At 93, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said he worries a Democratic governor could name his Senate successor if he dies in office, while insisting he plans no such exit.

The longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate put the succession question squarely on the table at the GOP’s annual Reagan Dinner in West Des Moines. Grassley told the crowd he does not want a Democrat in the governor’s office deciding who fills his seat if he dies before his term ends.

ABC News reported the remarks from late last week, drawing on video of the speech. Grassley is the oldest sitting U.S. senator, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and in the middle of his eighth term, which runs until Jan. 3, 2029.

He celebrated his 93rd birthday on Sept. 17. Days later, on Sept. 23, he was still at work in Washington, presiding over a hearing on men in women’s sports at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The West Des Moines speech mixed gratitude with a blunt political warning.

“At 93 years of age, I don't know how many more groups of Republicans like this I’m going to have a chance to talk to,” Grassley said.

"But I want to take advantage of it. But one of the reasons I'm worried about who's going to be elected governor -- I don’t plan on dying in office -- but if I did, I don’t want a Democrat governor choosing my successor."

He repeated the core line cleanly: “I don't want a Democrat governor choosing my successor.”

Iowa’s fall governor race now carries Senate weight

The mechanism is straightforward. If Grassley died in the next two years, the next Iowa governor, to be elected this fall, would make a temporary appointment to fill the Senate seat until the 2028 election. That is not theory. It is how Senate vacancies work in the state.

Grassley has not said whether he will seek a ninth term in 2028. He has made clear he does not intend to leave by dying on the job. He has also made clear he wants Republican control of the office that would name any interim replacement.

Polling already frames the stakes. A late June Fox News poll showed Democrat Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor, with a 9-point lead over Republican Zach Lahn among registered voters. A New York Times/Siena poll from around the same period found the two candidates essentially neck-and-neck among likely voters.

That spread matters beyond Des Moines. A single Senate seat can decide committee control, confirmations, and the fate of major nominations, as recent razor-thin confirmation fights have shown.

Grassley’s warning is about who holds the appointment power if the unexpected happens. Voters who shrug at the governor’s race are shrugging at a possible handoff of a senior Republican Senate seat.

Long service, plain talk, and institutional memory

Grassley has spent decades calling out Democratic policy failures in public settings, not just private meetings. Years ago, after then-Sen. Max Baucus announced his retirement, Grassley told an audience the Montana Democrat was leaving “because he’s so fed up with the possibility of the implementation of Obamacare being a train wreck,” National Review noted at the time, adding that Baucus had chaired Finance and helped draft the 2010 law.

The pattern is consistent. He names the policy problem, names the political consequence, and does it in front of voters. The Reagan Dinner comments fit that record. He is not pretending age is irrelevant. He is refusing to pretend party control of the governorship is irrelevant either.

Capitol Hill has already seen how quickly health scares around senior leaders can dominate the news cycle, including coverage of Mitch McConnell’s medical emergency. Grassley’s remarks force the succession question into the open before a crisis, not after one.

He still shows up. He still chairs Judiciary. He still draws a room of Iowa Republicans and tells them exactly what worries him about the next governor. That is accountability talk, not self-pity.

Party control is the point, not the footnotes

Democrats would appoint a Democrat. Republicans would appoint a Republican. Grassley said the quiet part out loud because the appointment would last until the 2028 election and would shape the Senate during a stretch when every vote counts.

Individual senators already break from party lines on high-profile national security and authority votes, as when Fetterman split from Democrats on Trump’s Iran military authority. A temporary appointee chosen by a governor would arrive with a different mandate and a different set of pressures.

Grassley’s seat is not a trophy. It is a working vote on judges, border policy, spending, and executive nominations. Handing the interim choice to a Democratic governor would change that vote for months or longer.

Republican voters in Iowa now have a concrete reason to treat the governor’s race as a Senate race by another name. Sand leads in one major poll and runs even in another. Lahn has a path. Grassley has told his own party why the outcome matters to him personally and institutionally.

He also reminded them he is still in the fight. “I don’t plan on dying in office,” he said. The clause that followed was the one that mattered for the map: he does not want a Democrat making the call if plans change.

Age, succession, and party control are not rude subjects in a constitutional system that fills vacancies by gubernatorial appointment. They are the subjects. Grassley put them on the record in West Des Moines instead of leaving them for a scramble later.

Other recent Senate fights have turned on debt, inflation, and resistance inside the conference itself, including when GOP senators pushed back on a major White House proposal. Power questions never stay abstract for long.

Grassley’s message was simpler than the process chart. Elect a Republican governor, or risk a Democratic hand on a Republican Senate seat if the worst happens. He said he does not plan on that ending. He also said he will not ignore who would choose the replacement if it came.

Voters can disagree with him. What they cannot do is claim he hid the stakes.