The selection of Joni Ernst to give the Republican response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech on Thursday is already eliciting groans and mockery from liberals about a Sarah Palin-approved congressional newcomer. But in Ernst country, she is more than ready for the national primetime spotlight.
The freshman senator from Iowa may be conservative and combative. What she is not, most Iowans will tell you, is a “nut”. Or even radical.
“The Democrats in Iowa tried to paint her as a Sarah Palin clone, but it didn’t really work,” said Tim Hagle, a politics professor at the University of Iowa. “Some of the claims made against her are over the top.”
Those claims flowed thick and fast on Thursday after Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced from a Republican party retreat in Pennsylvania that Ernst will give the party’s rebuttal to the president’s address to the nation on 20 January.
“Be sure and set your TV closed captioning to gibberish,” read one tweet. “Guess the GOP thinks we need castration tips,” read another, referring to Ernst’s by-now notorious upbringing on an Iowa farm, where she castrated pigs. More on social media tried to anticipate Ernst’s talking points: “Benghazi, poor people, brown people, Benghazi, terror, jobs, brown people, DISEASE”.
Hagle, a veteran observer of Iowa politics, said locals were nonplussed by outsiders’ responses to Ernst. “It’s a little surprising for us here in Iowa to see how she’s perceived by folks outside the state.”
It’s not that Iowans all adore her. The self-proclaimed hog castrator polarises opinion in the cornbelt, just as she is beginning to do in Washington, where she has barely unpacked her bags.
Some Democratic voters in the November election said the 44-year-old mother “scared” them as a Tea Party extremist. Ernst vowed to fight abortion rights and tame big government, putting the Affordable Care Act, the Clean Water Act, minimum wage and the Department of Education, among other things, in her sights.
Yet the previously obscure one-term state senator trounced her fancied Democratic rival, Bruce Braley, in what was supposed to be a purple state.
Ernst inoculated herself against the extremist label with a folksy charm and personal story that convinced voters – including most independents – that she better reflected their values. She also managed to unite the fractious GOP tribes, with endorsements spanning from Mitt Romney to Palin, who invoked her own campaign trail nickname in dubbing Ernst a “Midwest Mama Grizzly”.
Ernst grew up in humble circumstances in Red Oak, a remote outpost of Montgomery County, amid corn fields and grain silos. She obtained a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State university and a master of public administration degree from Columbus college.
Her ambition and leadership first shone in the military. As a member of the army reserve and Iowa national guard, she commanded a company in Kuwait in 2003, running logistics convoys into southern Iraq. As a lieutenant colonel she now commands a national guard battalion.
Ernst was elected Montgomery county auditor in 2004 and won a state senate seat in 2011. She won the Republican nomination for US Senate after running a now-famous campaign ad in which she gazed into the camera and boasted of castrating hogs.
“So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork,” she said in the ad, titled Squeal. “Washington is full of big spenders. Let’s make ’em squeal.”
Even Democrats laughed – until Ernst nabbed what was supposed to be a Democratic seat.
It remains unclear how radical or combative she will prove in Washington, but Iowa’s liberals may – may – over time warm to her, just as they did to their veteran senator Chuck Grassley, said Hagle. “He’s very conservative, but beloved even by Democrats.”
