Photo: United States Senate / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Chuck Grassley has been in the U.S. Senate since 1981, and he still visits all 99 Iowa counties every year. He has done it every year since 1981. Wright County gets its stop like every other.
Grassley was born in 1933 in New Hartford, in Butler County, and still farms there with his family. He served in the Iowa House and the U.S. House before winning his Senate seat.
He is the longest-serving Republican senator in history and has chaired the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees. In 2025 he became president pro tempore of the Senate for the second time.
His tweets, typed himself, are their own genre. But his reputation rests mostly on oversight work and whistleblower protection, and on showing up at county courthouses and small-town high schools to take whatever questions come.
Kim Sanders writes for Clarion News Online.