Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the oldest member of Congress, is ringing in his 93rd year on Thursday.
At 93, he is the oldest sitting member of the Senate and is the sixth-longest-serving senator in U.S. history.
On his birthday, he appears to be in a celebratory mood as he posted a picture of himself in a Dairy Queen-branded sweatshirt holding a birthday cake gifted to him by his fellow Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a 56-year-old Republican who is retiring from the Senate this year.
“Gr8ful for my fellow Senator for Iowa who brings me my favorite Dairy Queen cake each yr,” he posted.
He also posted that he went out for ice cream on Wednesday night with Ernst and some other Iowans.
Grassley has spent over six decades of his life in public office, having first been elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 1958. He was then elected to the U.S. House in 1975, and later the Senate in 1980, a seat which he has held since.
To put it in some context, he was first elected to office during the Eisenhower administration. He has been in office since he was 25 years old.
Still, he is seemingly popular in Iowa, as save for his first-ever election, Grassley has never won re-election without getting at least 60 percent of the vote.
The Iowa senator most recently won re-election in the 2022 midterm elections. He has not yet said if he plans to run for a ninth term in 2028, when he would be 95 years old, but he has also not definitively ruled it out.
Last year, he told reporters to “ask me the question in a couple of years,” citing the need to consider the same factors he has “through several re-elections, and that is family considerations, and whether or not I can do the job.”
Even so, in 2022, just after winning his eighth term, he proactively filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission for the 2028 election, but that still doesn’t guarantee he will run. The paperwork only greenlights his participation in campaigning activities.
He also serves as the Senate Pro Tempore, meaning he is third in line to the presidency if something happens to the president, vice president, and Speaker of the House and makes them unable to take over the presidency.
