Did Chuck Grassley buy the Iowa House Speakership for his grandson? The career politician of over sixty-two years used his Hawkeye PAC to give Iowa House Republicans and the Iowa House Majority large contributions in 2018 and 2020 that raise legitimate questions about the motivation behind them. 

The Hawkeye PAC, a Leadership PAC affiliated with Chuck Grassley, went from giving modest contributions to both Iowa House and Senate candidates as well as the Republican Party of Iowa, to in 2018 giving donations totaling $251,000 to exclusively fifty-seven House candidates.  These donations came the year before Chuck Grassley’s grandson was to run for Speaker of the Iowa State House.  

After Representative Pat Grassley was elected Speaker of the House in 2019, the payouts continued in a disturbing trend. The PAC contributed $140,000 to individual House Republicans. In addition, the PAC contributed $535,000 to the Iowa House Majority Fund, which his grandson, Pat Grassley, would control and distribute as Speaker of the House. Since 2009, the most the PAC had ever given to the Iowa House Majority Fund was $10,000. His total contributions to the Iowa House for 2020 was an incredible $675,000.

Nearly seventy-one percent of the donations brought into the PAC in 2020 went to the Iowa House Republican candidates. Why did Chuck Grassley direct the PAC to send so much support to the securely held Iowa State House in 2020, while nationally, Republicans lost the presidency and lost the majority in both the United States Senate and House? What do you think motivated Chuck Grassley? That is a question worth asking yourself.