“How many times have you asked someone, a neighbor, for help?” Conrad asked. “And your neighbor, without even asking what it was, says, ‘Yes, of course, of course, whatever you need.”

That’s what U.S. Senate candidate Mike Franken is all about, she said.

“Whenever his community asked him for anything, whenever his neighbors asked him for anything, whenever his country asked him, he said without question, ‘Yes, of course. Whatever you need,'” Conrad said. “And that’s the kind of man that we need in the United States Senate.”

Franken, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate made a stop at Willow Ridge to meet with potential voters on Saturday morning.

Franken told voters he wants to “be part of the solution” to lead to a brighter future.

“I believe this country is in serious problems,” Franken said. “There’s issues at the local level, national level, international level. So I need you to stop what you’re doing and be part of the solution.”

The candidate said he believes it’s time to vote U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley out of office. Grassley is the Republican candidate for Iowa’s U.S. Senate race and is running for his eighth term in office.

“We don’t need a senator for life, or a senator who has been bought by special interests,” Franken said. “There was a time when it was crazy to go against Chuck Grassley … that’s not today.”

One of the challenges Americans, and Iowans, are facing is the rising cost of health care, Franken said. A challenge that Grassley has contributed to, he added.

Earlier this year, Grassley voted against a cap on the price of insulin for diabetic patients that was included in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

“Why would you vote against the $35 cap rate per month? Why would you do that?” Franken said. “That may not affect you with your privileged health care system, but there’s 240,000 Iowans who have diabetes, it may affect them.”

Franken also talked about what he said was the Republicans’ plan to gut social security and Medicare.

“If you don’t think social security and Medicare are on the chopping block, you would be wrong,” he said. “They want to privatize it, make it a bad return on investment and slowly degrade it for the next generation.”

If rural hospitals lose Medicare funding, Franken said, they’ll cease to exist.

“They’re toast,” he said.

Franken also said he wants to make Iowa known as one of the best states for education again.

“There was a time where we were the standard, we were the North Star of academic achievement,” Franken said. “That’s less of a thing today … We’ve become rather mediocre.”

That trajectory can change, he said, with the election of lawmakers who put education at the forefront of their agendas.