Republican Joni Ernst says she’s “honored and humbled” to be the first woman from Iowa to serve in congress. Ernst spoke by phone with Iowa reporters shortly after being sworn in as a United States Senator.
Ernst says she didn’t base her campaign for the U.S. Senate on the fact that she would break the glass ceiling in Iowa politics.
A number of national publications and, most recently, ABC News, have put Ernst on list of new members of congress to watch. She downplays the attention.
She asked both Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and now-former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat, to be her escorts for the pomp and circumstance of day one as a Senator. Ernst says while she “very much” disagrees with some of Harkin’s political views, she was sending a signal to her new Democratic colleagues in the U.S. Senate.
