Here is how Ashley Hinson describes herself to Iowa voters:

"I am at the heart of everything a working mom, and whether it is, you know, refueling the, the minivan or restocking my fridge for our teenage boys, uh, I, I know what is facing our families here in Iowa."

That's the pitch. She's one of us. Gas prices, groceries, teenage boys who eat everything.

Now here is what her campaign has actually been buying, according to her own filings with the Federal Election Commission.

$39,748 at one private club

Hinson's campaign committee, Ashley for Iowa, has paid the Capitol Hill Club — the private Republican club a block from the Capitol — 72 separate times, totaling $39,748.14, according to FEC disbursement records. The payments run from December 2020, right after she was first elected, through May 2026.

That's not the only tab.

• The Capital Grille — a steakhouse chain where a bone-in ribeye runs north of $60 — $9,516.14 across 18 payments between May 2021 and April 2026.
• Bullfeathers, a Capitol Hill bar and grill — $4,305.42 across 34 separate visits between December 2020 and August 2025.

Those three line items alone come to more than $53,000 of campaign money spent on food and drink in Washington, D.C.

MeidasTouch first pulled these records, and put the full total at roughly $110,000 on fine dining and luxury travel, including more than $80,000 on meals in Washington. We checked the three largest items against the FEC's own database. Every figure matched.

And the resorts

The campaign's travel spending goes to places that are not on the way to Cedar Rapids.

On February 5, 2026, Ashley for Iowa paid $1,443.75 to The Breakers — the oceanfront resort in Palm Beach, Florida — filed under "travel." FEC records show it as a single disbursement.

The same review of her filings identified roughly $10,000 in resort lodging over the past five years, at properties including the Peninsula in Beverly Hills, the Fontainebleau and the Wynn in Las Vegas, the Lido House in Newport Beach, the Omni Homestead in Virginia, Stein Eriksen Lodge in Utah, and Nemacolin in Pennsylvania.

None of that is illegal. Campaigns are allowed to hold fundraisers at nice hotels, and members of Congress raise money in Palm Beach and Beverly Hills because that is where the money is.

That's rather the point. This is what a candidate's schedule looks like when the people funding her live in Palm Beach and Beverly Hills, not Waterloo and Dubuque.

The gap between the pitch and the paperwork

Hinson is running for the U.S. Senate on being relatable. The minivan. The fridge. Knowing what Iowa families are facing.

But Hinson is a millionaire. Her net worth has climbed by as much as $7 million during her time in office, according to her financial disclosures. Her husband holds stock in an insurance company valued at between $1 million and $5 million.

There is nothing wrong with being wealthy. There is something wrong with building a campaign around understanding a grocery bill while your campaign account covers 34 trips to a Capitol Hill bar and a night at a Palm Beach resort.

And the gap shows up in her voting record, not just her expense reports:

• She pushed Medicaid work requirements with the line that "if you're going to take a taxpayer benefit, you should be working" — when 92% of adults on Medicaid already do.
• The man trying to seize Iowa farmland for a carbon pipeline threw her a fundraiser.
• She refused to sign the petition to release the Epstein files while taking checks from billionaires named in them.
• And she has missed 196 votes in Congress.

What Iowans should ask

The next time Hinson tells a crowd she's refueling the minivan, it's worth asking a simple question: whose gas is she actually paying for?

Because the receipts on file with the federal government describe a very different life than the one in the ad. Iowa families paying $4 for a gallon of milk are not expensing $9,500 in steakhouse dinners. They are not staying at The Breakers.

Iowa deserves a senator who lives in the same economy as the people who elect her.

Source

Ashley Hinson Spent Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars of Campaign Funds on Luxury Trips, Fine Dining — Troy Matthews, MeidasTouch, August 17, 2026. Dollar figures independently verified against FEC Schedule B filings for Ashley for Iowa.