Greenfield Announces She Will Challenge Ernst in 2020

DES MOINES, Iowa – Theresa Greenfield announced that she will run for the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, in 2020.

Greenfield in a campaign video released Monday morning said, “I’m a proud farm kid with farm kid values. I worked my way through community college, became a community planner, and today, I’m the president of a small business.”

“Joni Ernst told us she’d be different and said she’d to go to Washington to ‘make ’em squeal,’ but the special interests and corporate lobbyists keep feasting like hogs at the trough,” Greenfield said in a released statement.

The Ernst campaign responded to Greenfield’s announcement.

“Iowans know that they have bold leadership in Joni Ernst, who has spent her life serving our country in the military and fighting for Iowa. Working with Democrats and Republicans, Joni has a proven record as an Iowan who takes on coastal elites and is making them squeal in Washington. Joni looks forward to continuing to take her record as an independent voice that delivers for Iowa to all 99 counties, as she has done for the last 4.5 years. In sharp contrast, Theresa Greenfield becomes the latest liberal to enter the crowded Democratic primary as the candidate of Washington special interests who would like nothing more than to inflict the Nancy Pelosi/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda of the Green New Deal, government-run health care, and infanticide on Iowans,” Brook Ramlet, a senior advisor for Ernst’s re-election campaign, said in a released statement.

Greenfield ran for Congress in 2018 but withdrew her nomination petitions for the Democratic primary after her campaign manager admitted he falsified petition signatures. An attempt was made by her campaign to obtain the 1,790 signatures needed, but it fell short. The Iowa 3rd Democrat Central Committee then attempted to have her name placed on the ballot, but under the advice of Attorney General Tom Miller, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate kept Greenfield off the ballot. Cindy Axne later won the Democratic primary and unseated former U.S. Rep. David Young. Greenfield was considered the frontrunner among the Democrat field before the primary.

Greenfield faces a three-way primary as Democratic attorney Kimberly Graham announced she would run, as well as, Eddie Mauro who also ran for Congress in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District in 2018.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann said that Greenfield is just another candidate joining what he describes as a lackluster field of candidates.

“In a primary filled with lackluster candidates, Theresa Greenfield is the Democrats’ latest lame attempt to find an ill-advised candidate to challenge Senator Ernst. Greenfield wants to join the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris in the Senate, where she would fit right in with their tax-hiking agenda of government-run health care and the Green New Deal,” Kaufmann said.

“From the battlefields of Iraq to the U.S. Senate, no one has fought harder for Iowans than Joni Ernst. She has criss-crossed the state, listening to Iowans and taking their concerns to Washington. Sen. Ernst has fought for the middle-class and stood up to elites and special interests. Iowans support Ernst and her record of results, not a failed candidate who would be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democrats’ socialist agenda,” he added.

According to a Des Moines Register/Medicom poll taken in February, Ernst enjoys a 57 percent approval rating.