“Meet Zach Lahn: A Koch-Connected Political Operative Running for Iowa Governor”
Iowa Starting Line: “There’s a problem at the center of [Lahn’s] outsider narrative”
DES MOINES – On the first day of the general election yesterday, Iowa Starting Line detailed how Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn is claiming to be an outsider, but the reality is he has a long career as a political operative, working in politics since 2009.
That includes spending “years on the campaign trails” as out-of-state political operative for D.C. politicians, and even overseeing fundraising for Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ dark-money group where he got his “big break.”
During his time in the Koch network, Lahn “helped lead AFP Montana’s push to block Medicaid expansion” and “push[ed] to reduce regulations on pollutants … to benefit Koch Industries, one of the country’s largest industrial polluters.”
This comes after the Des Moines Register reported that Lahn spends more time at his Kansas home than in Iowa and has been lying to Iowans since the start of his campaign about where he really lives. After voting in Kansas for years, Lahn registered to vote in Iowa right before the deadline to run for governor. Lahn also took out a primary mortgage on his Kansas home in July 2024 — just three months before he registered to vote in Iowa — despite claiming to be a full-time Iowa resident since 2023.
From Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Terra Hernandez:
“Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn has spent his career as a paid political operative, working to block Medicaid expansion and protecting the same corporate polluters that are contaminating Iowa’s waterways. Iowans are tired of powerful insiders who are only looking out for themselves at the expense of working families, and they won’t be fooled by Lahn’s desperate lies and spin.”
Read more from Iowa Starting Line here, or key points below:
- Iowa’s new Republican nominee for governor Zach Lahn … was a Koch-connected political operative who blocked Medicaid expansion in Montana, co-founded a Koch-funded private school in Kansas, and barely met Iowa’s residency requirement to run.
- There’s a problem at the center of his outsider narrative.
- While his campaign has been spinning him as the governor race’s clear-eyed, anti-establishment candidate, available reporting documents Lahn’s long history in politics during which he built skills and contacts that he’s relying on in his bid to help Republicans keep the governor’s mansion this November.
- Coverage of Lahn has identified him as a political outsider. One report from Iowa State Daily, a student newspaper, claimed “Lahn has never been involved in government before.” He bragged on X that he’s the only candidate in the race without a .gov email. But his Legistorm profile is a paper trail of his early political career going all the way back to when he was finishing up college.
- According to the report, he was working for Greg Brophy …
- In 2010, Lahn got involved in Republican US Rep. Cory Gardner of Colorado’s election campaign. According to Legistorm, a database used to track government officials and staff, he followed Gardner and worked as a staff assistant. In 2011, he started managing now-US Sen. Steve Daines of Montana’s first campaign, and by 2013, he was Daines’ congressional state director.
- In 2013, Lahn returned for a brief time to Iowa. Republican David Young—who himself was chief-of-staff to US Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office and is currently in the legislature—hired Lahn to manage his congressional campaign. And in 2014, Lahn signed on to work for Matt Schultz’s congressional campaign.
- After some years on the campaign trail, he got his big break with Americans for Prosperity.
- AFP is the flagship political advocacy group of the Koch Industries network and is considered one of the most powerful and well-funded political networks in the country. It’s spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars pushing to reduce regulations on pollutants as part of a mission framed as a push for small government. For example, AFP was among the groups that pushed the Supreme Court to curb regulatory power over carbon emissions. Critics note AFP just so happens to benefit Koch Industries, one of the country’s largest industrial polluters, considerably.
- The political arm organized local chapters that have worked to block renewable energy standards, clean car rules, and carbon pricing at the state level. But when Lahn came on in 2014 as state director, he helped lead AFP Montana’s push to block Medicaid expansion in the 2015 legislative session.
- “We are deeply disappointed in the legislature’s decision tonight to expand Medicaid. This decision stands directly against the voices of millions of Montanans who have made it clear that they do not want more Obamacare,” Lahn wrote in a statement.
- Lahn moved to Wichita, Kansas a few years later. There he co-founded a private school called Wonder.
- A Kansas Reflector analysis of voter registration records showed Lahn only barely became eligible to run in Iowa.
- Iowa requires governor candidates to have resided in the state for at least two years prior to their election date. On October 17, 2024, Lahn registered to vote in Iowa, just in time to meet the requirement. That same year, his wife Annie Lahn purchased a home near Wichita and declared on a mortgage document that it was her primary residence, not the house in Belle Plaine. One year later, the couple sold the Wichita home to an LLC for $1.
- During this year’s primary, a Des Moines Register report found that Lahn’s personal plane spent 75 nights in Wichita compared to just 51 nights at his property in Belle Plaine.
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