Iowa state senator Sarah Trone Garriott, now running for Congress in Iowa's 3rd congressional district, told an audience at the Iowa Secular Summit in July 2023 that she sometimes figures out which version of herself to present based on "the outfit I'm wearing or my name tag, or who's paying me." The remarks, captured in a clip obtained and reported by the Daily Caller, landed alongside new Federal Election Commission filings showing her campaign is flush with out-of-state cash from some of the Democratic Party's most prolific megadonors.
Voters in a competitive Iowa swing district might reasonably want to know: which Sarah Trone Garriott would they be sending to Washington? The candidate herself seems unsure.
Trone Garriott, an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was speaking at the secular gathering about the overlap between her roles as a clergy member and a state legislator. Her full remarks, as reported, went further than a casual aside about wearing multiple hats.
"And so in my life as a state legislator, there are times in my life where I'm very clear where I am doing the church thing, and I'm the minister, and that's what I'm about. And there are times that I know I'm the senator and that's what I am there for."
That much is unremarkable. Plenty of public servants hold religious vocations alongside their legislative duties. But the next portion of her remarks is where the trouble starts.
"But there's a lot of time that gets kind of mushy and kind of confusing, like today I'm not really sure who I am right now. I'm kind of all things. Uh, you know sometimes I can tell by the outfit I'm wearing or my name tag, or who's paying me, but um other times it's hard because all these things they connect and you know, they get a little messy."
Read that again. A sitting state senator and aspiring congresswoman told a crowd she calibrates her public identity, at least in part, by who is paying her. That line deserves more scrutiny than a dismissive campaign press release can wave away.
The "who's paying me" question becomes sharper when you follow Trone Garriott's campaign finance records. FEC filings show that in just the most recent quarter, her campaign received a maximum-level donation from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. The Daily Caller reported that the address associated with the contribution documents under Pritzker's name is the same address used by Lee "Rosy" Rosenberg, the chairman and treasurer of the JB for Governor campaign committee, as listed on an Illinois campaign disclosure page.
The Caller reached out to both Pritzker's campaign and the governor himself regarding the contribution. No response from either was reported. Pritzker, a billionaire who ran an unsuccessful congressional campaign of his own back in 1998, has long been one of the Democratic Party's largest individual funders. His interest in an Iowa House race tells you something about the national stakes Democrats see in the seat.
Pritzker's donation was not the only big-dollar check from outside Iowa's borders. Elizabeth "Liz" Simons, the daughter of late hedge fund billionaire Jim Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies, who amassed a fortune of $31.4 billion, gave the maximum-level donation to Trone Garriott twice in March, FEC records show. Quinn Delaney, co-founder of the Akonadi Foundation, made one maximum contribution during the same quarter.
These are not casual supporters dropping fifty dollars into an ActBlue page. They are among the most influential and ideologically committed donors in progressive politics.
The donor profiles paint a picture that Iowa voters should study carefully. Elizabeth Simons emerged as the top individual donor to Jay Jones' 2025 Virginia attorney general campaign, contributing $750,000, campaign finance records show. Jones won that race, but not before a National Review report surfaced text messages in which he allegedly fantasized about shooting former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican colleague, "in the head" and called him a "fascist." Simons also funded causes including support for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, described by the Daily Caller as a socialist.
Quinn Delaney's record is no less revealing. The Daily Caller reported that Delaney backed Kamala Harris after Joe Biden ended his 2024 reelection bid. In 2020, she worked alongside George Soros to support liberal prosecutor campaigns in California. Politico, as cited in the Daily Caller's reporting, noted her opposition to tougher retail theft penalties.
In short, the donors bankrolling Trone Garriott's congressional bid have a track record of funding soft-on-crime candidates, progressive prosecutors, and causes well to the left of the median Iowa voter. Whether Trone Garriott shares those priorities or simply takes the money and adjusts her persona accordingly is exactly the question her own words invite.
The individual megadonor checks are striking on their own. But the broader fundraising picture is worse. The Daily Caller reported that nearly 80 percent of Trone Garriott's total fundraising dollars came from out-of-state donors. More than 33 percent came from California alone.
Think about that ratio. For every dollar raised by a candidate asking Iowans to send her to Congress, roughly four out of five dollars came from people who do not live in Iowa. More than a third of her war chest originated in a single state three time zones away, a state whose politics, cost of living, and policy priorities bear little resemblance to the concerns of families in Iowa's 3rd district.
When a candidate's funding base is that disconnected from her electorate, the "who's paying me" line stops sounding like an awkward joke and starts sounding like a job description.
A spokesperson for Trone Garriott responded to the Daily Caller's inquiry about the video and the donations from Pritzker, Delaney, and Simons. The statement did not address the substance of the "who's paying me" remark or explain the heavy out-of-state fundraising. Instead, it pivoted to her opponent.
"Zach Nunn and his allies are so desperate that they are attacking Sarah for her years of work as a Lutheran minister, food pantry leader, and State Senator. No matter the job, Sarah works for Iowa families, while Nunn makes life more expensive."
The deflection is notable. Nobody attacked Trone Garriott for being a minister or running a food pantry. The question was about her own recorded admission that she shifts her public persona depending on who is paying her, and about the identities and ideological commitments of the people doing the paying. The campaign chose not to answer either question.
Trone Garriott's donor list also includes the American Association for Justice PAC. The AAJ itself has taken aggressive positions on law enforcement accountability. In a February 2021 statement, the AAJ backed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which includes provisions to eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement, and described the measure as "an important step toward increased accountability," urging Congress to pass it along with broader reforms. In a separate June 2020 statement, the group strongly criticized qualified immunity as an "unjust" doctrine that shields officers from accountability in civil rights cases and called on Congress to eliminate it entirely.
The Daily Caller noted that Republican Rep. Zach Nunn also received donations from the AAJ PAC, a detail worth acknowledging. But the broader pattern of Trone Garriott's donor base, Pritzker, Simons, Delaney, and an organization that wants to strip qualified immunity from police officers, tilts in one clear ideological direction. Whether that direction matches what she tells voters in Iowa is the open question her own words raised.
Trone Garriott will face Nunn in the November 3rd general election. Iowa's 3rd district is competitive territory, which explains why national Democratic money is flooding in. Pritzker, Simons, and Delaney are not investing in safe seats. They are investing in flippable ones, and they expect a return.
The question for Iowa voters is straightforward. A candidate who told a secular audience she determines her identity based on who is paying her now draws the vast majority of her campaign funds from coastal progressive megadonors with well-documented records of funding soft-on-crime candidates, backing efforts to eliminate qualified immunity for police, and opposing tougher theft penalties. Her campaign, when confronted with all of this, offered a non-answer about food pantries.
Voters deserve candidates who know who they are before they check the name on the check. Iowa's 3rd district will decide in November whether Trone Garriott has cleared that bar.
