Iowa's Senate candidates on the attack in first debate
Now that he is trailing Republican opponent Joni Ernst by six percentage points in a new poll, Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, had his work cut out for him during the Senate candidates' first debate Sunday night.
Both Braley and Ernst spent most of the evening trying to land a punch on their opponents, the Des Moines Register reports, attacking everything from their policies, to personalities, to outside supporters.
Ernst landed one of the most cutting attack lines of the debate after Braley tried to paint himself as the candidate who would be able to build bridges with his colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
"Congressman, you threatened to sue a neighbor over chickens that came onto your property. You're talking about bipartisanship. How do we expect as Iowans to believe that you will work across the aisle when you can't walk across your yard?" Ernst asked, referring to an incident in which Braley appeared to threaten to sue his neighbor if they did not stop allowing their chickens to run in the yard of the Braleys' vacation home (Braley denies the threat to sue).
And as Braley continued to attempt to tie Ernst to the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, major backers of Republican candidates, Ernst told him, "You are not running against these other people. You are running against me."
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They sparred on a number of other issues, including the Affordable Care Act (Braley would keep but fix it, while Ernst would repeal it), the Department of Education (Ernst would like to shut it down and move some programs to other departments), and the minimum wage (Braley wants to raise it to $10.10 an hour while Ernst says the states should decide the minimum wage but would not suggest an exact figure).
Kedron Bardwell, an associate professor of political science at Simpson College in Indianola, told the Register that Braley was at his strongest when he challenged Ernst to support bipartisan immigration reform in Washington and talking about the role of global allies in fighting terrorist threats.
"This is another great example where tea party obstructionism is keeping us from getting this problem solved," Braley said to Ernst, according to The Hill. "So senator, will you join John McCain and Marco Rubio and call on Speaker Boehner to bring this immigration bill to the floor of the House so we can pass it?"
Another political science professor, Dennis Goldford of Drake University, told the Register that Braley, "showed enough strength to give his campaign the chance to right the ship a little bit."