Although he has already completed his 99-county “Full Grassley” tour for the year, the Senator was happy to return to Marshalltown after stopping by MEMBERS1ST Community Credit Union over the summer.

“You don’t quit working just because you did all 99 counties,” he said. “You keep it up the rest of the year as well, so I’m happy to be with you.”

Grassley, 89, is seeking his eighth term in the U.S. Senate and is facing a challenge from Democrat Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral. On Tuesday, he opened with a few of his own remarks taking President Joe Biden to task for inflation and the current situation at the southern border, especially the influx of the highly addictive drug fentanyl.

Grassley also touted his own bipartisan record, citing bills he had worked on to help level the playing field for cattle producers against the big four packers, combat tech companies’ suppression of small businesses on sites like Amazon and lower prescription drug prices.

After introducing himself and sharing some prepared remarks of his own, Sen. Grassley opened the floor up to questions from the audience, which included both Rotarians and members of the general public.

Questions from the audience covered a variety of topics, including some that were more specific to the individuals who asked them. Early on, Marshalltown Police Chief Mike Tupper expressed concern about federal funds dropping off or drying out for various law enforcement initiatives like the Mid-Iowa Drug Task Force and a detective dedicated to working domestic violence and sexual assault cases, and he added that while fentanyl is a major threat and he’s glad it’s receiving attention, methamphetamine is still “the scourge” of the streets in Marshalltown.

“It seems to me, anyway, that policymakers are kind of setting that topic aside and focusing on opioids and fentanyl. Those issues are important, but we’re seizing pounds of methamphetamine,” Tupper said. “We used to get excited 20 or 25 years ago if we did an investigation and got half a pound. If we get less than five pounds, 10 pounds a net now, we’re not doing our job.”

Grassley said he believed more federal funds were being put toward such programs than ever before, and he encouraged Tupper to ask for his support anytime the MPD applied for a grant in the future. His wife, Assistant Marshall County Attorney Sarah Tupper, also inquired about federal funding for such programs later on before Grassley wrapped up his remarks.

Sarah Rosenblum, the director of the Marshalltown Public Library, asked Grassley about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program that protects individuals who were brought to the country as children from deportation. The Senator responded that there has not been any progress on securing the necessary votes for a renewal, and despite his concerns about the southern border he had already shared, he said he did not consider those who were brought to the U.S. as children to be in the country illegally.

“It’s not a problem for me. Now it might be a problem for other Senators, but that’s not the problem,” he said, before describing illegal border crossings as the bigger issue.

Another attendee then asked if Democrats have used the immigration issue as a political tool to secure more votes and why the border situation had persisted. During a subsequent interview, Grassley highlighted his strong support for legal immigration but added that allowing the law to be broken at the border and selectively enforced in general only encouraged more lawbreaking across the board.

Jordan Pope, a wealth advisor with United Bank and Trust, asked Grassley what he felt he had left to accomplish after a 63-year political career and what motivates him to continue serving. If, as most polls project, Grassley does win re-election over Franken and serves another six-year term, he would be 95 years old upon its completion.

The Senator from New Hartford laid out his daily routine — waking up at 4 a.m., jogging, getting to the office at 6 a.m., working through the day and being in bed by 9 p.m. — and his own status as the Cal Ripken Jr. of politics. Between 1993 and 2020, he set a record by casting 8,927 uninterrupted votes and only ended the streak after contracting COVID-19.

“I don’t think it’s a case of picking apart what I haven’t accomplished. It’s what I can do and what needs to be done,” he said.

One questioner inquired about Chinese companies stealing intellectual property and patents, and another, Mary Dooley, asked Grassley how, with another election upcoming, he could work to reassure Americans of all political stripes that a peaceful transfer of power. Citing past challenges like Bush v. Gore, which went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2001, and claims that Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was illegitimate due to alleged Russian influence, Grassley said he had introduced a bill to make election challenges harder and require more than one member of Congress to sign off on them.

Todd Steinkamp of Trending Media asked Grassley if the partisan divide in Washington was actually as pronounced as it is often portrayed in the national media, and he responded that despite political disagreements, he makes an honest effort to get along with lawmakers of both parties.

“It’s more (divided) now than ever, but it’s not as bad as what you see,” Grassley said.

In one of the last questions of the day, former Times-Republican Publisher and current MARSHALLTOWN Company Senior Marketing Manager Abigail Pelzer commented on the importance of local media outlets in Iowa, particularly newspapers, and asked the Senator how that relationship could grow and be strengthened in the era of so-called “Fake News.”

As he responded, Grassley stressed the need for open lines of communication with the media, but he also took national outlets to task for their coverage of certain events including the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was branded “Russian disinformation” in the lead-up to the 2020 election, the larger Robert Mueller Russiagate investigation and the Steele Dossier.

“I think you’ve got to look beyond the politics… I started an investigation of Hunter Biden in August of 2019. For the next two years, Iowa newspapers said we were spreading Russian disinformation,” Grassley said. “Why aren’t the journalists doing as much investigation as we are? My successful investigations were when I was doing them with journalists in the room. Then we had real successful investigations and really turned up (information). I have a Constitutional responsibility to do that because of checks and balances on the executive branch of government. Journalists, if they don’t want to investigate this stuff and they just want to take some politician’s word for it, then they aren’t doing their job.”

He then touted his support for a bill that would require social networks to compensate news outlets when they aggregate stories online.

During a subsequent interview, Grassley said he did not currently have any intelligence on who was behind the explosion of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which could cause a major escalation in the country’s war with Ukraine. He did add, however, that officials from Sweden and Denmark, who “didn’t seem to have any irons in the fire,” believe Russia was behind sabotaging its own pipeline. Grassley supports continuing to provide material support to Ukraine in its fight against Russia but does not believe the U.S. should commit to any troops on the ground unless Article 5 of the NATO treaty requiring mutual defense was invoked.

After Franken’s former campaign manager accused him of an unwanted kiss — and the details of the police report filed in Des Moines were reported on the website Iowa Field Report — Grassley has called for “full transparency” on the matter.

“We’re very concerned, and I think we are entitled to full transparency. And I think when a person that was a campaign manager makes the accusation, I think that carries more weight than somebody that never had any relationship (with him),” Grassley said. “Beyond that, I can’t have any opinion because I don’t know anymore than what’s in the police report.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.