Candidate Profile: Bruce Braley of Iowa

Bruce Braley was born in Grinnell, Iowa, in 1957. He grew up in the small rural town of Brooklyn, Iowa, in Poweshiek County. Bruce married Carolyn Kalb of Dubuque in 1983 and he currently lives with his wife and three children—Lisa, David, and Paul—in Waterloo.

Bruce learned the value of hard work from his parents. When Bruce was young, his father was severely injured at the grain elevator where he worked. Because of the accident, Bruce’s mother had to drive over twenty-six thousand miles back and forth across Iowa to get her teaching degree so she could go back to work and help pay the bills.

Bruce applied for his first job when he was in third grade and has been working ever since. He has delivered newspapers, mowed yards, baled hay, detassled corn, did janitorial work, worked at a grain elevator, and drove dump trucks. To pay his way through college at Iowa State and law school at the University of Iowa, Bruce worked as a restaurant server and in highway maintenance, among other jobs.

After he graduated from law school, Bruce moved to Waterloo and has been living there for the past 23 years. As an attorney, Bruce has held corporations accountable to their employees and consumers: he represented employees who challenged dangerous company safety standards and fought for people who lost their jobs due to corporate downsizing.

Bruce has been actively involved in his community for many years, and was honored with the Cedar Valley Mayors’ Volunteer Performance Award in 1998 for his service. Bruce has served as the president of the Waterloo Dollars for Scholars program, the President of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Northeast Iowa, a board member of the Visiting Nurses Association, and a member of the Iowa Legal Aid board of directors. Bruce and Carolyn were named “Couple of the Year” by Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Northeast Iowa.

As a member of Congress, Bruce will stand up to powerful special interests on behalf of working families just as he has been for the past two decades. Bruce will work hard every day to improve the lives of people in Iowa’s First District.