Joni Ernst not offended by ex-Walker aide’s Iowa tweets

Sen. Joni Ernst said she was not bothered by tweets critical of Iowa posted by a now-former aide to Gov. Scott Walker.

The aide, Liz Mair, who this week was hired as an online consultant to Walker, abruptly resigned Tuesday after her tweets stoked controversy among some Iowa Republicans. In tweets surrounding the Iowa Freedom Summit staged by Citizens United and Rep. Steve King, for example, Mair said Iowa was “embarrassing itself.”

“The sooner we remove Iowa’s frontrunning status, the better off American politics and policy will be,” Mair wrote.

But Ernst, a freshman Republican from Iowa, wasn’t the least bit phased by those remarks.

“Everyone has the right to express how they feel,” Ernst told the Washington Examiner on Thursday.

Other Iowa Republicans took Mair’s remarks less in stride, leading to her quick exit from Walker’s team this week.

Iowa Republican Party chairman Jeff Kauffman told The New York Times that Walker should “send her her walking papers.”

“It’s obvious she doesn’t have a clue what Iowa’s all about,” Kauffman said.

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