It’s a week until Election Day, meaning, Iowans will have to endure just seven more days of robocalls, campaign speeches and political advertisements. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican who is not up for reelection, says he hears plenty of complaints about those commercials, which are appearing in every form of media.
“It’s the negative ads that people are irritated about, they respond to them,” Grassley says. “One candidate uses them and if another candidate doesn’t respond in kind, the accusations against the candidate then become the truth and they could be an outright lie.”
He notes there’s a congressional ad running in Iowa where one candidate is being bashed for voting on an amendment that ships jobs overseas — when the candidate who bought the ad voted in favor of the same amendment.
“Why does it go on?” Grassley asks. “Because it works. The only way it works is because people believe it and if people didn’t believe it or didn’t vote for the candidate that uses negative ads, they’d soon go off the air.”
Grassley says the politicking may be taking a brief break out of respect for those impacted by the so-called superstorm hitting the East Coast, but he’s confident, the caravan of campaign ads will be back very soon.