A video recorded when Iowa Republican Joe Mitchell was a 19-year-old Drake University student shows him shouting 'I don't like Black women,' cursing white people and making crude racial remarks about his Black friends. Mitchell, Trump's pick in Iowa's 2nd District, didn't dispute the footage — he said he's 'grown up' and blamed cameras.
Forget the slogans. Judged by what they voted for, what they did, and what they refused to stop, this is what Republicans in Congress stand for, on 20 issues, with the receipts.
At the October 8 Iowa PBS debate, the Republican running for Iowa's open 2nd District seat said he would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Asked what would take its place, he talked about his childhood and Medicaid work requirements — and never named a replacement.
They're deleting Trump from their websites, calling for an end to his Iran war, and telling him his immigration crackdown went too far. Every one of them who was in Congress voted for Trump's budget bill, and every House member among them voted for $70 billion more for ICE.
On March 15, 2021, then-state Rep. Joe Mitchell voted no on three separate amendments that would have exempted veterans' housing vouchers, disability vouchers and foster-care family vouchers from a bill letting landlords refuse them. Then he voted for the bill.
Hinson backed S.F. 488 in 2017 and voted to double its set-aside in 2019. In 2021 her husband Matthew Arenholz co-founded BAM Development with two fellow Iowa legislators. In 2023 BAM was awarded $1 million in credits S.F. 488 made possible.
In 2021, then-state Rep. Joe Mitchell voted to expand Iowa's Workforce Housing Tax Credit. Two development firms he later partnered in took $2,559,880 from that program across three projects. He calls the federal version 'too much paperwork.'
His campaign says de-regulating homebuilding will fix housing costs. Iowa already ran that experiment — a law capping what cities can require for stormwater runoff, in a state with worsening floods. Meanwhile the real housing bill became law without Trump's signature, and his housing plank doesn't mention it.
Mitchell's campaign promises to represent Iowans 'left behind by a broken political system that works for insiders and lobbyists.' He founded and led a real estate trade group that spent nearly $75,000 lobbying the Iowa Legislature.
In March 2022, a check from Summit's Bruce Rastetter landed in Joe Mitchell's campaign account. Eight days later he cast the lone Republican committee vote against protecting Iowa landowners from the CO2 pipeline's eminent domain.
