The Republican running to keep Sen. Joni Ernst’s Iowa seat is locked in a war of words with her own former high school classmates and teachers, who are rolling their eyes at her “minivan mom” campaign persona.
A New York Times deep dive into Rep. Ashley Hinson’s balancing act — winning in November while keeping President Donald Trump at arm’s length — found her folksy, deal-making image clashes with her bank account. The former USC-educated TV news anchor, 43, showed up at the Iowa State Fair in a plaid purple dress last month calling herself a “minivan-driving mom” and joking that Congress was like raising teenage boys because “you spend all of your time negotiating with unreasonable people, and they have questionable hygiene.”
But Hinson insists the wealth attacks are bunk. “A terrible, shameless lie and what everybody hates about politics,” she told the Times, pointing to stocks she and her husband dumped for mutual funds after she took office in 2020 and legislation she cosponsored to ban congressional stock trading.
Her financial disclosure tells a fuller story: the Times found she and her husband are now worth between $2.3 million and $8.8 million, triple what she first reported, tied to her husband’s partial 2021 insurance-company sale — a deal that has already drawn scrutiny over his industry ties since her Senate launch. “I drove my minivan for 10 years so I wouldn’t have a car payment,” Hinson countered. “We painted the agency walls ourselves.”
According to the Times, those who have known her for years aren’t buying it.
“Ms. Hinson is also fending off attacks from an unusual coalition of teachers, administrators and students from her West Des Moines high school, some of whom say they object to her self-portrayal as a relatable ‘minivan-driving mom,’ given her comfortable upbringing,” The Times reported
Asked to comment, the Times reported the candidate “respected the group’s right to voice its opposition. But she also cast her former classmates and teachers as petulant.”
“Maybe they disagree with me politically now, but that’s OK,” she said in the interview. “Maybe they’re just mad that liberal indoctrination in our school system didn’t work on me.”
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