Hello,

I’ve done a lot of jobs.

I worked the tools in my dad’s machine shop, welding and fixing trucks and farm implements. Later, to live on my own, I was a math tutor, a farm hand, a construction worker, a bar manager… even a slaughterhouse worker.

That slaughterhouse job was really something. It built fortitude in this 17-year-old. I recall showing a paycheck to my mother. She said, “Michael, that’s more money than your father has ever made.” Those words stay with me today.

In 1978, the wages at a meatpacking plant could provide a full-time worker with a house, kid’s tuition, a vacation, and maybe even a Buick. But then Chuck Grassley got to the U.S. Senate.

Actually, every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has sat back and watched profitability taken from the real producers – the workers. Free-market to them means industry running amuck. And Chuck Grassley helped make it all happen.

In exchange, Chuck Grassley has gotten millions of dollars from Wall Street execs, Big Pharma donors, and every kind of corporate PAC you can imagine plied into his campaign account.

I’m running for Senate against Chuck Grassley because we need more progressive Democrats who come from humble beginnings and remember what it means to have worked a real job. Iowa deserves a senator who will stand up to corporations and big money special interests – not take their money like Grassley has done for 46 years.

Of course, the Super PACs are already circling – raising millions of dollars to spend attacking me on TV. I’m a hard target being a Navy veteran with rural roots, but that won’t stop them. Not with control of the Senate at stake.

In order to fight back and turn Iowa blue, we need to raise another $200,000 before our mid-month deadline. Right now, we’re still falling $41,856 short, but if grassroots donors like you chip in now, I know we can hit our goal and send Chuck Grassley packing this November:

Please, may I count on you to give $5 or more right now – whatever you can afford to spare before our critical mid-month deadline – to help me defeat Chuck Grassley, turn Iowa blue, and protect our Democratic majority in the Senate?

My mom and dad taught the Franken kids the importance of hard work, service, and giving back. I hope to honor those values every day in the U.S. Senate.

Thank you for being a part of the team,

Mike Franken, VADM, U.S. Navy (ret.)