Joni Ernst

How long have they been in office, and where?

Every federal term on record, with party changes, chamber changes, and breaks in service marked.

First took office

2015

Terms served

2

Years actually served

12

Terms held before federal office — state legislature, local office, or appointed roles — are not in the federal record and are not shown.

State and local office held before Congress is not in any federal dataset and is not shown.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)

Did voters choose them for every term?

Whether each term began with a general election, a special election, or an appointment by a governor.

No appointment or special election is recorded for this member. The roster marks how a term began for fewer than one term in a hundred, so an absence here means the record is silent — not that every term began with a general election.

An appointed senator holds the seat lawfully and with full powers; the point is only that no ballot was cast for them at the time. A special election is the opposite case — voters did choose, just outside the normal cycle. House vacancies can only be filled by election, never by appointment, which is why appointments appear on Senate pages alone.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)

What power do they hold inside the chamber?

Formal leadership posts — Speaker, Whip, Conference Chair, President Pro Tempore — with the years each was held.

Leadership is distinct from committee work. It controls what reaches the floor and when, which is power that never appears in a voting record.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)

Has their family served in Congress before?

Relatives who have also held federal office.

No relatives of this member are recorded as having served in Congress.

A political family is not a finding about anyone's conduct. It is shown because it is on the public record and is otherwise invisible.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)

Who held this seat before them?

Every person who has ever occupied this seat, and the party of each.

People who have held it

24

Seat dates from

1848

Changes of party

11

Senate seats are tracked by class, which never changes, so that lineage is continuous. House districts are tracked by number, and redistricting reassigns numbers — the 3rd district of 1850 is not the same territory as the 3rd district today. Read the older entries as the history of the number, not of the ground.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators, current and historical (public domain)

How did they vote on the bills that came to a vote?

Every recorded vote of their career. Most bills never reach a recorded vote at all, so this is not the whole of what Congress considered.

897 recorded votes. The strip runs oldest to newest, left to right; the table below is most recent first.

Votes cast

878

Missed

19

Missed rate

2.1%

On final passage

63

Most roll calls are procedural, not final passage. A vote against a motion to recommit is not a vote against the bill. Final passage is shown by default; procedural votes are behind the toggle.

Source · Voteview, UCLA — complete roll calls from the 1st Congress

What passed without anyone going on the record?

Bills their chamber approved by voice vote or unanimous consent, where no individual position was ever recorded.

Bills passed with no recorded vote

76

No individual position exists for these. This member's absence from the list above is not a fact about them — it is a fact about how the chamber disposed of the bill.

A large share of legislation passes this way. Absence from this member's vote list does not mean absence from the chamber's work.

Source · Congress.gov actions feed

Did they vote to weaken bills they then voted for?

Amendment votes paired with the final passage vote on the same bill.

Bills with both votes

98

Positions differed

78

Both votes are shown side by side with no characterisation. Amending a bill is ordinary legislating; the pairing is shown because it is otherwise invisible, not because it is an accusation.

Source · Voteview roll calls joined to Congress.gov amendment records

How have they voted on the issues you care about?

Their final-passage votes grouped by policy area, with the outcome of each bill.

How this is calculated Counts of Yea, Nay, and Not Voting on final-passage votes, grouped by the bill's CRS policy area. Nothing is weighted and no direction is scored — these are counts.

A vote on a bill is not a position on an issue. Members vote against bills they support over cost, over an unrelated provision, or over process. Read the individual votes rather than the totals.

Source · Policy areas assigned by the Congressional Research Service and published through the Congress.gov API. This site uses the CRS classification and does not create its own.

How does this compare with the rest of their delegation?

The same final-passage votes, alongside how the other members from their state voted.

Grassley

97%

Share of final-passage votes where both cast the same position.

Agreement or disagreement with colleagues is not a measure of anything. It is shown because it is the comparison a constituent is usually trying to make and cannot easily make anywhere else.

Source · Voteview roll calls joined to the current roster

What did they write, and what happened to it?

Bills sponsored and cosponsored, and how far each one got — enacted, passed one chamber, or died in committee.

Sponsored

20

Became law

0

Cosponsored

1930

How this is calculated Enacted ÷ sponsored. Both counts shown, not just the ratio.

Most bills die in committee. A low enactment count is the norm, not an outlier.

Source · Congress.gov API, Library of Congress

Did they try to force votes leadership would not schedule?

Discharge petition signatures — the mechanism for pulling a bill out of committee against the leadership's wishes.

Not in the local cache yet. python3 discharge_ingest.py

Source · Office of the Clerk, discharge petition record

What do they have power over?

Committee and subcommittee assignments, with chair and ranking-member roles.

A committee name says little about what it controls. The jurisdiction is the committee's own description of its remit, and it is what makes the holdings section below meaningful.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain); jurisdiction text as published by each committee

Who funds their campaign?

Money raised and spent by their principal campaign committee in the current two-year period, 2025–26, and where it came from.

Total raised

$2,002,592

Total spent

$2,307,957

Cash on hand

$1,934,478

From individuals

$997,372

From committees

$637,250

Every member is shown over the same two-year window. A senator's election cycle runs six years, so a senator's lifetime campaign totals are larger than this; showing two years for everyone keeps the figures comparable across the House and Senate. Contributor employer is self-reported by the donor. It groups individuals who share an employer. It is not a contribution from that company — corporations cannot give to candidates.

Source · Federal Election Commission, OpenFEC API

Who are the people writing the largest checks?

Every individual the FEC itemises, by name, with the employer and occupation they reported.

Itemised donors

236

From named donors

$888,505

Largest single donor

$22,146

236 itemised donors are on file and all are listed above. The complete list, with no cut-off, is in this CSV. Contributions under $200 in total are not itemised by law, so no public record names those donors — for most campaigns that is a substantial share of the money raised. Street addresses appear in the FEC filing and are deliberately not reproduced here.

How this is calculated Contributions summed per person across the cycle. The FEC itemises a donor once their total passes $200; below that, no public record names them.

Employer and occupation are self-reported by the donor and are often blank or vague. Street addresses appear in the FEC filing and are deliberately not reproduced here — city and state answer whether money is local without putting anyone's home on a searchable page.

Source · Federal Election Commission, Schedule A itemised individual contributions

How much of it comes from the people they represent?

Itemized individual contributions from inside the state, against contributions from everywhere else.

From Iowa

10%

In-state total

$113,915

All itemized

$1,175,655

How this is calculated In-state itemized ÷ total itemized. Unitemized small-dollar money has no address on file and is excluded from both.

Source · FEC Schedule A, aggregated by contributor state

Who spends on their behalf without asking them?

Independent expenditures supporting or opposing this member, by outside groups.

Spent supporting

$0

Spent opposing

$30,952

This money is legally beyond the candidate's control and cannot be coordinated with the campaign. It is shown separately from campaign finance for that reason. Spending against a member is listed alongside spending for them.

Source · FEC Schedule E, independent expenditures

Do they run a second committee most people never see?

Leadership PACs are separate from the campaign. They may pay for travel, meals, and contributions to other members.

A leadership PAC is legal and common. It is shown because almost no voter knows these exist, not because having one is irregular.

Source · FEC candidate committees, filtered to leadership PACs

Which colleagues do they fund?

Contributions from this member's committees to other members' campaigns — the internal influence economy of Congress.

Recipients are matched on surname against the sitting roster. A common surname can produce a false match, so this is shown as a name match and linked to the primary filing rather than asserted as a transfer.

Source · FEC Schedule B, recipients matched against the member roster

Who else does their campaign pay?

Where campaign money goes — consultants, vendors, salaries, and any payments to the member's relatives or own businesses.

Payments to relatives are disclosed and are not by themselves improper. They are flagged only where the payee surname matches the member's, and that match is shown as a match, not as a finding.

Source · FEC Schedule B, itemized disbursements

Did they lend their campaign money and get paid back?

Candidate loans to the campaign, and repayments of those loans out of money raised afterward.

No loans to the campaign are on file this cycle.

Source · FEC Schedule C loans and Schedule B repayments

Who lobbies them, and who pays for their events?

Contributions and honorary payments disclosed by registered lobbyists, plus lobbying filings naming their committees.

Disclosed

$757,023

Lobbying firms

221

FECA

$715,916

Honorary Expenses

$41,107

309 disclosures in all; the largest 40 are listed.

These are disclosures made by lobbyists, not acts by the member. LD-203 covers contributions made to or events held in honour of an official, and a member may be named in one without having been involved in the payment.

Source · LDA.gov. Senate Office of Public Records cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from LDA.gov.

What do they own, and what have they traded?

Assets, liabilities, outside income, and individual securities transactions — disclosed because they hold federal office.

Senate financial disclosures are filed with the Senate Office of Public Records. That system has no bulk feed, so this page links to the search rather than reproducing filings.

Amounts are reported as ranges, not exact figures — that is how the form works. Holdings owned by a dependent child are excluded from this site entirely.

Source · Office of the Clerk, U.S. House. Ethics in Government Act and STOCK Act filings.

Did they disclose their trades on time?

The STOCK Act requires a transaction to be reported within 45 days. This is the gap between each trade and its filing.

Not in the local cache yet. python3 fd_ingest.py --years 2025 2026 --parse-ptr

How this is calculated Filing date minus transaction date, in days. Statutory deadline is 45. Each trade shown individually; no average, because one 300-day filing and nine on-time ones is not the same as ten 30-day filings.

A late filing is a fact against a statutory deadline. The Ethics Committees, not this site, determine whether a late filing is a violation.

Source · Computed from filing dates in House Clerk PTR documents

Do their holdings overlap what their committees decide?

Committee jurisdiction on one side, disclosed holdings and contributor industries on the other.

These two lists are placed side by side and nothing is asserted about the relationship between them. An overlap is not evidence of wrongdoing. The reader draws the conclusion; this site does not.

Source · Committee jurisdictions from congress-legislators; holdings from House Clerk filings; industries from FEC filings

Who paid for their travel?

Trips funded by private parties rather than the taxpayer or the campaign — who paid, where, and what it cost.

Not in the local cache yet. python3 travel_ingest.py

Source · House Clerk gift and travel disclosures

How do they spend the taxpayer money for their office?

Quarterly office accounts — staff salaries, travel, equipment, and taxpayer-funded constituent mail.

The Senate publishes a separate semi-annual report.

Franked mail volume is shown against the election calendar because the timing is the thing that is otherwise invisible.

Source · Statement of Disbursements of the House, quarterly

What did they request for their district?

Community Project Funding requests — members must publish these, usually on their own sites where few people find them.

Not in the local cache yet. python3 earmark_ingest.py

Source · House Appropriations Committee member request disclosures

Has any authority investigated them?

Proceedings before the House or Senate Ethics Committees, the Office of Congressional Conduct, and FEC enforcement matters.

Not in the local cache yet. python3 ethics_ingest.py

Only findings by bodies authorised to make them appear here, always attributed to that body. An empty section means no proceedings are on file — which is the ordinary case, not a gap in the record.

Source · House Ethics, Senate Ethics, OCC referrals, FEC MURs

Where does all of this come from?

The systems of record behind this page. Go and check them — that is the point. Sections drawing on other sources name them in their own footers.

Source · Primary documents, government systems of record

Where are their local offices?

District and state offices — the ones that answer their own phones.

Mail to Washington passes through irradiation screening and can take weeks to arrive. For anything time-sensitive, the local office is the working address.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)

Where do they speak publicly?

Official accounts of the office.

These are official office accounts. Personal and campaign accounts are not in the federal dataset and are not listed.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)

How do I contact this office?

The office's own contact form, phone, and Washington address.

This opens the official www.ernst.senate.gov site. WriteTheUS does not see, store, or send what you write there.

Congressional offices weigh mail from their own constituents. Nothing written here passes through this site.

Source · unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain)