Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst faced a loud crowd at the University of Iowa Friday as she took questions at a town-hall-style meeting. Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act were the hot topic. The audience cheered when Ernst announced it’s unlikely the G-O-P’s latest proposal will pass.
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The event was punctuated with lots of shouting and booing. A group of protesters gathered outside. Ernst says she expected it to be worse.
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Ernst visits each of Iowa’s 99 counties annually, but this was the first time since Ernst became a senator in 2015 that she held a PUBLIC forum in the state’s most Democratic county. The latest data indicates there are more than twice as many registered Democratic voters as there are Republicans in the county.