Chuck Grassley, 93, Not Resigning, Will Instead Risk Letting Iowa's Incoming Dem Governor Replace Him
This is the predictable result of a system with no term limits and no age limits.
Voters can re-elect someone in their late 80s or early 90s, but once that person is in office, the rest of the country has no mechanism to prevent the seat from becoming a vacancy lottery.
Other members of the Senate in their 80s and 90s face the same basic reality. When health fails, the governor of the state at that moment decides who holds the seat.
Term limits would end the career-long accumulation of power that makes resignation feel optional. Age limits would remove the need to calculate whether a 93-year-old is likely to survive or still be able to function.
Neither change would eliminate every problem in the Senate, but both would stop situations like the one now unfolding in Iowa from arising in the first place.
Grassley’s future is his own to decide, yet the senior member of the Senate’s choice to stay means the governor may soon need to appoint his successor.
Ultimately, it is a reminder that open-ended service in the world’s most consequential legislative body will always collide with the unyielding laws of biology.
