Welcome back to Frequent Flyer Fridays — your weekly newsletter from the Iowa Democratic Party, bringing you the latest updates on everything Kansas’ favorite frequent flyer Zach Lahn is up to.
This week, Zach Lahn continued deflecting questions about living in Kansas and pledged to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed legacy, while new reporting put a spotlight on how he supports an extreme health care agenda that would make Iowans sicker. Lahn’s pick for his running mate also contradicted his campaign promise to take on big pesticide companies.
Let’s get into it.
📍 Where was Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn this week? Pledging to continue the worst of Kim Reynolds’ failed agenda and saying he’s “grateful” for everything she’s done.
Lahn plane: Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn continues to avoid questions about where he lives
Recent reporting has confirmed that career political operative and carpetbagger Zach Lahn splits his time between Iowa and Kansas and would “be in Iowa as much as humanly possible” if elected.
- In his first public appearance 10 days after winning the primary, Lahn sat down with KCCI and deflected questions about how many days he would live in Kansas while collecting a taxpayer-funded salary as governor of Iowa, saying “that’s something between my wife and I to figure out.”
- Lahn also refused to tell KCRG “how much time he spends in Iowa versus how much time he spends in Kansas.”
Lahn owes Iowans answers: How many days of Lahn’s term does he plan to spend in Kansas while collecting a taxpayer-funded salary as governor of Iowa? How much would Lahn’s travels back and forth from Kansas cost Iowa taxpayers — including the pilot, state plane, gas, and state trooper security he would need to make those trips? And when will Lahn make his “arrangement” outlining how often he expects to travel to Kansas available to the public?
🏥 Health care plan on life support: Lahn’s extreme agenda would make Iowans sicker
This week, The Iowa Independent detailed how Zach Lahn supports an extreme health care agenda that would make Iowans sicker and threaten access to health insurance, life-saving cancer treatments, and reproductive care.
- During Lahn’s long career as a political operative, he spent years opposing Medicaid expansion. Lahn “oversaw an unsuccessful campaign to stop Montana from opting in to the ACA’s optional Medicaid expansion program” — a position even more extreme than Iowa’s privatized Medicaid scheme.
- 180,000 Iowans now have access to health insurance because Iowa expanded Medicaid, but that care would be under threat with Lahn in charge, who called Medicaid expansion “bad policy” and a “mess.”
- Lahn has also “endorsed a ban on mRNA vaccines,” which “researchers say … can be used to help treat cancer.”
- Iowa is the number one state for new cancer growth, but Lahn opposes revolutionary cancer treatments and has pushed extreme vaccine conspiracy theories.
Lahn also wants to go even further than Kim Reynolds on restricting access to reproductive care. Lahn supports an extreme abortion ban from the moment of conception, which would put access to birth control and IVF in jeopardy, and “opposes allowing individuals to obtain medication abortion by mail.”
📞 Zach Lahn, call your office: Running mate pick undercuts claim he’ll take on big pesticide companies
New reporting from Bleeding Heartland put a spotlight on how Zach Lahn’s selection of Derek Wulf as his running mate contradicts his own campaign promise to take on big pesticide companies. Wulf has close ties to big pesticide companies and has a record of voting in favor of special interests over Iowans.
- Close ties to pesticide companies: During his time in the state legislature, Wulf supported “a bill that would give broad legal immunity to pesticide and herbicide manufacturers” — undercutting Lahn’s claim that his administration would stand up to big pesticide companies.
- Questions about gifts from lobbyists: Before pesticide lobbyists publicly thanked Wulf for supporting a pesticide immunity bill, Wulf attended a concert sponsored by the same corporate lobbyists. As Bleeding Heartland reports, Lahn didn’t answer who paid for the tickets and whether the gift was a violation of Iowa campaign law, which forbids gifts over three dollars. Lahn’s campaign is now scrambling to paper over Wulf’s ties to the pesticide lobby.
Lahn’s running mate pick — a government insider who has served as a rubber stamp for Kim Reynolds’ harmful agenda — has “raise[d] questions about whether Lahn and his team did their homework … to vet and interview” Wulf. Lahn even admitted to Gray TV he “had not thought about” who his running mate would be until “at least Wednesday and maybe later after the election.”
🐱 Kim Reyolds copycat: Zach Lahn pledges to continue Reynolds’ failed legacy
Ahead of Kim Reynolds bringing her so-called legacy tour to Clear Lake, Zach Lahn has already pledged to continue her years of failing Iowans.
Lahn cheered on Reynolds’ failed legacy, saying he’s “grateful” for everything she’s done. Lahn is apparently “grateful” for the last decade of one-party rule that’s left working families behind and made Iowa:
- The number one state for new cancer growth,
- 27th in the country for education — a new low — and the ninth worst state for teachers,
- The state with the second highest number of farm bankruptcies,
- 44th for physicians per capita,
- Last in the country for OB-GYNS per capita,
- 44th in the country and last in the midwest for hourly wages.
If voters needed more proof of where Lahn stands, they got it with his choice of a running mate who carried out the worst of Reynolds’ agenda. Derek Wulf has a record of putting special interests over Iowans and voted for unaccountable private school vouchers, to gut the auditor’s office, and against water quality monitors — all while cozying up to big pesticide companies and corporate lobbyists.
📲 Tweet of the week:
That’s a wrap for this edition of Frequent Flyer Fridays. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.