Abby Finkenauer was in Burlington Friday to tell residents why her journey from daughter of pipe fitter/welder to US Congressman will make her the perfect senator for Iowa.
One of Finkenauer’s biggest complaints about her opponent, longtime Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, is that she thinks he forgot to fight for the people of small town Iowa.
“My whole career, the reason I fight for what I fight for is because I remember where I come from,” Finkenauer said during a town hall at the International Brotherhood of Workers in electricity.
When elected in 2018, Finkenauer shared the designation of being the youngest woman elected to the House of Representatives, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
However, unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Finkenauer was able to swing a seat from Republican to Democrat.
When Finkenauer, 33, was younger, his family sometimes lived in poverty. His father had to travel to find work. Iowa had no going wage, a standard set by the federal government on how much wages to pay, so he went to Missouri to find work. Sometimes her father worked 12-hour days in the hot Missouri sun.
Some of the experiences she had as a child, including seeing her father wring the sweat from his waistband, are something she says she will never forget. When Finkenauer decided to run for Iowa House, she said she felt families like hers were forgotten.
Once at the Statehouse, she said she saw another way politicians were forgetting about families, by suppressing collective bargaining for public employees in Iowa. Finkenauer said she was proud to vote “no” by raising her fist in the air, a sign of solidarity with those who came to the Capitol to see the debate.
“I saw people who were there, just like my father, trying to fight for their families,” she said.
‘Those Capitol cops supported you that day’: Finkenauer says Grassley wrong about Jan. 6 riot
Finkenauer disagreed with Grassley about the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. She criticized his willingness to accept what she called right-wing narratives that the riots were in fact planned and carried out by FBI agents.
A video of Grassley answering the question at a Wright County town hall was posted on the Iowa Start Line’s Twitter account.
Grassley said some of the statements made about January 6 were true, but he did not identify what he believed to be true and what was false.
“Those Capitol cops supported you that day,” Finkenauer said of Grassley. “He was one of the first to leave that day, and they took him out. How dare he.”
She described the horror she felt seeing police attacked with American flags while members of Congress were in hiding.
For Finkenauer, it wasn’t just the symbol of democracy she saw on TV that day. It was also his old place of work and his friends were hiding.
“I remember texting my friends if they were okay,” she said.
‘I don’t support defunding the police’: trying to set the record straight
Finkenauer criticized Republicans for painting all Democrats with the same brush. She said they needed to look at what the party was doing as a whole, instead of picking one opinion they didn’t like and applying it to all Democrats.
“I don’t support defunding the police,” Finkenauer said. “When I was in Congress, I pumped up funding. When I was at the Statehouse, I constantly fought against cutting our law enforcement.
According to Finkenauer, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is proposing a budget that would cut funding for law enforcement. She specifically said the money came from justice appropriations, which includes the court system and the Iowa Department of Corrections.
