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 came under fire for his part-time living situation in Kansas and for not having a plan to address Iowa’s cancer crisis. The State Fair also put a spotlight on how Lahn supports chaotic tariffs raising costs for farmers and families.
Let’s get into it.
📍 Where was Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn this week? Coming out against “America the Beautiful.”
✈️ What Iowans are saying: “Is [Lahn] going all the time to Kansas? we don’t know anything about him.”
Iowans are raising questions about carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn’s frequent flights to Kansas after he spent the first two months of the general election in hiding.
- According to the Associated Press, “Iowans attending some of Lahn’s first publicly advertised events since the primary said they only knew what they’ve seen in advertisements” calling Lahn a “part-time Iowan.”
- Lahn has repeatedly been asked whether he expects Iowans to bankroll his commute home to Kansas as governor and refuses to “comment on whether he would travel or use taxpayer resources to do so if elected.”
Voters have called Lahn out for refusing to answer basic questions about how much time he actually spends in Iowa and how often he would travel back to Kansas if he’s elected. Even members of Lahn’s party are questioning his part-time living situation: “Is he going all the time to Kansas? “We don’t know anything about him.”
🏥 Health care plan on life support: Lahn’s record undercuts his claims he’d fight cancer
Pluribus News detailed how, as cancer has become a central issue in the race, Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn has no plan to address Iowa’s water quality crisis and high cancer rates. Lahn wants to “extend the status quo after nearly 10 years of Republican control,” which has downplayed and done nothing to address Iowa’s cancer crisis.
- Lahn has come under fire for supporting “cuts to cancer research funding and rural healthcare … undercut[ting] Lahn’s message on fighting cancer.” He “supports a ban on vaccines developed with mRNA technology,” even as mRNA vaccines are “being studied as a potential cancer treatment.”
- Lahn has yet to release a real water quality plan and “stop[ped] short of linking Iowa’s cancer crisis to broader healthcare policies such as Medicaid or drug price legislation.”
- He also chose a running mate who voted to sweep water quality violations under the rug and “backed legal protections for pesticide manufacturers, in direct conflict with Lahn’s anti-corporate messaging.”
Lahn “did not return a request for comment,” offering no explanations for why his record puts corporate polluters ahead of Iowans.
💸 Tariff lover Lahn: Lahn supports tariffs that are raising costs for families and farmers
Today, Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn took the stage at the Iowa State Fair political soapbox and shook hands with the farmers he’s been selling out by defending chaotic tariffs. Lahn has dismissed and downplayed the pain Iowa farmers are feeling from high costs and closed export markets, even telling them that these reckless tariffs have “worked as intended.”
- Lahn-backed tariffs are driving up the cost of food, including the fair’s iconic corndog, as “financial experts … expect everything at the fair to be more expensive this year than last year.”
- Tariffs have already pushed Iowa’s agriculture industry to the brink of another farm crisis, as farmers are already struggling under the weight of a four-year downturn and filing for bankruptcy at the highest rate in the nation.
Lahn has sold out Iowa farmers and dismissed the pain they’re feeling:
- Lahn claimed tariffs don’t raise costs, even though tariffs cost the average household more than $1,700, inflation has hit a three-year high, and Iowans are paying higher prices on everything from groceries to medicine.
- Lahn lectured Iowa farmers cut off from export markets due to reckless tariffs, telling farmers to “diversify crops and livestock” instead of selling their goods overseas.
- Lahn downplayed farmers struggling with high input costs, saying “the tariffs are not the issue.”
- Lahn is now struggling to earn trust and support from Iowa farmers after embracing reckless tariffs, and “few believe Lahn will actually” follow through on his campaign promises.
📲 Tweet of the week:
That’s a wrap for this edition of Frequent Flyer Fridays. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.