Blog: Iowa's Grassley 11th most mentioned senator

He's not a media darling like fellow Republicans Sen. John McCain or Sen. Marco Rubio, but sixth-term Sen. Chuck Grassley is holding his own when it comes to media mentions.

Grassley is the 11th most mentioned member of the Senate, according to a survey conducted by Smart Politics, the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs blog. Like Rubio and McCain, Grassley doesn't chair any committees, but still keeps a high media profile.

A Smart Politics review of broadcast media transcripts by ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR for the first six months of 2012 finds that Republican U.S. Senators have been mentioned in more than twice as many news stories as their Democratic counterparts with John McCain leading the field at more than 10 stories per day.

Grassley was mentioned 174 times so far this year -- less than a tenth the number of mentions of McCain, and slightly more than a third as often as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has recorded 21 mentions, tying his with Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana for 61st place among the 100 senators.

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