When US Rep. Ashley Hinson explained her Senate run in May, she pointed to her minivan and her fridge — refueling one and restocking the other for her teenage sons, she told WeAreIowa, means she’s “in that boat just like everybody else.”
Her family’s financial disclosures describe a different household.
How much is the family worth?
Members of Congress report assets in ranges, so any total is an estimate. An estimate first reported by Heartland Signal puts the family’s net worth as high as $1.6 million before she took office, rising to as much as $8 million by 2024.
While Hinson has not made her tax returns public, her family has a membership with the exclusive Elmcrest Country Club in Cedar Rapids, with new full membership running $13,375 to join. Her husband Matt Arenholz sits on the Iowa Golf Association board representing the club.
According to her most recent disclosure, she has no liabilities listed.
Where did the money come from?
Mostly insurance. Arenholz sold his stake in a Waterloo agency in March 2021 — nearly three months after Hinson took office — for over $1 million, and bought into High Street Insurance Partners the same day. High Street’s owner announced weeks later it had acquired that same agency.
By 2022, Hinson’s disclosure valued the High Street stake at $1 million to $5 million, with no purchase that year explaining the jump. Her 2025 filing shows the stake still in that range, paying up to $1 million in dividends last year.
What’s Arenholz’s role in the insurance lobby?
NOTUS reported Arenholz chaired the government affairs committee for the Iowa branch of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America from 2019 to 2023, and that the group’s own magazine credited him with arranging a meeting between its lobbyists and Iowa’s full congressional delegation, his wife included.
That national group has spent $6.8 million lobbying Congress since 2020 and its PAC has given Hinson’s campaign accounts more than $67,500 from InsurePAC.
Hinson’s campaign has said Arenholz “is not a lobbyist.”
What about the stock trading ban she champions?
Hinson says she “proactively” sold her individual stocks so serving in Congress wouldn’t look like “an investment opportunity.”
Her 2021 disclosure shows the couple’s accounts bought Tesla and Amazon shares in early March, then sold at least 10 individual holdings on March 31, after already buying into High Street the same month.
She declined to sign a discharge petition for the End Congressional Stock Trading Act, which would have required spouses to divest, co-sponsoring a weaker bill instead.
In 2024, Nico Agosta of Stocking the Capitol, which examines the financial integrity of members of Congress, gave Hinson an “F” rating. This was mostly attributed to the vast majority of her net worth being tied up in a non-publically traded insurance company and for the amount of money she receives from corporate PACs.
The tax breaks
Hinson has championed Section 199A, a pass-through deduction the nonpartisan Tax Law Center found mostly benefits the top 1% of earners, and joined colleagues pushing to preserve the carried interest loophole.
