In Iowa’s open Senate race, Republicans and Democrats are trading barbs about voting records, but a recent ad from the Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC (SPM) is filled with “verifiably false” claims about the voting record of Rep. Ashley Hinson (R., Iowa).
SMP’s latest ad targeting Hinson relies on a story published by a website that carries all the hallmarks of a Democratic Party press release. The American Journal News (AJN) is funded, according to its own about page, by one of the Democrats’ largest sources of dark money.
“Our publisher is True Blue Media (TBM),” it says. “TBM publishes American Journal News using content from our partners across the internet. True Blue Media is a for-profit media company that relies on ad revenue and investors, including The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, a 501(c)(4) research organization.”
SMP relies on a story from AJN to argue that Hinson skipped out on hundreds of votes — the ad comes shortly after Hinson’s Democratic opponent, state Representative Josh Turek, has been under fire for missing over half of the Iowa State House votes in 2026.
“Here are the facts,” the narrator of SMP’s ad intones at the beginning. “It’s Ashley Hinson who’s missed nearly 200 votes in Congress.” But Hinson’s campaign explained to the Washington Reporter that she has a 98.8 percent lifetime voting record in Congress. The SMP ad’s tone suggests that it is trying to turn Hinson’s attack against Turek on its head.
But Hinson’s team provided...
Scoops In Iowa’s open Senate race, Republicans and Democrats are trading barbs about voting records, but a recent ad from the Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC (SPM) is filled with “verifiably false...