THE HARRIS FILE
The Public Record
Iowa House District 26 (R)
Took office Jan. 2023, age 27.
Working in politics since his teens.
Summary of findings
| Question | Who does the representative for Monroe, Appanoose, Davis & rural Wapello counties actually work for? |
| Money | 84.4% of his $331,083 raised from OUTSIDE the district's four counties ($279,384). |
| Votes | 107 of 112 contested bills in our public vote database cast with his party. 5 breaks. |
| Alignment | When a lobby group tied to his top donors declared for or against a bill, his vote matched the group's position 95% of the time. |
| Method | Roll calls from legis.iowa.gov through 2026-07-09. Every dollar from IECDB filings through 2026-07-28, refreshed weekly. |
Contents follow as Exhibits A–E. Nothing in this file is anonymous, leaked, or alleged: it is the record he filed.
Exhibit A
THE MONEY ISN'T FROM HERE
of Austin Harris's campaign money ($279,384 of $331,083) came from outside the four counties he represents. That is the conservative count: every dollar from anywhere in Monroe, Appanoose, Davis, or Wapello County is treated as local, including all of Ottumwa. The one exception is $1,355 in small gifts reported with no address, counted as outside; treat every one of those as local and it is still 83.9% from away.
| $279,384from outside the district's four counties | $51,699from the four counties he represents | $37,391from outside the State of Iowa entirely |
His single largest donor, at $30,000 across five checks, is David Barker, the Republican Party of Iowa's former treasurer and finance co-chair, now President Trump's assistant education secretary. (hover to declassify) An Iowa City landlord and economist whose companies own more than 2,000 apartments across the Midwest, a three-time RNC delegate, and a top donor to the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader. His largest check to Harris, $10,000, arrived in July 2025 while his federal nomination was pending before the U.S. Senate. Not a District 26 address. The full roll of all 403 donors is printed in Exhibit F.
One more piece of arithmetic on the local column. Of the $51,699 raised inside the four counties, $15,500 came from his own parents, Rex and Sheri Harris of Moulton. Nothing wrong with that; any family would do the same. It does mean that district residents who are not his parents account for 10.9% of everything he has ever raised.
THIS RACE ONLY: THE 2025-2026 CYCLE
| $115,563raised this cycle | $112,629spent this cycle | $5,459left on hand |
The figures above are the current race, not his whole career. This cycle he has raised $115,563, and 91.2% of it came from outside the four counties, an even wider gap than his all-time 84.4%. And he is not sitting on it. A week after the June primary, on June 9, 2026, he wrote a $100,000 check to the Republican Party of Iowa, with $1,000 more the same day, draining a $102,359 account down to $5,459. A safe-seat incumbent who raised it from the PACs, then handed almost all of it back to the state party. The full career total, every donor and every dollar since he first ran, is the ledger in Exhibit F.
Cycle raised and the outside-district share are counted from his itemized IECDB filings; spending and cash on hand are from his DR-2 summary reports, current through the period ending July 14, 2026 (his most recent filing). His next report is due October 19, 2026. Source: Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board, via the Iowa Data Hub. Refreshed weekly.
Exhibit B
THE VOTES FOLLOWED THE MONEY
He claps in Des Moines. The district picks up the bill.
Over $315 million a year, income cap removed, two-thirds of first-year recipients already in private school. District 26 has almost no private schools: nearly all of that money leaves, and what comes back is pennies on the dollar. Rural Republicans Tom Moore, Chad Ingels, and Michael Bergan voted NO to protect their rural schools. Harris, who went on to chair the House Education Appropriations Subcommittee through the 2025 session before taking the health committee gavel, chose the Governor over the district.
Source: HF 68 bill & roll call, legis.iowa.gov · ESA data: Iowa Dept. of Education.
The Area Education Agencies are how a school the size of Moravia or Moulton affords a speech pathologist at all. HF 2612 stripped their media and education-services money and pushed them toward fee-for-service. Iowa's nine AEAs lost 429 staff the very next school year. Fewer AEA staff means fewer services for special-needs kids in small districts. He voted for it.
Source: HF 2612, legis.iowa.gov.
Caps non-economic damages when a clinic or hospital's negligence wrecks a life: $1 million for clinics, $2 million for hospitals. The rural catch: the uncapped part of an award leans on lost wages, and rural wages run lower. For a retiree, a kid, or anyone in a low-wage job, the capped pain-and-suffering money is often the biggest share of what a jury can give. He voted to let a statute, not twelve Iowans, decide what your pain is worth. As of the 2026 session, he chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee: healthcare in this state runs through his room.
Source: HF 161, legis.iowa.gov · roll call mirrored at LegiScan.
That room changed hands in the fall of 2025, when leadership named him Health and Human Services chair for the 2026 session. Before that fall, no health-industry PAC had ever written him a check bigger than $2,500. Then came November 17, 2025, one fundraising day as the incoming chairman: $25,720 into his committee, including $7,500 from the hospital lobby, $6,000 from the nursing-home lobby, and $1,000 apiece from the dentists, from Wellmark, and from Centene. Centene and Elevance, whose checks arrived weeks apart, are parent companies of two of the corporations that run Iowa's privatized Medicaid. The committee he now chairs oversees Medicaid. From mid-October through January 11, 2026, the day before the session convened, PACs and interest groups gave him $59,475 across 56 checks. The votes match the checks: where the nursing-home association declared a position on a bill, his vote went the association's way 42 of 42 times in our database.
Source: itemized IECDB receipts, committee 2707, via the Iowa Data Hub · lobbyist declarations, legis.iowa.gov. Every check named here is in the register in Exhibit F.
Public record, from the USDA's own files: his father's farming operation received $954,770 in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2023. That is not a scandal. The farm safety net is why family farms like his survive, and this campaign defends it. Here is the vote. In 2026 Harris voted yes on SF 2422, the party-line rewrite of Iowa's public assistance programs, SNAP and Medicaid included, that the League of Women Voters lobbied against. It is law now. He also voted yes on HF 2716, the House's SNAP, Medicaid, and WIC bill that the Iowa Hunger Coalition, the Iowa Catholic Conference, and the state's community action agencies all declared against. His own listed resume includes the USDA office that oversees the food stamp program. One safety net stayed whole for the farm. The one for the poorest counties in Iowa got new strings, and he voted to tighten them knowing exactly how that machinery works.
Source: EWG Farm Subsidy Database (USDA records) via Iowa Starting Line, May 14, 2024 · SF 2422 and HF 2716 roll calls and lobbyist declarations, legis.iowa.gov.
On the 112 contested bills in our database, the ones that split the chamber where a vote is a real choice, he voted with his party 107 times. Give him the 5 breaks: once against a state ban on local guaranteed-income pilots, a vote to leave that spending call with cities and counties instead of Des Moines; once against a charter-school funding bill that sent per-pupil money out with departing students and could force districts to sell school buildings to charter or private bidders; three more times in the 2026 session, on side matters, the rules for school-board and city elections, hunter education requirements, and a school-security grant funded by a fee on wire transfers. None of those were the votes that hollow out this district. So the independence is real, and he knows how to tell leadership no. He just wouldn't do it for this district on the votes that count: the $315 million voucher program, the AEA cut, the cap on what your pain is worth. Every one of those votes, with the lobbyists who declared on it, is in the public database this campaign built.
Exhibit C
THE CHECKS WORTH READING TWICE
Six entries from the donor roll, annotated. The full roll of all 403 donors is printed in Exhibit F.
Exhibit D
EVERY BOSS HE HAS EVER HAD
His profession, exactly as he filed it for the Iowa Official Register: "Deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks; Iowa Republican Party; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services; Donald J. Trump for President Inc.; farmer." Four political employers and the family farm. The payment records fill in the dates.
| 2014 age 18 |
Miller-Meeks for Congress On a congressional campaign payroll months out of Moulton-Udell High School. FEC records: $7,583 in wages, salary, and mileage. |
| 2015–2019 age 19–23 |
Republican Party of Iowa, staff Sixty-four mileage, expense, and payroll items in the party's federal filings, paid to Austin Harris of Moulton, then Ottumwa. |
| 2016 age 20 |
Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Listed on his own official bio; the campaign's FEC filings show payroll that fall and a mileage reimbursement to Austin Harris of Ottumwa. |
| dates not public | USDA, Office of the Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services A political appointment, per his own bio. That office oversees SNAP, the food stamp program. |
| 2019–2021 age 23–25 |
Miller-Meeks campaign, consultant $4,500 a month for fifteen months, then a final $15,000 check on January 15, 2021, the same month he moved onto her official taxpayer-funded staff. $82,500 total. |
| 2021 age 25 |
Deputy chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Miller-Meeks Official House payroll, January through November 2021. He left to run for this seat. |
| 2023– age 27– |
State representative, House District 26 The first job he has ever held that answers to voters. |
The money completes the circle. The party employed him. The party's former treasurer and finance co-chair, David Barker, is his largest donor. His campaign has spent $314,544 in its life, and $238,020 of it, 76 cents of every dollar, went right back to the Republican Party of Iowa — including a single $100,000 check on June 9, 2026 — with another $46,942 to Victory Enterprises, the Republican consulting firm. He raises from the PACs and pipes it to the machine that raised him.
Sources: Iowa Official Register 2023-2024 (his filed profession); FEC Schedule B disbursement records for Miller-Meeks for Congress, the Republican Party of Iowa, and Donald J. Trump for President Inc.; official House payroll via LegiStorm; IECDB campaign expenditure filings, committee 2707, via the Iowa Data Hub.
Exhibit E
TWO NAMES ON THE BALLOT. TWO SIDES OF THE TABLE.
His record, from the filings and roll calls above. Brett Mohler's platform, from mohlerforiowa.com. Line them up and decide who works for you.
Exhibit F
EVERY DONOR. EVERY DOLLAR. NO EDITING.
All 403 donors to his committee, annotated, followed by the itemized register of all 785 reported contributions. Straight from the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board, refreshed weekly.
THE DONOR ROLL (403)
THE REGISTER (785 CONTRIBUTIONS)
| Date | Donor | From | Amount |
|---|
Every itemized contribution he has reported to the IECDB, newest first, drawn from the state's bulk dataset (pulled 2026-07-28, refreshed weekly as the state updates that export). His cash-on-hand and spending totals, above, come from his DR-2 summary through the period ending July 14, 2026; his next report is due October 19, 2026.
FINDING: HE WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE WHO WRITE THE CHECKS.
Case OpenThis file stays open, and it updates itself: the votes refresh from legis.iowa.gov and the money refreshes weekly from state filings. He can change the record any time he likes, by voting like he lives here.
Recommended action
RETIRE THE RUBBER STAMP. HIRE A NEIGHBOR.
I'm Brett Mohler, a neighbor and a dad from Albia, running on water, schools, and healthcare. I published this file so you never have to take a politician's word for anything. Including mine.
SOURCES & METHOD
- Votes and bill text: legis.iowa.gov roll-call records, 90th–91st General Assemblies; HF 161 roll call mirrored at LegiScan.
- Campaign finance: IECDB itemized filings via the Iowa Data Hub (dataset 917). Geography counted conservatively: all four counties, including all of Ottumwa, count as local.
- Nursing homes: Iowa Public Radio (Oct. 2024); Iowa Capital Dispatch (Dec. 2023). Manufactured housing: reporting on Havenpark Communities' Iowa parks.
- Donor-lobby alignment compares his floor votes to lobbyist declarations filed on the same bills by groups tied to his top donors: 185 matches on 195 tracked votes.
- Photos: campaign file; bill-signing at the Iowa Capitol, May 20, 2026.