Washington, DC — Senator Chuck Grassley is the longest-serving Republican in congressional history and, when the Senate convenes Friday, Grassley will again have the title of Senate President Pro Tem.
The post goes to the longest-serving senator from the party that has a majority of seats in the Senate. He served in the same role in 2019 and 2020 and this is how Grassley described it then.
Grassley was first elected to the state legislature in 1958. He served 16 years in the Iowa House, then won election the US House in 1974, where he served for six years. He’s been a United States Senator since 1981.
Grassley, who turned 91 in September, has long argued his seniority gives him leverage to use on behalf of Iowa.
In 2022, Grassley won reelection to an eighth term in the US Senate with over 56 percent of the vote. During his first term as a US Senate, Grassley gained national attention for criticizing wasteful spending in the Pentagon. When he ran in 2016, Grassley stressed the importance of providing oversight of the executive branch.
That was Grassley in early 2016. Later that year he won reelection with 60 percent of the vote.
The President Pro Tem of the Senate is also third in line in presidential succession after the Vice President and the Speaker Of The House, and receives a full-time security detail.
