Burt Winthrop, the Republican senior senator from Iowa, is holding his 79th annual “Summer FUNdraiser” this weekend in the Iowan capital city, but turnout is expected to be the lowest in years on account of the senator being dead for 19 years.
His campaign staffers are planning the typical events of years past, including crowd favorites like the homemade chili competition, an arts and crafts auction, and a blow-up air castle for kids.
However, many critics have expressed frustration with Winthrop’s continued campaigns, while wondering privately if it isn’t time for Mr. Winthrop to finally retire. The debate whether having a seasoned veteran in the Senate outweighs the benefits of having a physically alive senator gets fiercer every year.
“Don’t get me wrong, everyone here in Des Moines loves Burt, but, even if he wasn’t dead, he’d be 113 years old,” said Marty Reed, 38, a Des Moines resident who has been going to Winthrop’s FUNdraisers since he was a toddler. “I just think it’s time for a fresh face to represent Iowa in Congress. Someone who can walk themself into the Senate and raise their own hand for votes instead of being rolled around in a wheelchair and held erect by an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys dangling him like a puppet.”
Despite the physical handicap of his age and expired mortality, the Iowa GOP has not lost faith in Senator Winthrop’s ability to win elections.
“Burt is a testament to this country’s 90% incumbency rate for members of Congress,” said Polk County GOP Chair Theresa Perry. “Burt literally hasn’t even given a live campaign speech in decades, and he still keeps winning. His staff just plays the last recorded speech he ever gave through the loudspeakers, and I think Iowans just love the tradition of reelecting the oldest member of Congress over and over.”
The recorded speech does have its detractors, though.
“Honestly, it’s a very outdated and awkward speech,” admits Mick Waterston, 22, chairman of the local university’s College Republicans group. “I mean, I love and appreciate what Burt has done for this state throughout his long, storied career, but I don’t understand how the Winthrop campaign thinks this tape reflects the old man’s legacy in the best light. The video is, like, half just Mr. Winthrop coughing out his lungs, and, toward the end, if the sound guy isn’t paying attention and forgets to cut the tape at the right moment, you can audibly hear Winthrop repeat, ‘It hurts everywhere’ a few times. Also, the tape is littered with some racial terminology that has long passed its cultural appropriateness. There are several off-color jokes about East German hookers, and women having science careers, and women going to college, and women getting bank loans. And how country clubs were better before Jews and Catholics were allowed to join. I get that the guy was a product of the time period in which he grew up, but that was a long time ago.”
Winthrop’s approval ratings have been falling every year since he died, and many believe his career is aging badly.
“He kind of worked a little on the committee staff that wrote the bill that brought all the Nazi rocket scientists and physicists to America after WWII,” explained Waterston. “On his deathbed he reportedly said his only regrets were that he didn’t filibuster the Senate votes to bring in Alaska and Hawaii as states because they were ‘too native.’ The guy had very strong opinions. He was so far conservative he once accused Barry Goldwater of being a Soviet sleeper agent. And so far nationalist he tried to duel a man who called FDR a cripple. And so far libertarian he campaigned in support of Allen Ginsberg during his obscenity trials for publishing Beatnik poetry about homosexuality. I heard there were eyewitnesses to him punching both Joseph McCarthy and Eugene McCarthy. Interesting guy.”
Senator Winthrop’s personal behavior in his final years has been the subject of very cringey disclosures in the last 18 months.
“The Russians have declassified some pretty icky Soviet blackmail they apparently got on him that doesn’t reflect well on the institution of the Senate,” explained Iowa College Republicans vice president Danny Malcolmberg. “But to his credit during the Cold War he once threatened General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev that he would sneak into Ronald Reagan’s office, steal the nuclear football, and preemptively launch the nukes at Moscow himself. But he arguably should have retired, and not deteriorated publicly. Ultimately, he was found dead in his office by a traumatized 17-year-old Congressional page named Maddy. Making things worse, he had porn playing on his computer. It appears he had been trying to masturbate. Apparently he did that a lot, and claimed all senators prior to the 1950s used to do it in their offices, often together. He said letting women be senators ruined a cherished Senate tradition going back to Calhoun and Clay.”
Senator Winthrop won his last reelection by just three points, the lowest margin of victory since his second election in 1954.
“I think it’s really selfish of Mr. Winthrop to not get out of the way and let someone younger take his place in the Senate,” said two-time Winthrop opponent Carl Dawes, currently one of Des Moines’s Democratic state representatives. “And, for the millionth time, I cannot stress enough to Iowan voters that this guy is literally dead and wheeled to the Senate every day inside a body bag filled with formaldehyde. It stinks up the entire Senate chamber and makes other senators gag! I’m alive! Why continue voting him in still?”
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