Iowa candidates farm for votes

One of the most important Senate contests in this midterm election cycle — and one of the tightest, according to recent public polling — could hinge on winning over the Hawkeye State’s agriculture industry.

But the fight for the hearts and minds of Iowa’s farmers has only become more contested since earlier this year, when Braley was taped during a private fundraiser dismissing Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.”

That remark helped send Braley’s campaign into a temporary tailspin. But now Ernst is on the defensive, too, being attacked by Democrats who say she does not support the renewable fuel standard, which sets a minimum requirement for renewable fuels such as ethanol among the fuel sold in the U.S.

At a “Farmers for Joni Ernst” event Friday in Independence, Iowa, with the Iowa Farm Bureau, it was clear Ernst has taken those attacks seriously, and she attempted to push back against that characterization at the very top of her remarks.

“What I can say is, I do support the RFS. I support ethanol, I support biodiesel,” Ernst said, standing in an agriculture museum among a veritable shrine to biofuels, including an ethanol pump and an old GMC pick-up truck. “I just want to make that very clear.”

The Ernst campaign had a camera crew in tow, not leaving it to chance that this message would be heard far and wide in the form of an eventual web or television ad.

Some of the damage has already been done, and the Iowa Corn Growers Association PAC has endorsed Braley anyway.

But Ernst is still enjoying support from many farmers who were turned off after Braley’s dismissive remark about Grassley, made to a room full of trial lawyers.

“It was more of a disparagement of the whole state being an agricultural state,” said Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau, which has endorsed Ernst. “I saw it as an attack on Iowa. …I think a lot of farmers felt just as I did.”

The sting of Braley’s words is somewhat less potent now, a few months later. But Republicans and Ernst have tried to weave them into a larger narrative about the “Iowa way,” which Ernst claims, versus the “Washington way,” which she assigns to Braley, a sitting member of Congress.

The latest iteration of that argument has seen Ernst attack Braley for receiving support from Tom Steyer, who she Friday described as “a California billionaire environmentalist, extreme environmentalist, who has spoken out against ethanol.”

Meanwhile, ads by the pro-Democratic Senate Majority PAC in Iowa have tried to tie Ernst to the “oil billionaire” brothers Charles and David Koch, whose company, Koch Industries, has opposed subsidies for ethanol. The Kochs have spent millions of dollars to support Ernst, as Steyer has spent millions in support of Braley.

It’s still unclear which appeal will resonate more among farmers, a large, influential demographic among Iowa voters. But as Ernst has slipped in polls in recent weeks to a statistical tie with Braley, she is as eager as ever to make her case.

On Friday, Hill introduced Ernst as a “farm girl,” and she later drove the point home with a requisite nod to Braley’s controversial remarks about agriculture.

“Sen. Grassley, who is just a farmer,” Ernst began, pausing for laughter, “a very brilliant one…”