We Asked This Journalist-Turned-Congresswoman Why Voters Should Give Her Senate Promotion

The control of the Senate may run through one state in America’s heartland that Democrats are eagerly seeking to flip back after it supported former President Barack Obama twice and then President Donald Trump three times.

Republican Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democratic State Rep. Josh Turek are vying to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst in a Hawkeye State race the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates “Lean R.” As she gears up for a blockbuster general election, the Republican nominee spoke about her state’s “common sense values” and addressed criticism that a pork bill she introduced was a gift to Communist China.

“In my congressional district we have eight of those pivot counties. Counties that voted for President Obama and then swung to President Trump,” Hinson, who represents Iowa’s Second Congressional District told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Iowans are just really common sense people. They are no nonsense people.”

“I think Iowans always expect you to go out and earn their vote. And that’s exactly how I’m running my campaign for U.S. Senate. It’s how I’ve run my past campaigns for Congress and for State House. Again, it’s that common sense initiative,” she added.

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Hinson, a former broadcast journalist and news anchor, first won election to the state legislature in 2016, winning by a landslide margin of 25 percentage points — in a seat that narrowly voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton on the same ballot. She said during the interview that due to her background, she knows “how to ask a tough question.”

“I’ve done 47 in-person town hall meetings. I can tell you I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of those tough questions. So, I how to make sure they’re holding their elected leaders accountable,” she told the DCNF.

Now in her third House term, Hinson serves on the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). She has co-sponsored multiple bills during her tenure aimed at preventing the CCP from buying American farmland.

The lawmaker told the DCNF that she is “laser-focused” on the issue.

“[Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] has been not shy about his priorities, about being the world-dominant both economic and social superpower by the year 2049,” she said. “That’s what the Chinese want. And they have a philosophical difference in how they approach business competition.”

The Chinese have been buying up American farmland “in very very covert ways,” Hinson added.

“They’re doing it buried in LLCs [limited liability companies] so that they’re not detectable,” she explained. “We have very strong laws already on the books in Iowa at the state level, but we need better accountability at the federal level to be able to dig a little bit deeper.”

However, another agriculture-related bill Hinson sponsored received criticism from some who said it would serve to benefit the CCP and its interests.

The Save Our Bacon Act would prohibit “state and local governments” such as the government of California “from interfering with the production of livestock in other states,” according to a July 2025 press release from Hinson’s office announcing the bill.

Critics of the bill have argued that its passage would greatly help the pork lobby and in particular Smithfield Foods — a U.S.-based company that is currently majority Chinese-owned.

The Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited acquired Smithfield Foods in 2013 via a massive deal totaling $7.1 billion including debt.

WH Group’s chairman, as well as several board members and senior executives, were identified as being members of the CCP in a 2022 stock exchange filing, the DCNF first reported in January 2024. Via its ownership of Smithfield, the Hong Kong-based company controls almost 150,000 acres of U.S. land across a majority of states, per the DCNF’s past reporting.

Hinson’s Democratic opponent, Turek, slammed the Save The Bacon Act in a March X post claiming the Republican is “once again putting billionaires over rural Iowans.”

“Ashley Hinson’s Save Our Bacon Act is so unpopular that she’s trying to hide it 700 pages deep in the Farm Bill,” Turek wrote in his post. “This bill protects giant foreign corporations and hurts Iowa’s local pork producers all so the billionaire CEO of Smithfield can rake in more profits.”

Taylor Warren, president of The Center for Responsible Food Business, wrote in a featured partner piece for the Daily Caller, that Hinson “should explain” what he alleged as her hypocrisy on China to her voters.

“Hinson says we can’t sit on our hands while the CCP infiltrates American agriculture, but hers are full of Smithfield’s checks,” Warren wrote.

Hinson denounced such criticism of her legislation as “Chinese propaganda.” The congresswoman said that she proposed the bill to protect Iowa’s pork industry — ranked No. 1 in the U.S., and not the communist country. Almost one-third of the country’s hogs — 24.7 million out of a total of 74.3 million — are raised in Iowa, according to March data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

“Iowans grow the best pork products in the country, and we deserve to have access to other state markets. And what we’ve seen is California stepping in it once again over regulating and overstepping their bounds when it comes to interstate commerce,” she told the DCNF. “This is about supporting Iowa family farmers, not the big guys. The big guys can actually afford to comply. China is the big guys. This is about standing up for small family farms.”

The mother of two also discussed several of her past bills aimed at fostering maternal health throughout the country, telling the DCNF that an integral part of being pro-life is “supporting pro-family policies.”

She said her legislation is “about helping make sure that moms have access to the healthcare tools that they need across the country to have those healthy babies, and then making sure that big health insurance companies are not screwing new parents right after they’ve had a baby.”

Hinson noted that she often works “across the aisle on these priorities” and emphasized that she introduced her No Surprise Bills for New Moms Act alongside Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, a prominent critic of the GOP and Trump.

“I think it just shows how my approach to governing is. I will work with anyone on any issue that’s important for my state and my constituents. I’ll shout it to the rafters when they’re wrong and work with them when they’re right,” she told the DCNF.

The former news anchor also spoke about her transition from the media to electoral politics, saying that she had always prided herself on the fact that “nobody knew” what party she was a part of when she was in the broadcast booth.

“I always just covered the story,” Hinson said. “I think that has really helped me to be successful in Congress, because I know how to hold people accountable no matter what side of the aisle they’re on.”