Ashley Hinson Faces Heat From Iowans for Her Corrupt Behavior as Headlines of Her Self-Dealing Continue to Drag Down Her Senate Campaign

Ashley Hinson Faces Heat From Iowans for Her Corrupt Behavior as Headlines of Her Self-Dealing Continue to Drag Down Her Senate Campaign 

In This Week’s Edition of the Ashley Accountability Alert, Iowans Call Out Hinson for Corruption, While New Reports Spotlight Her Latest Self-Dealing at the Expense of Iowans

DES MOINES – This week, Iowans sick and tired of Ashley Hinson’s corrupt record called her out after a report revealed she and her husband reportedly used her position of power to grant her husband’s insurance lobbying group access to the Iowa congressional delegation.

Meanwhile, breaking reports spotlighted Hinson’s self-serving behavior, including one showing she pushed for tax credits that helped her husband’s business “save millions of dollars.” While two more uncovered Hinson took campaign contributions from pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbyists as she was voting to make healthcare more expensive for Iowa seniors and cancer patients, and fought harder “saving private equity’s favorite tax break” than lowering costs for Iowans.

But Hinson’s week got much, much worse…

• First, it was reported in Politico that Hinson “went silent at repeated questions about whether it was time to end the [Iran] war” at the Iowa State Fair, even as gas, diesel, and fertilizer prices are sky-high and U.S. servicemembers remain at-risk.

• Ashley Hinson has voted six times to continue the Iran War. She has publicly defended the war numerous times, despite admitting in private that it’s becoming a “political liability.” Three Iowans have lost their lives in the conflict, and Iowans in every corner of the state are dealing with an affordability crisis due to the war.

• Last week, Iowans experienced the highest price for diesel in the state’s history as it cracked $5.45 per gallon, up more than $1.95 in the last year because of Ashley Hinson’s six votes to continue the war in Iran

• Then, a recent TV ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC supporting Hinson, was fact checked for spreading the misleading claim that Hinson “increase families’ take-home by over $9,000.”

• The truth:  According to the report, Hinson’s vote for the ‘One Big Big Beautiful Bill’ meant “only the top 5% of incomes saw tax savings of more than $9,000 this year.” Meanwhile, “the lowest 30% of earners actually saw their net resources decrease.”

• Next, a new report from MeidasTouch News analyzed Ashley Hinson’s fundraising reports to discover that Hinson accepted “over $660,000” in campaign donations from Big Pharma and healthcare industries as she took votes benefitting those groups at the expense of Iowans.

• According to the report, around the time Hinson voted for the biggest cuts to Medicaid in history, she accepted “nearly $10,000” in campaign contributions from lobbyists who pushed for provisions in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ that made healthcare more expensive for Iowa seniors and cancer patients.

• These lobbyists giving to Hinson’s Senate campaign successfully lobbied her and other members of Congress to “exempt or delay more than a dozen drugs from Medicare price negotiations,” helping to boost profits for Big Pharma companies while driving up the costs of lifesaving drugs for seniors and cancer patients.

• What’s more, a report from American Journal News revealed that Hinson pushed for tax credits that have helped her husband’s business “save millions of dollars.”

• According to the report, Hinson’s husband’s business got letters of support from local stakeholders – one which came from a group that Hinson earmarked for $3 million in federal funding and another whose owners gave $51,500 to her campaign.

• But, that wasn’t all after a new report from Mother Jones dove into Ashley Hinson’s corrupt record and found she has been more focused on “saving private equity’s favorite tax break” than fighting to lower costs for Iowans.

• According to the report, Hinson fought to keep in place the carried interest loophole, which allows private equity groups and their multimillionaire managers to “save billions of dollars each year by paying a markedly lower tax on much of their income than many less-affluent Americans.” Tax experts have called the loophole a “terrible policy,” something “on which tax professors are most strongly agreed.”

• Over the years “she has proved to be a reliable vote for corporate tax breaks and deregulation in Washington,” including backing massive cuts to financial and consumer watchdog groups that help Iowans protect their hard-earned dollars. It comes as she’s relied heavily on campaign donations from the finance industry to power her political campaigns, raising “more than $1 million” from the securities and investment industry.

• To round out the week, Iowa leaders gathered outside the U.S. District Courthouse in Davenport to call out Ashley Hinson’s corrupt behavior following the release of the bombshell report that found Hinson and her husband reportedly used her office to grant her husband’s insurance lobbying group access to the Iowa congressional delegation.

• Hinson’s husband, who holds a “government affairs post at a leading insurance industry lobbying group,” reportedly used his post to “gain access to Hinson and other Iowa lawmakers” and “blur the lines” as a shadow lobbyist. 

• The “expansive national insurance […] lobbying group” related to his organization “has spent more than $5 million lobbying the federal government since Hinson was elected,” as Hinson and her husband hold a “significant stake in the insurance sector” through insurance stock worth up to $5 million.

• Meanwhile, the national insurance group’s PAC contributed more than $67,000 to Hinson’s campaign and PACs over the years.

See What Iowans Were Seeing and Reading This Week: 

Quad City-Times: Davenport Democrats criticize Ashley Hinson’s insurance ties after GOP event last week

• Democrats also criticized her votes for the Big Beautiful Bill, which included tax cuts and cuts to social safety net programs, and her defense of the war in Iran.

• “Ashley Hinson is a millionaire whose household wealth is now roughly 10 times what it was before she entered,” Peters said. “You don’t get to stand in front of working Iowans and pretend your life looks anything like the life of someone deciding which bill gets paid this month.”

• The Democrats emphasized reporting by NOTUS that Hinson’s husband held a government affairs role for an insurance lobbying group and organized meetings with Iowa’s congressional delegation, including Hinson.

• “Public service should be about serving the people, not yourself, not your donors, and not whichever special interest is writing your next check,” Peters said. 

Mother Jones: Ashley fought to save private equity’s favorite loophole

• On her campaign website, Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee in Iowa’s toss-up US Senate race, says she’s “laser focused on lowering taxes on working families.” In Washington, she’s tackled a different project: Saving private equity’s favorite tax break.

• The carried interest loophole, which allows private investment managers to save billions of dollars each year by paying a markedly lower tax on much of their income than many less-affluent Americans, is one of the few things that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump all agree on. […] Trump once said private equity executives were “getting away with murder.”

• And Hinson joined a few dozen other Republican members of Congress in asking Smith to keep the carried-interest provision as it is.

• “[…] Congress has considered it and decided to leave this terrible policy on the books so many times. At this point, it’s intentional malfeasance on the part of Congress.”

• Tax professors are not as divided on the issue as members of Congress. Choi once surveyed 157 of his colleagues and found that all but 10 believed carried-interest should be taxed as income. It is “the single policy on which tax professors are most strongly agreed,” he says.

• Hinson, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, has proven to be a reliable vote for corporate tax breaks and deregulation in Washington. She has backed major cuts to the Securities and Exchange Commission—Wall Street’s top watchdog—and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans from scams and dodgy financial instruments.

• […] Hinson is getting major support from Fight On Iowa, a hybrid super-PAC that’s entered into a joint fundraising agreement with the candidate’s campaign committee; it’s a way for candidates to rake in large donations far in excess of what a contributor can gave to a campaign committee. So far, the PAC has raised $1.77 million. A full $1.5 million of that has come from one donor: Ken Griffin, the New York- and Florida-based hedge fund billionaire who has given generously to conservative causes.

• Hinson is just one of many candidates he’s supporting. But the money pouring into her race from one donor—and one industry—represents a marked contrast with her self-styled image as a fighter against “special interests.”

American Journal News: Hinson backed tax credits that helped her husband’s company

• Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson pushed for tax credits that allowed her husband’s future business to save millions of dollars.

• In 2017, when Hinson was serving in the Iowa House, she backed S.F. 488, which reserved $5 million in these incentives for housing projects in smaller cities. It also increased the available credit for these projects to 20%.

• Hinson’s husband, Matthew Arenholz, co-founded BAM Development LLC in 2021, which builds and operates apartment complexes across the Midwest. His co-founders were Iowa Reps. Joe Mitchell and Michael Bousselot. Mitchell served with Hinson and also supported S.F. 488.

• In order to receive the S.F. 488 credit, BAM Development had to submit letters of support from local stakeholders. One letter came from Sukup Manufacturing Co., a manufacturer of grain storage, drying, and handling equipment based in Smithfield, IA. Members of the Sukup family donated a combined $47,500 to Hinson’s congressional campaigns. They gave another $4,000 to her leadership PAC.

MeidasTouch News: Ashley Hinson received a half million dollars from Big Pharma while voting to increase healthcare costs

• Iowa Republican Representative and candidate for U.S. Senate, Ashley Hinson accepted over a half million dollars in campaign donations from the pharmaceutical industry and then voted for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Budget Bill, which gutted medicaid, delayed treatments, and skyrocketed the cost of prescription drugs for cancer patients and seniors, at a huge benefit to the companies her donors represented.

• While a candidate and member of Congress, from 2019 to 2026, Hinson has received over $660,000 in donations from pharmaceutical and health insurance industry lobbyists. Hinson accepted $400,479 from pharmaceutical and healthcare lobbyists and $262,500 from pharmaceutical, healthcare, and health insurance corporate PACs and interest groups.

• In July 2025, Ashley Hinson voted for Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Budget Bill. In a two month period around that vote, lobbyists representing pharmaceutical and health insurance companies that stood to benefit from the bill donated nearly $10,000 to Hinson. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act exempted or delayed more than a dozen drugs from Medicare price negotiations, a change expected to lead to “higher costs” for cancer patients and seniors and bigger profits for pharma giants.

• June 30, 2025: Hinson accepted $2,000 from Christopher Cox, who lobbied on drug pricing in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on behalf of Johnson & Johnson, which then benefited from drug price negotiation delays via its cancer drug Darzalex.

• June 16, 2025: Hinson accepted $1,000 from pharma industry mega-lobbyist Emily Murry, whose clients benefited from cancer drug price negotiation delays – including on Keytruda and other crucial cancer drugs – in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Politico:

KCRG: FACT CHECK: Did Ashley Hinson vote to increase families’ take-home pay by thousands of dollars?

• The ad includes this claim: “She voted to increase families’ take-home pay by over $9,000.”

• This statement is tied to Hinson’s vote for President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

• However, the level of someone’s salary can mean differences in how much the bill impacts take-home pay.

• The lowest 30% of earners actually saw their net resources decrease.

• A more recent analysis from the Brookings Institute backed up that analysis – showing only the top 5% of incomes saw tax savings of more than $9,000 this year.

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