She Ran on a “Strong Work Ethic.” Then She Missed More Than Half Her Votes.

When Iowa state Rep. Lindsay James (D-Dubuque) launched her run for Congress, she told Iowans her day job was safe in her hands. “Full-time campaigning and, of course, fulfilling my important work in the Iowa legislature,” she said. “You know me, I have a pretty strong work ethic.”

The legislative record tells a different story. During the 2026 session of the Iowa House, James missed 177 of 342 recorded votes— 51.7 percent, more than half the votes her chamber took — according to the legislature’s own journals. On at least three of those days, the reason she was gone is documented: she was at campaign events for the U.S. House seat she now hopes to win.

This is not a charging document or an audit. It is something simpler and harder to spin: the public roll call. James is the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s open 2nd Congressional District, and the question her own attendance record raises is the one every voter is entitled to ask — if she skipped more than half the job she already holds while running for the next one, what does “strong work ethic” actually mean?

• 177 of 342 — recorded votes James missed in the 2026 Iowa House session — 51.7%, more than half the votes taken · Source: Iowa Legislature journals; Fox News
• “Strong work ethic” — her own campaign-launch pledge that running for Congress would not pull her off her legislative job · Source: Fox News
• April 20 & April 30 — two of the documented days she skipped floor votes — a school screen-time bill and a bill making animal torture a felony — to hold campaign events · Source: Fox News; NRCC
• Open seat: IA-02 — James won the Democratic primary with 57.3% after Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) vacated the district to run for U.S. Senate · Source: Iowa Capital Dispatch
• Taxpayer-funded — she drew her state legislative salary across the session in which she missed the majority of votes · Source: NRCC
• vs. Joe Mitchell (R) — James faces former state Rep. Joe Mitchell in the November general election for the 2nd District · Source: Iowa Capital Dispatch

The figure at the center of this story is not an estimate, an opponent’s talking point, or a leaked memo. It is arithmetic from the Iowa House’s published roll calls. Across the 2026 session, the chamber took 342 recorded votes. James, Rep. Lindsay James (D-Dubuque), was absent for 177of them — 51.7 percent. That is not a handful of missed quorum calls or a bad week with the flu. It is a clear majority of the votes she was elected to cast.

Attendance is one of the few metrics in politics that cannot be argued with. A legislator either answers the roll or does not, and the clerk writes it down either way. The Iowa Legislature posts those journals publicly, which is how the count became a story in the first place. James won her primary on June 2; by late June, the session record of the job she still holds had become the most concrete thing voters knew about her.

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The reason the number stings is that James invited the comparison herself. Asked how a full-time congressional campaign would square with her duties in Des Moines, she did not hedge. She would do both, she said — “full-time campaigning and, of course, fulfilling my important work in the Iowa legislature” — and she leaned on her reputation to close the deal: “You know me, I have a pretty strong work ethic.”

That framing is exactly why the attendance record matters. Plenty of legislators run for higher office, and some miss votes doing it — the issue here is the gap between the assurance and the result. James told constituents the campaign would not come at the cost of the work. The journals show it came at the cost of more than half of it. When a candidate stakes her case on her own diligence, her diligence becomes a fair, and measurable, subject.

“You know me, I have a pretty strong work ethic.”

Iowa Rep. Lindsay James (D), describing how she would balance her congressional campaign with her legislative duties

On several of the days James missed floor votes, the public schedule shows where she was: on the campaign trail. On April 20, while the House took up a bill to limit student screen time, she held a campaign event in Cedar Rapids — roughly two hours from the Capitol. Ten days later, on April 30, she missed a vote on whether to make animal torture a felony in order to host a meet-and-greet at a brewery in Decorah. By other accounts she also skipped the chamber’s consideration of a property-tax measure for a candidate event in Dubuque.

None of those campaign stops is improper on its own — candidates campaign. The accountability point is the trade-off. Iowans elected James to be in the room when the House voted on schools, on animal-cruelty penalties, and on their property-tax bills. On those particular days she chose a brewery, a meet-and-greet, and a stop in her would-be new district instead. The votes happened without her.

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The job James missed votes to pursue is Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, anchored in the northeastern corner of the state around Cedar Rapids and Dubuque. The seat is open: Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson left it to run for the U.S. Senate in 2026. James won a three-way Democratic primary on June 2 with 57.3 percent of the vote, defeating Clint Twedt-Ball and Kathy Dolter, and will face Republican former state Rep. Joe Mitchell in November.

That context sharpens the attendance story rather than excusing it. The National Republican Congressional Committee has hammered the theme — “Lindsay James promised Iowans that campaigning wouldn’t distract her from the job she was elected to do,” spokeswoman Emily Tuttle said, accusing James of choosing “her own political ambitions over showing up for work” while drawing a state paycheck. James’s campaign answers with her legislative résumé: spokesman Jackson Smith pointed to her bill capping the cost of insulin and her work on tenant protections, saying she “has always fought for Iowa families.”

Accountability does not always require a subpoena. Sometimes it is just the clerk’s tally read back to the person who promised it would never come to this. Lindsay James ran on a “strong work ethic,” assured Iowans her campaign would not cost them her presence in the legislature, and then missed more than half of her votes — with her campaign schedule, on several documented days, the explicit reason why. Her opponents will make it an ad; her supporters will point to her insulin and tenant bills. But the number belongs to no party. It is in the journal, it is 51.7 percent, and every Iowan in the 2nd District can read it for themselves. We will update this page as the general-election contest with Joe Mitchell develops.

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