“The other 29-year-old who Democrats just elected to Congress”

While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting headlines and much press, Iowa’s Abby Finkenauer as a slightly older new member of congress is getting ready to represent Iowa’s working families, farmer, students and children in the first district. Finkenauer has been a rising star in the Iowa Democratic Party for a few years. She has earned the trust of her district through her hard work and honesty.

From an instagram post cited in the article, Finkenauer lets out a lot of frustration on the last session of of the Iowa legislature:

View this post on Instagram

Around 7 AM one of the worst legislative sessions for Iowa families, finally came to a close. Walking out this morning I thought about how different I felt walking out after my first adjournment in the House when I was a Page at 18. I was so excited to be starting my adult life in Iowa after picking to stay in Iowa for college, and how I knew Iowa was a place that would put value in my future and be a place of equality and respect. We raised the minimum wage that session and added sexual orientation to Iowa Civil Rights Act, just to name a few things which absolutely changed Iowa for the better. This year, walking out, I'm reminded about how quickly progress hard fought can be taken away. 4 months. That's all it was and yet that's all it took to gut workers rights for 180,000 Iowans, lower wages, pass provisions making it harder for every hard working Iowan who gets hurt on the job to receive fair compensation, restrict a woman's right to her own health care choices as well as gut funding making it harder for men and women to receive family planning services, and underfund our education system from K-12 to community colleges and our public universities – again, just to name a few. On that note, this eastern Iowa girl doesn't forget when you mess with the lives of her friends, family and neighbors. Although we all may need some rest now after 24 hrs straight at the Capitol, tomorrow we get back up and I promise you, this fight for Iowa is only getting started. 💪🏻

A post shared by Abby Finkenauer (@abby4iowa) on Apr 22, 2017 at 6:03am PDT

So it was good to see thinkprogress.org do an in depth article on Iowa’s new 1st district representative highlighting her background and the reasons she is a traditional Democrat. At a 2015 fundraiser, Finkenauer herself explains where she got her political leanings: (7 minutes).  

I know most of us can’t wait until the new congress is sworn in and the new Democratic majority can get to work turning this country back from a country that attacks its workers, teachers, poor elderly – in short everybody who is not rich – and goes back to work for those people once again.

Finkenauer will be one of three Democrats representing Iowa in the new US House. That feels so nice to say that. Along with Abby Finkenauer Iowa will have Cindy Axne representing the third district and of course old hand Dave Loebsack from district 2. 

Unfortunately that leaves us with Iowa’s singular major embarrassment in congress in the person of Steve King.  In a very embarrassing exchange this week in a Judiciary committee hearing where Republicans were trying to claim that Google’s search algorithms made Republicans look bad, King had this exchange with Google’s CEO:  (video at link)

• At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) why his 7-year-old granddaughter saw a photo of the congressman with inappropriate language while playing a game on her iPhone.

• Pichai answered, “Congressman, iPhone is made by a different company.”

• The Democratic staff table erupted in laughter at Pichai’s reply, according to Business Insider’s Joe Perticone, who attended Tuesday’s hearing.

• Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California) told the Iowa congressman later in the hearing that if he wanted “positive search results, do positive things.”