Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ashley Hinson brought her campaign to Indianola First Church Monday night, where she spent much of the evening not touting her six-point economic plan but knocking down attack ads aimed at her finances and record. The rally drew about 100 interested voters from central Iowa and came as Hinson's race against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek for the seat held by Sen. Joni Ernst has tightened into one of the most closely watched contests in the country.
According to the Indianola Independent Advocate, Hinson said she was in the middle of a “Fighting for Iowa” tour that had already stopped in Coralville and Pella before reaching Indianola. As reported by qctimes.com, Hinson spent a majority of her time at the Indianola rally addressing different attack ads about her and whether the information in them was true.
Hinson Pushes Back on Net Worth Claims
Much of the pushback centered on her household finances. At a Pella event, resident Michelle Fetters Steen asked Hinson directly about a Turek television ad alleging her net worth had increased by as much as $8 million after she entered Congress, and Hinson denied that the increase resulted from her congressional service, instead attributing it to her husband Matt Arenholz selling his insurance business. Arenholz received private stock and a check from that sale, and the couple has said they agreed to sell their publicly traded stocks once Hinson was elected to Congress, per the Independent Advocate's account.
That framing lines up with a fact-check from PolitiFact, which found Hinson's estimated assets rose from a range of $726,000 to $2.4 million in 2020 to between $2.3 million and $8.8 million in 2025, while her reported debt fell to zero. PolitiFact said much of that increase traced back to Arenholz's stake in Highstreet Insurance Partners after he sold his local agency to the company in 2021, and that an apples-to-apples comparison showed a roughly $4 million increase — about half the figure cited in the Democratic super PAC ad. The outlet rated the $8 million claim Mostly False. Hinson campaign spokesperson Billy Fuerst told PolitiFact the stock sale “has no connection whatsoever to Ashley's service in Congress, and the sale was in process before Ashley was elected to Congress.” Newsweek has reported that Hinson's August financial disclosure listed her husband's privately held High Street Insurance Partners stock at between $1 million and $5 million.
Hinson also disputed a Turek ad claiming she voted against distributing files concerning Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died by suicide in prison after facing accusations of child sex abuse. She separately said she opposes members of Congress trading stocks, according to the Independent Advocate.
A Six-Point Plan for Kitchen-Table Costs
When Hinson did turn to policy, she described a six-point plan aimed at what she called economic kitchen-table issues, telling KWBG, “I've proposed a six-point plan to specifically focus on economic kitchen table issues affecting Iowans.” She said she wants to increase domestic refining capacity. She told KWBG she has backed E-15, getting the farm bill across the finish line, and legislation addressing Proposition 12, and said farmers are facing high input costs and weak markets, with harvest running about a month behind in some areas this year.
Her plan also touches housing, child care and tax policy, per the Independent Advocate: she wants to lower the age of the typical first-time homebuyer, which she said now sits above 40, make child care more accessible and affordable, and promote efforts to lower health care costs by challenging insurers that delay or deny care and pharmacy benefit managers that drive up drug prices. Hinson said she supported the Working Families Bill, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, and said she would make those tax cuts permanent if elected. She also said she backs funding for Customs and Border Patrol and ICE agents, and pointed to her service on the federal Appropriations Committee, which she said secured funding to eliminate a backlog of DNA tests in sexual assault cases. As a state legislator, she said she sponsored a bill closing a loophole that let schools avoid reporting employees accused of harming children when those employees resigned or were fired.
Asked about working across the aisle, Hinson described a posture of conditional loyalty to President Trump. “I will be someone's ally when they're with me on the issues that are important to Iowa,” she said, according to Politico. “And if they're wrong, I'm going to pick a fight with them, no matter who that is.” She pointed to her past dealings with the previous administration, saying, “I found common ground with President Biden,” per ABC News. Hinson has completed a tour through all 99 of Iowa's counties.
Other Republicans Urge Supporters to the Polls
Hinson wasn't alone at the Indianola event. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, seeking a second term, told the crowd she won her first attorney general race by 20,000 votes — a margin she estimated came out to roughly 12 votes per precinct across Iowa's 1,600 precincts — and asked each attendee to get 12 people to the polls, the Independent Advocate reported. State House District 22 Republican incumbent Samantha Fett said Republicans win by showing up and voting. Hinson herself urged attendees to call 10 to 12 people and encourage them to vote, and asked supporters to sign her campaign bus after the rally.
A Race Still Too Close to Call
The rally comes amid a flurry of conflicting polling that underscores just how competitive the race has become. A Marist poll conducted Oct. 8-11 showed Turek edging Hinson 48% to 45% among likely voters, with independents breaking for Turek 51% to 31%. Yet the same poll found 59% of likely voters statewide still expect Hinson to win. An Emerson poll conducted Oct. 5-6 showed the opposite, with Hinson ahead 47% to 45%, and the RealClearPolitics average from Sept. 22 through Oct. 12 put Turek ahead by less than a point, 46.7% to 45.8%, according to Newsweek. A Suffolk University poll showed Turek leading Hinson by four points.
Cost of living looms large over the race. The Marist Poll found 44% of likely Iowa voters approve of President Trump's job performance while 53% disapprove, and a CNN poll cited by ABC News found majorities of likely Iowa voters say the president's policies have raised their cost of living and that gas prices have caused hardship. Iowa voted for Trump by 13 points in 2024.
With Election Day on Nov. 3 fast approaching, turnout is shaping up as the deciding factor.
