The Iowa House Ethics Committee has unanimously voted to reprimand a mother-daughter lobbying team for falsely claiming on a website that a member of the House was a former stripper.
Republican Representative Samantha Fett of Indianola filed the ethics complaint, alleging the pair had violated the legislature’s rules for lobbyists and their online post could harm her current work and future prospects in the marketing and communications field.
“The purpose of this complaint was to keep professionalism in this building,” Fett said. “We have rules for a reason and it was the right thing to do not only for myself, but for others that are in this situation.”
During a House Ethics Committee meeting this afternoon, Heather Ryan said this is the first year she and her daughter, Heaven Chamberlain, have registered with the legislature as lobbyists and they created online profiles of all 150 legislators. Chamberlain told legislators she felt like she was on trial.
“We were working off a rumor and it was a reputable source and I don’t name my sources,” Chamberlain said. “…If Samantha had just reached out to us, we would have taken it down.”
After the meeting, Ryan said she’s surprised lawmakers didn’t ask her and her daughter to remove the rumor from their website. “I’m wrestling with that now, now that I know that it annoys her so much,” Ryan said, “but you know if it’s not true I’ll probably just cross that part out.”
Ryan and her daughter have testified at a variety of hearings at the Iowa Capitol this year and lawmakers have asked them not to say the name of their organization aloud. It includes a word that Chamberlain described today as “potty language.”