(Radio Iowa) — House Speaker Linda Upmeyer announced at the end of September she would not seek re-election and would step down as speaker. House Republicans met in early October and elected Pat Grassley to replace Upmeyer. His current title is House Speaker-Select. He will become House Speaker when the full House takes a vote next Monday.

If you ask State Representative Pat Grassley to describe himself, he starts out by saying he’s a “sand farmer from New Hartford” and a dad. “Three kids — 13, 10 and 5. My wife’s an administrator at a nursing home in Ackley and then, obviously, my grandfather’s Senator Grassley and my dad’s the farmer-son of Senator Grassley,” Pat Grassley says. “Nobody knows his name and that’s the way he likes it.”

Pat and his dad, Robin Grassley, farm 17-hundred acres of corn and soybeans and raise about 200 head of cattle for sale each year. Grassley has repeatedly rejected the notion he’s being groomed to run for the U.S. Senate when his grandfather Chuck Grassley retires. “Everyone thinks there’s been this grand scheme and I kind of joke about it because it is kind of silly, Grassley says. “that when my grandfather had my dad in 1960, that someday he would have a son that was in politics just in time for him to be ready to retire.”

Grassley, who is 36 years old, has been around politics his whole life. As a nine-year-old, he was pictured riding a bicycle in one of Chuck Grassley’s campaign ads, then his grandfather used the same ad when Pat Grassley was a high school freshman. “Nothing better than it running every 15 minutes on the TV,” Grassley jokes. “That’s not hard on your reputation.”

Grassley’s Republican colleagues in the House have selected him to take over as speaker next week. It means he’ll be in charge of recruiting candidates and raising money for Republicans running for House seats in November. Grassley says it’s no secret Democrats are focused on winning a majority of those races, but Grassley points to Democratic incumbents who may be vulnerable because they live in districts President Trump won in 2016 and Governor Reynolds, a Republican, won in 2018.

“The president being on the ballot in some of these seats I actually think has a positive effect,” Grassley says. “The governor displayed the ability to win some of these seats we don’t currently hold and so I think those two things really bode well for us in the coming election.” As he enters his 14th year in the legislature, Grassley will be leading negotiations over legislation. Grassley says it’ll be difficult to devise a package that would raise the state sales tax AND reduce other taxes during the 2020 legislature.

“I probably bring a little bit more caution to the table that others have on this because this is a big conversation piece that’s going to happen,” Grassley says, “if there’s even the appetite to do it in the legislature.” Grassley says a priority for House Republicans will be finding ways to expand access to affordable child care.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CST

DE SOTO, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa State Patrol says a passenger who was standing outside a car that had crashed into a guardrail was killed when another car hit her. Television station KCCI reports the incident happened early Saturday morning along I-80 near De Soto in central Iowa after a vehicle lost control due to slippery road conditions and hit a guardrail. Investigators say a passenger in the car, 51-year-old Carmen Benitez, was standing outside the wrecked vehicle when a second car hit her. Officials say Benitez died at the scene. The 26-year-old driver of the second car was treated for injuries at a nearby hospital.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A federal judge in Nebraska has awarded more than $610,000 to an Iowa company that sued after it said it wasn’t fully paid for masonry work at a national veterans cemetery in Omaha that opened in 2016. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Seedorff Masonry, of Strawberry Point, Iowa, sued Archer Western Construction, of Chicago, and its insurer in 2018, saying it hadn’t been paid nearly $610,000 for labor and limestone it supplied for the Omaha National Cemetery. On Thursday, a judge in Omaha awarded that amount, plus $138,000 in interest and costs, to Seedorff.

LECLAIRE, Iowa (AP) — Officials in eastern Iowa say train traffic has resumed in downtown LeClaire a day after a derailment sent more than a dozen freight cars and tankers off the tracks just yards from the Mississippi River. The LeClaire Fire Department said in a news release Saturday that all derailed cars had been moved away from the main track and would be hauled away by tractor-trailers throughout the day. Officials say Canadian Pacific Railroad had found no significant air or water contamination from the Friday morning derailment. No one was injured and no buildings were damaged in the derailment, although some vehicle in a nearby parking lot were damaged.

IOWA CITY – Officials with the Iowa Department of Corrections said Friday, prison inmate, 59-year old Delbert Duane Anderson, was pronounced dead due to natural causes Friday afternoon, at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Anderson had been serving a 30-year maximum term for the crimes of Burglary 1st Degree and Willful Injury Causing Bodily Injury from Johnson County. His incarceration began on December 29, 2006.