Today, Retired Admiral Mike Franken, candidate for U.S. Senate from Iowa, accepted two invitations to debate Sen. Chuck Grassley. The debates will be held on October 4, 2022 on KCCI and broadcast statewide on affiliate stations across Iowa, and on October 6, 2022 on Iowa Press.
Admiral Mike Franken is running to defeat Senator Grassley. Mike Franken was born the youngest of nine children and raised in rural Northwest Iowa. He spent his formative years in his dad’s Lebanon Farm Shop as a welder and lathe operator. He worked his way to college as a farmhand and by working for a slaughterhouse. He received a Navy scholarship while in college.
Franken’s career stretched across multiple continents and almost forty years. He commanded the destroyer USS Winston S Churchill, a squadron of ships, and an international task group at sea. He was the task force commander for the 4,000 US personnel in East Africa and the first director of the POW/MIA defense agency. He went on to serve in various policy-making, strategy and planning roles including chief of legislative affairs for the Department of the Navy. He retired from military service as a three-star admiral in 2017.
