Former TV News Colleagues Compete in Iowa Congressional Race

Both candidates in an eastern Iowa Congressional race are familiar faces in one TV newsroom, because they both used to work there.

State Sen. Liz Mathis (D-Hiawatha) announced Tuesday that she’s running for the First Congressional District seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Marion).

The two women’s careers overlapped in the newsroom of Cedar Rapids ABC affiliate KCRG-TV9 from 2005 to 2007, when Mathis co-anchored the 5 and 6 p.m. newscast and Hinson co-anchored mornings and middays. (Full disclosure: your reporter worked there at the time, too, producing the 10 p.m. newscast.)

Mathis left KCRG in 2007 and was elected to the Iowa Senate in 2011. Hinson left in 2015 and was elected to the Iowa House the following year, and then to Congress in 2020.

The general election is in November 2022. The matchup is not yet a certainty because other candidates could emerge to run in the primary election.