Ames native becomes youngest women elected to office in Iowa

AMES — Voters in Ames made history in their municipal election yesterday.

Twenty-year-old Iowa State University student Rachel Junck, an Ames native, was elected to a seat on the Ames City Council. She’s the youngest woman ever elected to public office in Iowa.

Junck fell just seven votes short of winning the seat by the 50 percent threshold in November’s municipal election, forcing her race into a runoff. She won with about 55 percent of the votes cast in yesterday’s election.

There were a handful of other run-off elections around the state. In Iowa’s largest city, Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie won an unprecedented fifth term. He defeated Jack Hatch, a former state legislator who was the Iowa Democratic Party’s 2014 nominee for governor, by about 300 votes.