Patty Judge — the Democrat who’s challenging Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s bid for reelection — says Grassley is distorting HER record AND his own when it comes to pay raises. Grassley’s running a campaign ad that criticizes Judge for failing to voluntarily take a pay cut in 2009 when she was serving as Iowa’s lieutenant governor. “In the height of that recession, where he is trying to call me out, he took a permanent pay raise that was nearly $5000,” Judge says. “Now that was his 23rd raise since he went to Washington.”

Judge served one term as lieutenant governor and her salary was about 103-thousand dollars. “As lieutenant governor I never took a pay raise, including a cost of living adjustment. It simply was not done,” Judge says. Grassley told Radio Iowa earlier this week that “several times in the last five or six years” he’s taken “a pay cut.” Judge says that’s not a “straight answer.”

“He’s trying to claim that voting against a COLA — a cost of living adjustment — is the same thing as taking a pay cut, you know. Really,” Judge says. “Only someone who’s been in Washington too long would try to make that kind of argument.” According to the U.S. Senate’s website, the salaries for senators have been frozen at 174-thousand dollars since 2009. Judge says Grassley and other Republicans insisted on taking the longest summer recess since the 1950s — and she suggests their pay should be cut as a result of that extra vacation.

“Chuck Grassley is more concerned with airing negative attack ads today than working on behalf of Iowa,” Judge says. Grassley’s campaign manager is accusing Judge of trying to “change the subject” from her mismanagement of state government while she was lieutenant governor. Grassley campaign manager Robert Haus (like “house”) says Judge took a “meat cleaver” to the state budget and forced workers to take furloughs or be laid off, but wouldn’t take a pay cut herself.

Grassley told Radio Iowa on Tuesday that he has “consistently voted for measures to deny all congressional pay raises.” Judge says during the government shutdown of 2013 Grassley continued to accept his taxpayer-funded salary, while about 120 other members of congress donated their salaries to charity or back to the government.

(Radio Iowa)