Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says she has absolutely no regrets about her decision to step down in January. Ernst announced just over a year ago she would not seek re-election and the Iowa Republican Party hosted an event Friday night to honor her. Ernst wiped away tears toward the end of her remarks. “I am going to spend a lot more time with my family and with my mother, who is extremely important to me,” Ernst said, her voice breaking. “I will be able to spend time with my grandchildren.” Ernst’s first grandchild is a boy named Miles who was featured in a video played during the event. Ernst revealed the due date for grandchild “number two” is around Election Day.
The evening also featured video tributes from some of Ernst’s southwest Iowa neighbors and top Iowa Republicans, like fellow Senator Chuck Grassley. Then Iowa G-O-P Chairman Jeff Kaufmann invited Ernst to sit on stage to answer some of his questions, like how Senator Grassley is perceived in D.C.
Ernst, who called Grassley a mentor, said it was a slog to follow in Senator Grassley’s footsteps by visiting each of Iowa’s 99 counties each year, but it’s one of the things she’ll miss.
Kaufmann reminded Ernst that she gave the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech in 2015 and mentioned wearing bread bags as a kid to protect her shoes.
After several people in the audience raised their hands, Ernst told the crowd she and Governor Reynolds once got into a very deep discussion about wearing bread bags to school. “And she was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I remember my mom slipping on the Wonder bags,” Ernst said. “‘And I was like ‘Wonder Bread? You had designer bread bags? We had generic.'” Ernst ended the night by singling out current and former staff members in the audience and thanking them for their work.
