Republican Joni Ernst won reelection to her Iowa U.S. Senate seat Tuesday after an expensive and at times bruising race against Democrat Theresa Greenfield.
Voters gave another term to Ernst following a campaign that featured a blizzard of television ads and three heated televised debates. The two candidates had more than $170 million in spending on media as parties and interest groups poured money into the race, one of the costliest in the nation.
“The election is over and it’s time to start the healing,” Ernst said after taking the stage at a downtown Des Moines hotel to chants of “Joni.” “There is far more than unites us than divides us.”
It was a more intense race than in 2014, when Ernst breezed into office with an 8-point victory thanks in part to an image molded by television ads of her riding a motorcycle, shooting a handgun and promising to make big-spenders in Washington “squeal.” The squeal ad in particular vaulted Ernst to national attention, as she walked through a barn while noting she “grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm” and was ready to cut pork. The ad was interspersed with scenes of pigs and the sounds of squeals.
