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 was exposed for living a life of luxury outside of Iowa. Lahn also came under fire for making out-of-touch comments on health care and running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed legacy while continuing to avoid questions about how much time he actually spends in Iowa.
Let’s get into it.
📍 Where was Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn this week? Getting polling from Emerson College that shows 76% of Iowa voters think it’s important a candidate has lived here for most of their adult life.
🏡 House hunters, Kansas edition: Lahn “busted living in luxury out of state”
A new Daily Beast investigation revealed that carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn has been living in a luxurious $2 million Kansas mansion while building a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio “hundreds of miles away from the state he wants to run, contradicting his humble farmer claims.”
- Lahn “has actually been living in Kansas for years” in a “luxury mansion” with a private lake and indoor pool. Despite lying and claiming he moved to Iowa in 2023, Lahn bought his Kansas mansion in 2024 and later “transferred to an LLC in what appeared to be a move meant to hide his ownership—and true residency—as he planned to run for governor a few states over.
- Lahn recently sold a “$5 million dollar … ski-in, ski-out mansion” in Whitefish, Montana in October 2025, just one month before he launched his campaign.
As Daily Beast reports, Lahn “regularly flies in and out of Wichita to attend” campaign events in Iowa — including the day he “submit[ted] his paperwork for his nomination at the State Capitol.” Lahn even “waived the Iowa Homestead Tax Credit, a sign that they do not consider the Iowa property to be their primary home.”
⁉️ Career political operative says what: Lahn dismisses Iowans losing health care as a “partisan talking point”
In a new interview with KGAN, Zach Lahn said Iowans losing their health care and rural health care closures due to Washington’s cuts to Medicaid are “partisan talking points.”
- This comes as 110,000 Iowans are losing their health care and 117,890 Iowans are seeing their premiums skyrocket as a result of the federal budget law.
- Clinics in Ottumwa, Traer, Centerville, Anthon, Moville, and Iowa City have already closed their doors, and clinics across Iowa have laid off staff, citing the largest cuts to Medicaid in history.
KGAN: “110,000 Iowans will lose health care. Any response to that part of it?”
Lahn: “Yeah, I think those are partisan talking points really. I think if you dig into that, you’ll see that they are.”
Lahn has spent his career trying to block people from getting health insurance and spearheaded a campaign to block Medicaid expansion in Montana, which would have kicked tens of thousands of people off their insurance. Lahn said he would continue Kim Reynolds’ privatized Medicaid disaster as governor, which has resulted in higher costs, thousands of Iowans being denied health care, and closed rural hospitals.
✈️ Lahn plane: Questions Lahn STILL hasn’t answered about living in Kansas, two months later
We’re over two months into the general election, and Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn still hasn’t answered basic questions about how much time he actually spends in Iowa, how often he would travel back to Kansas if he’s elected, and how much those flights would cost taxpayers.
- Lahn has been busy skipping candidate forums, picking fights with Iowa voters and reporters on Twitter, and praising Kim Reynolds’ failed legacy — but has not told Iowans how he plans to adjust his current living situation if he’s elected.
Now that Lahn has returned to the campaign trail after two months of hiding, Iowans still need 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, and how much would his travels back and forth from Kansas cost Iowa taxpayers?
🗣️ What Iowans are saying: Lahn called out for backing Reynolds’ Medicaid mismanagement and legacy of corruption
This week, a rural health care provider called Zach Lahn out for pledging to continue Kim Reynolds’ privatized Medicaid disaster, which has made health care more expensive, denied care to thousands of Iowans, and made it harder for rural families to get the care they need.
Meanwhile, State Rep. Amy Nielsen penned a new guest column in The Gazette and put Lahn and his running mate Derek Wulf on blast for running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed status quo.
- As Rep. Nielsen writes, Wulf served as a “rubber stamp” for the worst of Reynolds’ agenda and has a record of putting special interests over Iowans.
- Wulf voted to gut the Auditor’s Office and voted for Reynolds’ unaccountable private school voucher program — making it clear that a Lahn-Wulf administration would continue Reynolds’ “years of backroom deals and corruption.”
📲 Tweet of the week:
That’s a wrap for this edition of Frequent Flyer Fridays. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.