The Hawkeye on the Hill
Driving alone. He has also become the patron saint of whistle-blowers from all over the government, because in 1986 he pushed through amendments to the False Claims Act that allowed whistleblowers to collect a portion of damages paid by firms that defraud the government. Grassley says one reason he spent so much of his energy trying to root out fraud in government agencies was because he could do it without having to cut deals or trade favors. It was a tractor he could drive alone. "The thing about oversight is that you could do it yourself. You don't need 51 votes to do it, and you don't have to get down on your hands and knees before some powerful committee chairman and beg permission to do it."
Today, Grassley is one of those powerful committee chairmen, but you wouldn't know it from his habits. Grassley jogs 2 miles every morning with staffers, starting at exactly 5:29 a.m. He jogs in the morning instead of the afternoon because "I don't want to take two showers a day," he says. Afterward, he generally has a bowl of oatmeal. He's also famous for a frugal streak. He does not eat at the weekly Republican caucus lunch, because it costs $20. "I'm not going to pay $20 for a salad," he says. He hasn't embraced the atmospherics of his position for a reason. "I have seen a lot of powerful senators walk out of here, and then the next day they are a regular citizen and they don't know how to deal with it. I'm not going to have this big letdown when I walk out of here."
Meanwhile, the image of the man off the prairie endures. He has not actually raised a pig since he came to Congress 28 years ago, but the "hog farmer" moniker remains, and he does farm corn and soybeans on a 710-acre spread back home with son Robin.
"He is an interesting character because even after all this time in Washington, he has managed to continue to portray himself as a pig farmer from Butler County," says Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa. "I don't know that he does it intentionally, but it does work to his advantage."
Indeed. "He's dumb like a fox," says former Sen. Bob Dole, laughing out loud as he emerges from Grassley's office. Dole had been there for a typical lobbying call, but Grassley quickly turned it to his advantage by urging Dole to talk to another committee chairman about supporting Grassley's Medicare proposal.
"Chuck Grassley is one of the smartest and one of the most underestimated men in the Senate," says Bob Packwood, the former senator and finance chair, "and if anybody thinks that because he goes home to Iowa and farms every weekend, it means he doesn't know a whole hell of a lot about taxes or Medicare, or that he is not 10 times savvy, they're mistaken. If you're going to mess with Chuck, you've got to be smart and tenacious."
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