BFIA: Governor Culver said on Iowa Press that you may have a primary opponent. Would you like to speculate on who you think may run?

BK: Well, there's been a number of names bandied around but no recent ones and at this point I don't know of a name. I know of people who have surfaced in the past but it is my understanding at this point that there is no one actively pursuing it right now.

BFIA: The only name that we knew of was Governor Vilsack before he was appointed as Agriculture Secretary.

BK: Yeah, some people were touting Vilsack and he may well have [run] if he had not gotten appointed, and then some people were touting Christie Vilsack, who would have been a very serious candidate, obviously. But she's involved in a health care grant….so it's been that and Washington activities of her husband, I think, that are pinning her down, so she doesn't appear to be on the radar screen. Geri Huser from Altoona was mentioned in an article. Tom Fiegen who was a state Senator was making some noises but when I got in he evidently dropped it. The only other one, of course, is Sal Muhammad who has announced. I don't know how serious he is. Those are about the only ones that I know of and I think they've all moved on.

I think in terms of my campaign, we've got a lot to offer and we've got the desire – which is a very important thing in politics – you have to want to do it – and you have to do it early because going against an incumbent you've got to have time to test the organization and see if you can get it to perform. And nobody else so far has expressed a willingness to do that, so I'm confident that I'll be the candidate, and if there is a primary I do have an organization such that whoever would come in on a primary would be challenged to get a comparable group together.

My work with veterans groups across Iowa has given me a network that has allowed me to hold a number of fundraisers already in different parts of the state, so we've had quite a bit of help and we're expanding from that to reach other groups. Last night we had a fellow come over, from Fairfield, he's 88 years old – he's a Quaker, a pacificst, and he is quite an enthusiastic supporter. He recited some of his poetry for us. There's a belief about the military that we like to be for defense, but we don't like to be used for war. So I do think there's a common bond where I think that many soldiers are probably more peace loving than anyone who wasn't in the military would ever realize.

So the supporters come in all shapes and sizes. And the growth in the number of people that have heard of us, that are tired of Republicans and Charles Grassley – there is quite a few of them. It's quite amazing and I feel like I'm carrying the flag for a very good cause with a lot of people who believe in what we're doing.

BFIA: Supporters obviously are going to look for evidence that a challenger of a long-time incumbent such as Senator Grassley can win. What can you share with would-be supporters that might convince them to invest their time, energy and possibly financial resources into your campaign for the U.S. Senate?

BK: In January, Grassley's approval rating was 71%; in April it was 59%. I haven't heard any more recent polls, but it's a substantial drop. I think it was in part because the Republican brand is shattered and he is a Republican – and a very staunch Republican – so there's a downward trend, and I think that's going to carry through election day.

We've got a lot in our favor – Senator Grassley will be 78 years old on election day and if he would be re-elected he would be 84 years of age when he left office. I think a key thing is that since he's been in office all these years, since 1958, he's tended to keep the same circle of friends, and that circle of friends that was advising him when he was a young state legislator and young Congressman are still advising him in 2009 and 2010. And their views or attitude and the type of advice they give him is always the same. It's part of that right-wing drumbeat. There's an old proverb if you give a man a hammer and that's his only tool, every problem requires a hammer. And I think Grassley is there.

BFIA: Conventional campaign wisdom is that challengers must strike the right balance between being aggressive in their criticism of the incumbent and yet getting out their own positive message. What is the primary message you want Iowans to receive about your candidacy?

BK: A green tone, such as what Governor Culver and Governor Vilsack did on energy in the state, wind energy and some other areas, is important to carry through on the national level. When I served in the Carter administration, one of my very good friends, Mary O'Halloran, was chair of the Energy Committee, and then she went down to Kansas City, and there was a number of innovative things done in the Carter administration. If those policies would have been followed, even partially over the next 30 years, they would have saved us economically and probably would have helped us in the Middle East, had we followed them and been really serious about energy independence. Even if gas prices go down, national security is too important to leave energy independence off the table.

There's been a green movement across the country where we try to make green buildings that are sustainable, we try to reduce our carbon footprint. There are a lot of things we can do to make America green. In Iowa we're a naturally green state.  We have farmers out in the fields, green grass, and Iowans are more subliminally green than in many parts of the country because we have green all around us. We do tend to think in ways that are helpful to a green movement.

BFIA: Speaking of farmers in the field, what should be the role of federal government and your role as U.S. Senator in solving environmental issues involving CAFOS, corporate farm pollution, etc.

BK: That is a tough nut…. At the federal level, you have the EPA water quality rules that we deal with, and what Iowa has historically done has been to go with the bare bones minimum, and that might be in some areas a wrong-headed philosophy by Iowa. I grew up in northwest Iowa, and this spring in February or March, I was up in Algona, a town of about 4000-5000 people and we stopped to gas up the car and got a snoot-full in the city limits of Algona – strong smells – and my wife, being a farm girl, is used to it. But how would you ever get a business to come into a place that smells like that? It involves the world of economics, and agriculture is tremendously important to Iowa.

We can have both, we can have a hog industry and do the pro-active things to clean up our water and clean up our air, because where is the hog industry going to go? Because you have the food here. The corn and the beans that feed the animals grow here, and this creates somewhat of a barrier of entry for other states to get into the business and it gives us probably enough of an advantage that we can still have what we want, which is clean water, less smelly, clean air, and still have a hog industry.

But the way we're doing it, it's almost like in the old days when people would discriminate in housing. We're creating red lines in rural areas, essentially blocking off all other development in order to keep a hog industry there, and I think that's a mistake.

BFIA: President Obama announced his nomination for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, a Princeton and Yale Law graduate from a working class family, the first Latina to be nominated for the Supreme Court. Senator Grassley, one of the top-ranking Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee – which will first handle Sotomayor's nomination – said that the judge will start with a “clean slate” going into her nomination vetting and hearings. Grassley voted against her nomination for 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in 1998 and since the “clean slate” comment, the GOP has ratcheted up the rhetoric, some calling Sotomayor a “racist.” Can you comment on this nomination and what it means?