Miller-Meeks no longer lives in the district she represents in Congress

US Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the Republican congresswoman for Iowa’s 1st District, recently changed her voter registration to Iowa’s 3rd—despite still representing and running for reelection in the 1st.

Miller-Meeks has changed her voter registration and residency back to her Ottumwa acreage, which is in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District.

The Quad City Times broke the story Thursday, and a spokesperson for Miller-Meeks confirmed the change to the publication.

“Congresswoman Miller-Meeks has moved her residency back to their property in Ottumwa to be by her husband’s side,” a spokesperson for the Miller-Meeks campaign told the Times. “Miller-Meeks has lived in Southeast Iowa for almost 40 years and remains committed to serving the people of Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, having held over 280 events in all 20 counties this year alone.”

The ongoing saga of where Miller-Meeks lives dates back to Iowa’s 2021 redistricting, during which most of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District—which Miller-Meeks represented during her first term—was reassigned to the 1st District. The state’s new map also moved Wapello County—where Ottumwa is located and where the congresswoman has long resided—from Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District to its 3rd.

Those changes took effect during the 2022 midterms, and for weeks leading up to the election, Miller-Meeks confirmed that she still lived in Ottumwa, but would find a residence in the new 1st District, where she was running.

Federal law only requires federal candidates to live in the state they seek to represent, not their specific district.

In December 2022, Starting Line broke the news that Miller-Meeks changed her voter registration to a Scott County address—part of her new congressional district—and that the address she used was a home owned by then-state Sen. and now-Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer.

Cournoyer’s then-home was a three-bedroom house she also shared with her two teenage sons.

A little less than two years later, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that Miller-Meeks changed her voter registration to an apartment in Davenport, also in Scott County. That apartment was partially owned by businessman and prominent Republican donor David Barker.

Barker was recently appointed by President Donald Trump as the assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the US Department of Education. He began his new role in October.

Miller-Meeks’ residency was the subject of a 2024 federal Office of Congressional Ethics complaint filed by a LeClarie resident>, who claimed Miller-Meeks did not reside in the district and that her primary residence was in Ottumwa.

Making headlines

Besides her residency controversy, Miller-Meeks has also made headlines for several other recent incidents or remarks.

The congresswoman was spotted flying in first class on a flight from Des Moines to Washington, DC, in November. While not illegal, it is often considered a bad look for elected officials to make high-dollar expenditures on the taxpayers’ dime.

In October, Starting Line reported that Miller-Meeks’ campaign mistakenly paid her son, Jonathan Miller-Meeks, $3,500 from her campaign account for “consulting.” Her son returned the funds 22 days later, and her campaign filed an amended finance report.

In August, Miller-Meeks told the Johnson County Republican Party she would hold a town hall “when hell freezes over.” A video of the remarks surfaced in the fall and went viral, with Miller-Meeks drawing enormous criticism. She eventually relented and held a contentious November town hall> in Keosauqua.