US Rep. Ashley Hinson argues she’s going after special interests in Washington DC. But financial disclosures and new reporting show her own household has spent years embedded in the insurance industry’s lobbying machine. And not only has her family’s stake in the industry grown her household’s personal fortune, the same actors have funded her campaigns.
New reporting from NOTUS found that Hinson’s husband, Matt Arenholz, held a government affairs post at a leading insurance industry lobbying group, which has not been previously reported. He helped arrange meetings with Hinson and other Iowa congressional delegation members.
From 2019 to 2023, Arenholz chaired the government affairs committee for the Iowa branch of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. The group’s magazine credited Arenholz with arranging a sit-down between the group’s lobbyists and Iowa’s entire congressional delegation, NOTUS first reported.
“Matt was able to arrange a meeting with all four of our congressional members in one large conference room,” the group’s CEO, Tom O’Meara, wrote in the magazine. “This not only saved us a lot of time but prevented us from having to bounce around from building to building in D.C.”
The Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America has spent $6.8 million lobbying Congress since Hinson was first elected in 2020, according to OpenSecrets, and the group’s political action committee, InsurePAC, has pumped more than $67,500 into Hinson’s campaign accounts over the years.
Arenholz also holds a stake worth between $1 million and $5 million in High Street Insurance Partners, a private equity-backed insurance brokerage, according to Hinson’s 2025 financial disclosure, first reported by Heartland Signal. He sold a stake in a different insurance company for more than $1 million in 2021, per that same disclosure.
“No one’s saying that if your significant other gets elected to Congress, you have got to stop being in insurance,” Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, told NOTUS. But combining that with active government affairs work for the industry, Hauser said, is “not normal.”
The Hinson campaign did not respond to emailed questions for this story.
A Hinson campaign spokesperson told NOTUS that Arenholz “is not a lobbyist” and that the couple “maintain[s] the highest ethical standards,” adding that his work focused on state-level issues and that the congressional meeting was arranged “through proper and appropriate channels.”
The reporting lands as Hinson positions herself as a check on the insurance industry. On Aug. 5, she introduced the Health Insurance Transparency for Patients Act, which would require health insurers to publicly report claim denial and approval rates, wait times, and which treatments require prior authorization.
“Big health insurance companies have a pattern of purposely denying patients coverage based on technicalities to protect their own bottom line,” Hinson said in a press release announcing the bill.
It’s worth being precise about what that bill does and doesn’t touch: Hinson’s bill focuses on health insurance carriers. The bill doesn’t regulate agents or brokers like the trade group Arenholz did government-affairs work for.
Hinson’s opponent in November is Democratic nominee Josh Turek. Election Day is Nov. 3.
