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy’s office and as the chief of legislative affairs for the Navy.

Franken said his work in the Navy inspired his “country over party” philosophy and gives him a global perspective that will be important in confronting international challenges.

“You’re apolitical, you work with people from all walks of life,” he said. “You’re all about country over party, people over politics. Its mission is of the highest regard.”

But Franken resigned from the Navy after the election of Trump who, he said, was an “outlier” among the presidents he’d served under.

Fundraising

Despite a lack of funding from the national Democratic infrastructure, Franken has been able to keep pace with Grassley in fundraising, raising more than $9 million in the election cycle to date. Grassley has raised more than $10 million, according to Federal Election Commission data.

But Franken ended the last reporting period with $608,000 cash on hand, while Grassley had more than $2.1 million in the bank.

National Democratic groups have mostly stayed out of the Iowa Senate race, focusing efforts on states like Pennsylvania and Georgia where they see a higher chance of victory. Still, in 2022, Franken raised more money than Grassley owing mostly to small individual donations, according to OpenSecrets.

Franken’s campaign said he raised more than $500,000 in donations in four days after the latest Iowa Poll was released showing a close race.

“Separate from the national party, we have outraised him this year,” he told reporters in October. “And we’ve done this on individual donations. … We have individual donations, by people, and nothing is more strong than people power.”