Former Iowa lawmaker gives master class on sucking up to Trump

Joe Mitchell rises again

Joe Mitchell in May 2022 (photo originally published on his political Facebook page)

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When I saw former State Representative Joe Mitchell’s guest column in the Des Moines Register in late June, my first thought was, “What federal government job is he angling for?” His op-ed was an embarrassing piece of hagiography about Donald Trump—or as Mitchell put it, “the most consequential president ever.”

I got my answer on July 23, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that Mitchell will serve as the agency’s regional administrator for the Great Plains, covering Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.

Mitchell is a rising star again at the age of 28, when many ambitious politicos haven’t begun climbing the ladder. At every stage, he’s had help from the GOP establishment.

His comeback story shows how over-the-top public praise for Trump has become normal and expected behavior for even the most well-connected Republicans.

MOVING UP IN THE TRADITIONAL WAY

Mitchell became the youngest legislator in Iowa this century after winning his first state House race in 2018 at age 21. (Scott Newhard was a few months younger when elected in 1972.) He recounted his path to public office in a recent interview with the Harvard Political Review, conducted during his time as a Spring 2025 resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

Mitchell graduated from high school a semester early so he could be a page at the Iowa legislature during the 2015 session. He enrolled at Drake University later that year, so he could continue to work at the statehouse. He clerked multiple years for a Republican state senator, then had summer internships in the offices of Governor Kim Reynolds and Senator Joni Ernst.

When long-serving State Representative Dave Heaton decided not to seek re-election in 2018, the 20-year-old Mitchell began campaigning for the open House seat in the part of southeast Iowa where he grew up.

He knocked on many doors before the low-turnout GOP primary, where he finished 110 votes ahead of the runner-up in a field of four candidates. Mitchell easily won the November election, graduated from Drake in December, and began his work as an Iowa lawmaker in January 2019.

Right away, he landed enviable committee assignments: Commerce, Judiciary, State Government, Administrative Rules Review, and the Education Appropriations subcommittee.

Mitchell’s upward trajectory continued. In 2020, he was named vice chair of the Ways and Means Committee, while continuing to serve on the other panels.

Going into his second term in 2021, he became one of four assistant House majority leaders—a sign of approval from Speaker Pat Grassley (who had been just 23 years old when first elected to the legislature in 2006).

Mitchell maintained good relationships with establishment Republicans outside the legislature as well. In August 2020, he founded the organization Run GenZ, with the goal of boosting young conservative candidates. Governor Reynolds said she was “excited” about the group and predicted it would be a “powerful tool,” “recruiting and mentoring the next generation of leaders in Iowa and across the nation.” Iowa GOP co-chair and former Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer became an officer of Run GenZ, as did Barry Jackson, a former chief of staff for U.S. House Speaker John Boehner. Former Republican governors of New Jersey, Texas, and New Hampshire joined the Run GenZ advisory board.

Mitchell has described former Governor Terry Branstad as a mentor who helped Run GenZ with fundraising. He hosted Branstad at an Iowa GOP event in April 2021.

photo first published on Mitchell’s campaign Facebook page

Then Iowa’s nonpartisan redistricting system threw a wrench in the works.

NEW MAP DEALT JOE MITCHELL A BAD HAND

The political map Iowa lawmakers adopted in October 2021 spelled trouble for Mitchell. He had previously represented all of Henry County, plus parts of Washington, Jefferson, and Lee counties. Now he was one of two Republican incumbents drawn into the new House district 87.

Only the city of Mount Pleasant and a handful of rural precincts were still in Mitchell’s turf. Most of the new district had previously elected State Representative Jeff Shipley: the city of Fairfield and surrounding areas in Jefferson County, and all of Van Buren County.

Shipley was among the younger cohort in the legislature; like Mitchell, he was first elected to the House in 2018. But they had entirely different approaches to the job.

Shipley was a notorious troll, often using provocative language, especially on the topics of vaccines and transgender people. He was the chamber’s most prolific filer of bills targeting LGBTQ Iowans, and had famously compared being trans to having cancer in remarks on the Iowa House floor. GOP leaders didn’t give him significant committee responsibilities or assign him to floor manage important bills.

In 2019, Shipley called a vaccine advocate a “medical rapist,” “pharma fascist,” and “corporate vaccine whore.” In June 2020, he told a group of anti-vaxxers that COVID-19 “isn’t even killing anybody,” later asserting that “whenever they come out with this vaccine is certainly going to be more dangerous than whatever this coronavirus is going around.”

In contrast, Mitchell proudly posted photos of U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks giving him his COVID-19 vaccination during the Iowa GOP event with Branstad in April 2021.

photos first published on Mitchell’s Facebook page

According to Mitchell, he was the only person who thought he could win his first race for the state legislature. He had much more help for his 2022 re-election bid.

At least 26 fellow Iowa House Republicans backed Mitchell for his primary election against Shipley. The endorsers ranged from those considered “moderates” (Jane Bloomingdale, Garrett Gobble, and Dave Maxwell) to some of the most conservative members of the caucus (Steven Holt, Joel Fry, and Dean Fisher).

Mitchell also had local support: all three county sheriffs in his new district, along with some county supervisors. At the statewide level, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig was in his corner. The Iowa Industry PAC named Mitchell a “friend of business.” The Iowa Farm Bureau PAC named him a “friend of agriculture.”

A few nationally-known conservatives waded into the House district 87 primary. Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and the American Conservative Union (the organization that puts on the annual CPAC conference) both endorsed Mitchell.

Shipley and his allies portrayed his rival as missing in action on key issues for conservatives, from school vouchers to anti-trans policies and removing “obscene” material from libraries. The Iowa Standard’s Jacob Hall made his case for Shipley in May 2022, citing Mitchell’s statements opposing Education Savings Accounts, his “palling around with the Log Cabin Republicans” (at a Run GenZ event), his House committee vote against prohibiting eminent domain for carbon pipelines, and his alleged work with a Democratic legislator on climate change.

Shipley also claimed Mitchell was not “pro-life” because he had voted against an amendment Shipley introduced to ban medication abortion. The staunchly anti-abortion Holt defended Mitchell’s “statesmanship on this issue,” saying he had followed “the tactical plan” and consensus of the pro-life community. Holt accused Shipley of engaging in “gamesmanship” on abortion-related legislation to advance his personal interests.

Despite support from many influential corners, Mitchell lost the 2022 primary by 1,605 votes to 1,319 (roughly 55 percent to 45 percent). You could argue that he overperformed in a district where Shipley was representing about two-thirds of the population.

Nevertheless, there can be only one Republican nominee. Shipley was easily re-elected to the Iowa House in November. The following January, Mitchell was out of office.

REGROUPING, WITH HELP IN HIGH PLACES

After graduating from college, Mitchell worked for his family’s business manufacturing club foot orthopedic braces. But he focused his energy on political pursuits upon leaving the legislature.

He became the founding president and chairman of the Iowa Real Estate Developers Association, a 501(c)(6) business group created in May 2023. Its members included companies associated with major Iowa GOP donors David Barker and Denny Elwell.

Mitchell joined a Youth Advisory Council that the Republican National Committee formed in May 2023. But he and four others resigned from that council in December 2023 after concluding the body was not doing serious work “to win the hearts and minds of young voters” and was “nothing more than another failed fundraising ploy by the RNC.”

Run GenZ’s tax filings, available through ProPublica’s searchable database, show Mitchell reported spending about three hours a week on the organization in 2021, increasing his commitment to fifteen hours a week in 2022 and 2023. He didn’t draw a salary for his work as Run GenZ chairman, however. On the contrary: the group’s 990 for calendar year 2023 indicates that Mitchell loaned the organization $60,000.

Although Mitchell had an undergraduate degree in business administration, Run GenZ’s revenues fell far short of expenses in 2022 and 2023. Consequently, group leaders negotiated a “strategic partnership” with ALEC Action, “the advocacy partner of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).” (Linda Upmeyer was both board secretary for Run GenZ and a director of ALEC Action, which files tax forms as “the Jeffersonian Project.” She’s still on the ALEC Action board, at this writing.)

A January 2024 news release quoted Mitchell as saying,

State lawmakers across the country recognize ALEC Action as a powerful voice for trusted and principled policy solutions. ALEC Action CEO Lisa B. Nelson is one of the nation’s most admired and respected leaders, and we are proud to become members of her team.

Don Wiener and Arn Pearson of the Center for Media and Democracy raised important questions about the merger, noting that “ALEC is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organization that is prohibited by law from engaging in any electoral activity.”

While Run GenZ describes its goal as helping young “conservatives” (not “Republicans”) become elected officials, Wiener and Person observed, “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has long recognized “conservative” as a code word for partisan political activity.”

Around the same time Mitchell rolled out his group’s merger with ALEC Action, he was getting back into Iowa Republican politics, as a public admirer of Trump.

“LIFE WAS OBJECTIVELY BETTER”

Less than a week before the 2024 Iowa caucuses, the Des Moines Register published an op-ed by Mitchell, under the headline “Young Americans flock to Donald Trump, set stage for Iowa caucus victory.”

He highlighted the former president’s “incredibly high poll numbers” with Gen Z and first-time caucus-goers. “This of course is not by mistake. Trump has been extremely intentional about his efforts to garner the youth vote, unlike many of the other candidates in this race. His opponents are trailing him by 50- and 60-point margins among youth voters.” (Sarah Longwell, among others, has argued that young Republicans favor Trump because his style of politics is “all they know.”)

Mitchell went on to exaggerate “the massive support my generation has for Trump,” a trend he asserted “extends outside of the Republican Party to the general Gen Z electorate, reaching across party lines.”

He claimed, “Trump is consistently beating Biden on a head-to-head rematch with young voters, both New York Times and NBC polls show in recent months.” Not quite: a New York Times/Siena poll from November 2023 showed Trump and Biden virtually tied among voters under 30. An NBC News poll from November 2023 found “Trump holds a slight advantage within the margin of error in the survey among voters ages 18 to 34 (46% to 42%) — a reversal from past election results and past NBC News polls.”

Anyway, Mitchell had a theory on why Trump was gaining traction with young Americans: “Gen Z remembers that, when Trump was president, it was easy to find a good-paying job, and we were safer abroad and in our own backyard. Life was objectively better.” Meanwhile, “Joe Biden has now single-handedly made it harder for people in my generation to achieve the American Dream” because of “record inflation and rising housing costs.”

I wonder whether Mitchell will hold Trump “single-handedly” responsible for the higher prices Americans will pay due to new tariffs. But I digress.

In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, Trump and his supporters regularly promised he could prevent World War III. Mitchell echoed that idea in his January 2024 guest column: “And while Joe Biden takes us on the brink of a world war, it’s my generation that knows they’ll be the first to be sent on the front lines to fight for some proxy war overseas.” He also lauded Trump’s “increasing edge in pop culture,” describing him as “cool.” Mitchell spun Trump’s criminal indictments in a positive way, writing that the former president’s mugshot “turned him into a kind of folk hero symbol.”

Trump crushed it in the Iowa caucuses. Mitchell became the youngest Iowa delegate selected for the 2024 Republican National Convention. He also served on Trump’s transition team, according to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development agency’s July news release.

During the transition period, Mitchell really laid it on thick.

“NO ONE KNOWS HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT LIKE DONALD TRUMP”

It’s unsettling to see Iowa Republicans who were not always MAGA genuflect before Trump and act desperate to get his attention.

I recently joked that U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson’s comments about the president ushering in a “golden age” reminded me of the Soviet newspapers I read while studying the Russian language during the 1980s.

Let me tell you: Hinson’s got nothing on Joe Mitchell.

Case in point: Mitchell’s guest column for the Washington Reporter in December 2024, titled “Donald Trump and Scott Turner will Make Housing Great Again.”

He referenced Trump’s supposedly “landslide victory” and “all-star cast” of early appointees: “Between Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Pete Hegseth, Gov. Doug Burgum (R., N.D.), Pam Bondi, and many more America First rock stars, it is clear that President Trump has put together the greatest lineup of cabinet nominees in American history.”

Mitchell put a spotlight on Trump’s nominee to lead the Housing and Urban Development agency.

Before President Trump became the world’s most popular man, he was the world’s most famous real estate developer. No one knows housing and development like Donald Trump. No one understands the bureaucracy, building codes, energy and environmental compliance like Donald Trump. President Trump has committed to Make Housing Great Again. That starts with his fantastic pick for HUD Secretary, Scott Turner.

Trump has never been “the world’s most popular man”; in fact he’s consistently been less popular than other U.S. presidents at the same stage of their term.

I was more interested in Mitchell’s phrasing that “no one knows” the relevant subject better than Trump. It’s a favorite flex for the president, as you can see in this NowThis Impact supercut from 2020. The whole video is worth a watch, but I cued it up to Trump boasting, “Nobody knows more about environmental impact statements than me.”

Mitchell went on, telling Washington Reporter readers, “As a developer myself, I appreciate Trump’s policies, his background in the private sector, and his keen acumen for picking good people. And make no mistake, Scott Turner is the man for the job.” He cited Turner’s “pro-growth, pro-development mindset” and “more than impressive resume,” with prior work in the Texas legislature, the first Trump White House, and the private sector.

Trump’s HUD nominee’s unique and broad experience couldn’t come at a better time for our country. Americans cannot afford homes. As America’s population grows, our housing stock rots. COVID changed the way we do business, the way we live, and the way cities are built. Without sound housing policies, the American Dream will go the way of Romney Republicans — extinct.

Luckily, Donald Trump knows the way forward.

Mitchell appears to have lined up his federal job months ago. When asked about next steps after his fellowship at Harvard, he told an interviewer he would be doing some real estate development work “and then eventually transitioning to the Trump administration.”

Did a couple of years of experience on workforce housing projects make Mitchell the most qualified candidate to be HUD’s administrator for four states? Probably not. But Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” aimed its chainsaw at career civil servants, not the Republican political appointees paid well to supervise experts’ work.

“THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL PRESIDENT EVER”

Mitchell’s latest foray into op-ed writing was his most absurd: a June 29 column for the Des Moines Register titled “Trump’s Triumphs turn Gen Z into the America First generation.” Previewing the president’s July 3 rally in Des Moines, Mitchell packed a lot of flattery and falsehoods into 400 words. The opening paragraph was priceless:

This week, our 45th and 47th president will return to Iowa — a state he won by historic margins three elections in a row. We would vote for him three more times if we could. Iowans understand that President Donald Trump is the most consequential president of our lifetimes. In fact, he’s the most consequential president ever.

More consequential than George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

Mitchell went on to brag that after inheriting “one of the worst messes in American history,” Trump “completely stopped illegal border crossings, mitigated inflation, restored American energy dominance, and restored peace in the world” in his first 100 days. “Trump eviscerated President Joe Biden’s disaster with mythical speed, paving the way for America’s golden age.”

He reminisced about Trump’s “commanding victory” in the Iowa caucuses and “landslide win” with an “astounding” popular vote margin. In reality, Trump won the nationwide popular vote by around 1.5 percent and carried four of the seven swing states by less than a 3-point margin.

Mitchell wrongly stated, “Until Trump, no Republican candidate had ever won the youth vote.” Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would like a word. And contrary to Mitchell’s analysis, Kamala Harris carried the youth vote in 2024 despite shifts toward Trump in that demographic.

More false claims ensued. As for why Trump attracted “a record amount of young voters” in 2024, Mitchell argued, “Young people understood that Trump delivers on their issues better than anyone else. We remembered the president’s first term, when inflation was non-existent, wages were high and houses were more affordable.”

Inflation was lower pre-pandemic, but not “non-existent.” The average year-on-year inflation rate during Trump’s first term was higher than the average inflation rate during the Obama administration.

Mitchell went on to praise Trump’s “surgical, focused, and effective” foreign policy—”His predecessors couldn’t have dreamed of such success.”

He summed up, “Trump’s record has left him untouchable—it’s driven by young voters who agree with him on policy and style.” Wrong again. The nationwide Harvard Youth Poll conducted in March 2025 found only 15 percent of respondents ages 18-29 thought “the country is heading in the right direction.” The same survey showed only 25 percent of young people thought the U.S. was better off under Trump than during the Biden administration, and just 31 percent approved of Trump’s job performance.

Since the Des Moines Register published Mitchell’s latest op-ed, more polls have suggested the president is cratering with young people. The latest CBS/YouGov survey, taken in mid-July, found Trump’s job approval among Americans ages 18-29 was just 28 percent, down from 55 percent in late January. A majority of respondents said Trump “is doing different things than he promised during the 2024 campaign.” About six in ten said the economy is getting worse. Just 15 percent said Trump’s policies were making them better off financially, while 58 percent said they were worse off because of the president’s policies.

No one’s going to fact-check Mitchell’s grand claims at the Des Moines Register, or in the Trump administration. While Iowa’s economy lags most of the nation in the ninth year of our state’s Republican trifecta, Mitchell can spend a few years in a cushy federal government job.

He wore Trump’s unofficial uniform (navy jacket, white shirt, red tie) for his new HUD headshot.