Congressman Bruce Braley has spent part of this week visiting with people in jobs similar to those Braley held in the past, campaign events designed to highlight Braley’s biography as he runs for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Tom Harkin.
“This whole ‘Iowa Works’ tour has been to give me a chance to meet Iowans where they work, to highlight the hard work they do every day and to discuss policies that will allow them to get ahead and strengthen the middle class,” Braley says.
Braley was at Iowa State University Thursday, revisiting the campus newspaper when he had a paying job while he was an ISU student.
“The job that I had while I was there was running ad proofs around to Ames businesses, so I got a good understanding of how small businesses use advertising and how they think they about how they’re reaching out to customers because they would make changes to the proofs of the ads and then I would drive them back to The Daily offices, back before computers,” Braley says.
Braley talked with ISU and DMACC students this week about student loans and he talked with most of the crowds about raising the minimum wage.
“The most important thing congress could do to help the middle class is restore the minimum wage and pass the bill that Senator Harkin and I have cosponsored in the House and Senate,” Braley says, “and that would restore the minimum wage to the level of purchasing power to the level it had the last time that we increased it.”
This week Braley has scheduled stops at workplaces in Council Bluffs, Sioux City, Ankeny, Dougherty, Waterloo, Dubuque and Davenport.