Joni Kay Ernst is an American politician and veteran serving as the junior United States Senator for Iowa since 2015. Ernst served in the Iowa Army National Guard from 1993 to 2015, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. She was elected Montgomery County Auditor in 2004 and reelected in 2008. Ernst was elected to the Iowa State Senate in a special election in 2011 and re elected in 2012. In July 2013, Ernst announced that she would seek the Senate seat held by retiring Democratic Senator Tom Harkin.
About Joni Ernst in brief
Joni Kay Ernst is an American politician and veteran serving as the junior United States Senator for Iowa since 2015. Ernst served in the Iowa Army National Guard from 1993 to 2015, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. She has been characterized as a reliable ally of President Donald Trump, and was thought to be a possible running mate in his 2016 campaign. Ernst received widespread attention for a campaign advertisement she released in March 2014 in which she made a tongue-in-cheek comparison between her experience castrating pigs and her ability to cut pork in Congress. Ernst opposes legalized abortion, and has supported a fetal personhood amendment and introduced legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. She opposes the Affordable Care Act and has called for reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Ernst was elected Montgomery County Auditor in 2004 and reelected in 2008. She was elected to the Iowa State Senate in a special election in 2011 and re elected in 2012. Following her election to the U.S. Senate, Ernst resigned from theIowa State Senate, effective November 28, 2014. In July 2013, Ernst announced that she would seek the Senate seat held by retiring Democratic Senator Tom Harkin. In March 2014, Ernst was endorsed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, to whom she has drawn comparisons. She served as a logistics officer and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in theIowa National Guard. In 2003–2004, she spent 12 months in Kuwait as the company commander of the 1168th Transportation Company, during the Iraq War.
In an interview with Time Magazine in 2014, she said that she was sexually harassed in the military, saying she would support removing sexual assault cases from the chain of command. In May 2014, the United States Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying group, endorsed her. By May, she was being described as the front-runner in the Republican primary for the 2014 Iowa Senate race. In February 2014, a Suffolk University poll showed her essentially tied with Mark Jacobs with a narrow lead and a Loras College poll showed she essentially tied. In April, Ernst promoted a conspiracy theory that a United Nations Agenda 21 plan could force farmers to sell their land to the United Nations, forcing them to be forced off of their land. She said that the plan could lead to their land being forced to be used for sustainable development, and that farmers could be forced to sell off their land for development. In October 2013, Iowa Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed her in October 2013. The Koch brothers launched an advertising blitz, including a USD 257,000 campaign against Ernst’s biggest Republican rival, Mark Jacobs, who had supported a proposal to limit carbon emissions that Koch Industries opposed. After it aired, Ernst privately credited the Kochs and their allies for having \”really started my trajectory\” after her primary victory. In April 2014, Ernst was described in the media as the “strong front-runners” in the GOP primary for 2014. She won the primary in February 2014 by a narrow margin of 21 points.
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