Grassley selected as next Speaker of the House

State Representative Pat Grassley, a Dike-New Hartford alumni and area farmer, has been chosen as the next Speaker of the Iowa House and will start in his new role at the beginning of the 2020 legislative session.

Grassley, who has served since 2006 and is currently the chair of the Appropriations committee, will replace Linda Upmeyer as she has officially announced that she will not seek re-election in 2020. The majority party selects the speaker by a vote of its members, and the change will be finalized at the beginning of the next session. As Grassley explained it, the Speaker “manages” the House and helps to shape its legislative priorities.

“I think anyone that served under a good speaker like Speaker Upmeyer would say that just managing the caucus in general, as generic as that sounds, (and) trying to get 53 different people on the same page day in and day out, that’s a pretty big task. That’s been something she’s very good at, and that’s pretty big shoes to fill,” he said on Monday.

Now that Grassley has ascended to the highest position in the Iowa House, he is the second representative of southern Butler County in the last five years to hold leadership in one of the two chambers. Bill Dix, a former State Senator from Shell Rock, was the Senate Majority Leader until his abrupt resignation in 2018.

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