Bruce Braley is trying to win back Iowa farmers after he disparaged them in comments recorded earlier this year — now, he’s claiming to be one of them. One problem: Braley, a lawyer, doesn’t own any farmland or participate in any farming operations.
During a Fourth of July parade over the weekend, an Iowa woman said to him, ”We’re farmers.”
“So am I,” Braley appears to say, while shaking a child’s hand.
“So is Grassley,” the attendee responds, referencing Braley’s slight of the state’s Republican senator from January, in which he called Grassley “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” Braley reiterated that he is also a farmer.
The Des Moines Register reports to the contrary: He isn’t an active farmer, the paper found, with no land, income, or operations pertaining to farming. Grassley has since weighed in on Braley’s claims too, saying “I thought his profession was being a lawyer.”
Braley’s campaign has since issued a statement saying the congressman misheard the woman in the parade and thought she said “We’re for farmers,” to which Braley said he is too.