GOP Congressional candidate Joe Mitchell visits Tama-Toledo area Thursday

TOLEDO -- Joe Mitchell, a real estate developer and former state representative who hopes to represent Iowa's 2nd District in Congress come January, made several stops in the Tama-Toledo area on Thursday accompanied by his onetime colleague in the Iowa Legislature, Rep. Dean Fisher (R-Montour).

Mitchell, 29, started the afternoon off enjoying ice cream at Murph's Creamery and Grill in Toledo and sitting down for an interview with the T-R and the Cedar Rapids Gazette before stopping at the Tama-Toledo Christian School, where Fisher serves as board president, Hardon's in Tama and the State Bank of Toledo. At 21, the Wayland native became the youngest person ever elected to the Iowa House when he took office in 2019, serving two terms before being redistricted into the same district as fellow Republican Jeff Shipley and losing his primary in 2022.

After leaving the Iowa House, Mitchell worked for President Donald Trump's 2024 transition team and subsequently held a pair of roles within the administration -- chief of staff in the Federal Housing Finance Agency and then Regional Administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development of the Great Plains Region. His Clear Lake-based company, J Mitchell Real Estate, has focused on building workforce townhomes in several rural Iowa communities including Dyersville, Mount Pleasant, Grinnell and Clear Lake.

Mitchell told the newspaper he has made several stops in Tama County since announcing his candidacy last year, including the annual Lincoln Dinner, and his goal for Thursday was to meet with local business leaders and workers to share his agenda if he is elected in November. The Republican is facing off against Democrat Lindsay James, independent Dave Bushaw (who held a town hall in Tama on Saturday) and Libertarian Rick Stewart as current Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Fisher was the first elected official to endorse Mitchell in his race, and Mitchell went on to defeat fellow Republican Charlie McClintock by over 20 percentage points in the June primary.

"I knew Joe in the legislature and worked with him there, thought a lot of him back then, and when I heard he was running, I just knew he'd be the right guy for the job," Fisher said. "He's a solid conservative, worked with the Trump administration and was involved in a lot of rural housing things. I knew he'd bring a lot of energy to the job."

From there, the conversation shifted focus to the issue seemingly at the top of everyone's mind at the moment: affordability, especially in light of continually high gas prices. Mitchell said the government needs to spend less money to reduce inflation and interest rates, which he described as a bipartisan problem, and he touted the tax cuts passed last year as a step in the right direction. Currently, he noted that the federal government runs a $2 trillion annual deficit and pays $1 trillion in interest on the debt every year.

Inflation, he added, typically benefits wealthy people who own assets, while the working class gets "screwed" because their dollar doesn't go as far. Mitchell highlighted efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse in government programs such as Medicaid.

As for the ongoing war in Iran, Mitchell was asked about his position given that Reps. Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, all Republicans from Iowa, recently voted to authorize an end to the conflict unless Congress authorizes further military action. He described himself as an "America First" candidate who didn't feel that the U.S. should be involved in any war that doesn't benefit its people.

While most people don't believe Iran should have a nuclear weapon, Mitchell commented, costs remain high despite the fact that they had dropped earlier in Trump's second term before the war began.

"Two things can be true at once. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and also, we still need to work on getting costs down and getting an exit plan to get out of the war as well," he said. "I think most voters agree with those two points."

He called the War Powers Resolution, however, a "partisan move" by Democrats and wished to see a larger, more bipartisan discussion about reeling in executive power for wars in general, referencing previous presidents such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

When asked about the biggest distinctions between himself and James, a state representative from Dubuque who visited Tama for a town hall at the library last month, Mitchell pointed out the fact that he is a lifelong Iowan, while James hails from Portland, Ore. and has previously lived in San Francisco and Massachusetts.

"I always say I don't hold it that she's from Portland, Ore. against her. I hold it against her that she votes like she's from Portland, Ore. And so she's somebody that has one of the most extreme records in the House, voted against almost every single tax cut that was proposed... voted for pieces of legislation that would've allowed kids to get sex change surgeries as young as four, five, six years old. She was voting for legislation that would allow prisoners to get taxpayer funded sex surgeries. She was voting for bills to allow illegal immigrants to be able to take taxpayer programs like state Medicaid and food stamps and housing assistance," he said. "So there couldn't be a clearer contrast between the two of us."

Mitchell claimed that other Democrats have privately told him they wish they had chosen another candidate, and he felt he was winning the messaging battle and the candidate quality battle.

On healthcare, the candidate said he would like to preserve some portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that keep rural hospitals and clinics open and protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Describing his own work in building homes in rural Iowa, he opined that if such communities don't have adequate healthcare, housing and schools, they will struggle to attract residents.

Mitchell said noncitizens should not be eligible to receive Medicaid benefits, and from there, he was asked about the balance between keeping the meatpacking industry afloat in places like Tama-Toledo and Marshalltown and enforcing immigration laws.

"I don't think we should ever reward companies for hiring illegals. They should always be hiring people that are going through the legal process, whether they're a citizen or they're here on a visa. It could be one or the other, so they need to have some kind of work permit to be working here. I would never want to condone any business hiring people illegally," he said.

He felt that Trump won the 2024 election because of frustration over the rash of illegal border crossings under Biden, which he said included convicted murderers and rapists who had not been vetted. Mitchell contended that if meatpacking plants are struggling to find employees who are legally authorized to work in the country, they should raise their wages.

"If you flood the market with cheap labor and they're going to ultimately hire the people that are willing to work for less, then the people that are maybe Iowans that expect a higher wage and better working conditions where it's not 110 degrees in the facility, they get breaks and they get some vacation time (won't want to work there)," he said. "We want to create the labor market where Iowans are picked first, and if that means these massive multinational companies have to raise their wages to actually hire Iowans, then that's what they have to do."

Contact Robert Maharry at (641) 753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.