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Republican Mitchell launches campaign in Iowa’s 2nd congressional district
A Republican who was the youngest state legislator in Iowa history when he was sworn into office is running for the U.S. House.
Twenty-eight-year-old Joe Mitchell of Clear Lake served for the past eight months in the Trump Administration, most recently as regional director of the federal agency focus on housing. “Donald Trump needs the strongest ally possible in congress and I believe I’m that person,” Mitchell said during a Radio Iowa interview. “Secondly, we have to make sure that we maintain and keep the Second Congressional District red, so the president has allies in congress that can support his agenda.”
Iowa’s second district is currently represented by Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson of Marion, who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2026. After Trump won the 2024 election, Mitchell worked on the president’s transition team and worked in the Federal Housing Finance Agency before his appointment in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“I have the experience both on the inside and the outside because I’ve been a property developer for the last five years in this state. I’ve done workforce housing developments all across Iowa,” Mitchell said. “Every day I had to deal with regulation on the federal, state and local level and so I’m going to take that real life experience and take it to Washington.”
Mitchell has worked on housing developments in places like Dyersville, Grinnell and Clear Lake. Mitchell, who was born in 1997, is part of Generation Z and nearly four years ago he founded a national non-profit called “Run GenZ” to encourage young conservatives to run for state and local office. Mitchell said his generation deserves a seat at the negotiating table in congress. “The issues we’re going to vote on in congress are going to impact me and my generation and my children more than anybody else,” Mitchell said. “…Right now you have $34 trillion in debt that my generation and our children will have to pay for. That’s something that’s ultimately something that’s driving me to run.”
Mitchell holds a degree in business administration from Drake University and this past spring he was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Mitchell worked alongside Democrats and other Republicans, including the general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “I was the Kennedy School and the Institute of Politics. It’s a bit removed from the day-to-day at Harvard,” Mitchell said. “…But I did deal with a lot of the students from undergrad that would tell the bias they would deal with every day in class and I think the president’s right in the fight he’s taken to the Ivy League schools.”
Mitchell is a native of Wayland, in southeast Iowa, and represented the area in the Iowa House for four years. “I learned what it meant to have a balanced budget as a state, to cut regulations, to cut taxes for working class families,” Mitchell said, “and so we’re going to take the same mentality to the United States Congress.”
Mitchell is likely to face a GOP primary in the second congressional district and three Democrats have announced they are running in the district, which includes 22 counties in the northeast portion of the state and includes the cities of Mason City, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Waterloo.
