On March 16, 2022, a committee of the Iowa House voted on whether to protect Iowa landowners from having their farmland taken by a private carbon pipeline company.

Republicans on that committee voted yes. All but one.

Joe Mitchell was the one.

Eight days earlier, Mitchell's campaign account had received a $10,000 check. It was his largest contribution of the reporting period, and it came from Bruce Rastetter — the CEO of Summit Agricultural Group and the founder of Summit Carbon Solutions, the company that wanted the land.

Now Mitchell is the Republican nominee for Congress in Iowa's 2nd District. Two of the counties Summit planned to cut through are in that district.

What the vote was actually about

Iowa farmers had been fighting the CO2 pipelines for a year. Summit's proposed route ran about 700 miles through 30 of Iowa's 99 counties. Landowners who said no were told it didn't matter.

Ted Junker, a landowner from Butler County, described the pitch to Iowa Public Radio:

"They're using a strong arm policy, I would say. And the first thing that comes out of their mouth after you tell them no, you're not interested [is], 'Well, we're going to get it by eminent domain anyway.' And that's their spiel. That's their negotiation."

So Republicans in the Iowa House tried to slow it down. Rep. Bobby Kaufmann took a bill about cosmetology and swapped its contents for a simple rule: private pipeline companies could not seek eminent domain before March 1, 2023. One year. A pause, so the legislature would be in session if Summit came for people's land.

It was not a radical bill. House Speaker Pat Grassley described it as a warning shot: "We just want landowners and…the companies trying to do this to know that the legislature just stands prepared to act if needed."

Democrats on the committee voted no because they thought one year was too weak — Rep. Molly Donahue said she'd have voted yes for a three-year moratorium. Every Republican voted yes.

Except Joe Mitchell.

The $10,000

The Iowa Standard, a conservative Iowa outlet, asked Mitchell why he voted the way he did. His answer:

"As gas prices are at record highs and our agriculture industry is under attack, it's extremely unfair to switch up the rules in the middle of a process that will support biofuels and benefit everyday Iowans. This is not about politics. This is about a fair process, supporting agriculture, and alleviating the energy crisis that is hurting our communities."

Two months later, the campaign finance reports came out. Eight days before that vote, Mitchell had taken $10,000 from Bruce Rastetter.

Rastetter is not a small donor. He is one of the biggest political givers in the state — more than $2.6 million in political contributions, including $163,902 to Kim Reynolds' campaign committee since 2015. He is an agribusiness magnate, and the pipeline was his project.

Mitchell said his vote was "not about politics." It was about a $10,000 check from the man whose company stood to gain.

He was already in business with the pipeline's lobbyist

There's more to the relationship than one contribution.

Terry Branstad — the former Iowa governor — was hired as senior policy advisor for Summit Carbon Solutions. Branstad is also the chairman of the advisory board of Run GenZ, the conservative nonprofit whose founder and president is Joe Mitchell. And Branstad, the Iowa Standard reported, was an early endorser of Mitchell in his own primary that year.

So when Mitchell cast the only Republican no vote against protecting Iowa landowners, he was doing it while the pipeline's top policy advisor chaired the board of his organization, had endorsed his campaign, and while the pipeline's owner had just written him his biggest check of the period.

He used the pipeline company's talking point

Look again at Mitchell's defense: it's "extremely unfair to switch up the rules in the middle of a process."

That is not a landowner's argument. That is the pipeline's argument. Four years later, when South Dakota's Republican legislature banned eminent domain for CO2 pipelines outright, Summit put out a statement complaining that the new law "changed the rules in the middle of the game."

Same line. Mitchell just got there first.

What happened to the Iowans he voted against

The one-year pause died. And what landowners feared happened.

In June 2024, the Iowa Utilities Commission granted Summit's project eminent domain rights. In 2025, the Iowa House passed HF 639 to sharply restrict eminent domain for CO2 pipelines. Twelve Republican senators refused to vote on the state budget until the Senate took it up. It passed the Senate 27–22.

Gov. Kim Reynolds vetoed it.

Bobby Kaufmann — the Republican who wrote the 2022 amendment Mitchell voted against — told Radio Iowa afterward: "Kim Reynolds has soiled her legacy and her legacy is now spitting in the face of landowners and being Bruce Rastetter's errand girl."

In January 2026, the Iowa House tried again and passed HF 2104, a flat ban on eminent domain for carbon pipelines, 64–28. Rep. Steve Holt, the floor manager, said on the House floor:

"The precedent we will set if we allow private property to be seized for a private economic development project will reverberate for decades to come, and could render property rights safeguards in our constitution meaningless for our children and our children's children."

Five years of this. In May 2026, a Shelby County landowner named Jann Reinig told the Iowa Utilities Commission: "We've tried to be Iowa nice for five years and that's running kind of thin."

Now he wants to represent the counties the pipeline was going to cross

On May 13, 2026, Summit filed to change its route, dropping eight Iowa counties — Shelby, Pottawattamie, Montgomery, Adams, Page, Fremont, Mitchell and Worth.

Mitchell County and Worth County are both in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District — the seat Joe Mitchell is running for. So is Cerro Gordo County, home to Clear Lake, where he runs a real estate company and where he changed his voter registration to a rental shortly before launching his campaign — having never lived in the district before that.

Colleen Tucker, a landowner in Mitchell County, asked the Iowa Utilities Commission to reject Summit's plan: "The question is, when will those landowners finally see an end to this nightmare that has been dragged on since 2021."

Joe Mitchell had a chance to help end it in March 2022. He voted the other way — alone in his party — eight days after the pipeline owner's check cleared.

"We don't plan on accepting PAC money"

Running for Congress this year, Mitchell told Iowa Public Radio his campaign doesn't plan on accepting PAC money and that he's willing to call out his own party.

The $10,000 that showed up eight days before that vote didn't come from a PAC. It came from a man. And Mitchell didn't call out his own party over the pipeline — he broke with it to help the pipeline. Every other Republican who voted in that committee voted to protect landowners.

Weeks after the Iowa Standard published the contribution, Mitchell lost his primary to fellow Republican state Rep. Jeff Shipley — redistricting had put both their homes in the same district — and he left the legislature.

He's back on the ballot in November, in a district where his own party's state legislators are still fighting to stop the pipeline he voted to shield.

Joe Mitchell chose the pipeline's owner over Iowa landowners. We deserve better.

Source

Days before voting against eminent domain protections, Mitchell received largest campaign contribution of the year from Summit CEO — The Iowa Standard, May 21, 2022. Photo: The Iowa Standard.