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 hypocritically supporting term limits for everyone except himself, while a Republican cattle farmer raised serious concerns about his out-of-state land ownership and Kansas residency. New reporting put a spotlight on Lahn’s longstanding ties to corporate agriculture and his dangerous plan to ban all mRNA vaccines in Iowa, including lifesaving cancer treatments.
Let’s get into it.
📍 Where was Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn this week? Getting flamed on social media for not being able to answer what his favorite food at the State Fair is — understandable for a first-time Iowa visitor.
✈️ What Iowans are saying: Republican rancher concerned with Lahn’s out-of-state land ownership, residency
This week, CNN spotlighted carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn’s living situation in Kansas — and how it will be a major liability for him in the governor’s race with “midterm wild card” voters.
Republican rancher Shanen Ebersole told CNN that Lahn owning farmland in Iowa while keeping his home, “his business, and his family” in Kansas is a “glaring, bold-faced issue.” Ebersole called out-of-state ownership a “critical” problem facing small businesses and landowners like her, and told Lahn that owning “acres of Iowa farm ground doesn’t make you an Iowan.”
Lahn has hypocritically criticized out-of-state land owners on the campaign trail, even though he is one and “has actually been living in Kansas for years”:
- Public records show that “he has never claimed any property in Iowa as his primary residence” and “regularly flies in and out of Wichita” to attend campaign events in Iowa.
- 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.”
🎞️ Roll the tapes: Unearthed footage shows Lahn wants term limits for everyone except himself
New reporting from Heartland Signal and KCRG has unearthed footage of Zach Lahn opposing term limits for the governor’s office while “telling a podcast he wants to serve as governor ‘for the next two decades.’” Lahn’s comment undermines his already dubious claims to be a political outsider and “conflicts with his history in political campaigning and donor networks.”
According to Heartland Signal and KCRG, Lahn repeatedly said he supports term limits for most positions — just not the office he hopes to hold:
- Lahn claimed he didn’t want to be a career politician, even as he left the door open to being governor for decades on end in the same breath: “I could be the governor of Iowa for the next two decades … And I don’t want to be a career politician, but I think that’s one of the things about Iowa that we can do.”
- Lahn “explicitly defended Iowa’s lack of gubernatorial term limits” in an interview with the Des Moines Register, saying: “One of the things I like about the governor not having term limits, and I am actually in favor of term limits for most things.”
Lahn has avoided answering questions about why he chose to run for governor in Iowa and not in his home state of Kansas, where he “has actually been living” for years. His campaign “did not address questions about Lahn’s inconsistent stance on term limits or why he chose to run for governor in Iowa instead of Kansas, where term limits are imposed on the governorship.”
🤥 More election-year lies from Lahn: New report exposes Lahn’s longstanding ties to corporate agriculture
Mother Jones exposed Zach Lahn’s record as a political operative funded by agribusiness interests tied to “the same monopolistic, polluting practices Lahn now rails against.”
- Lahn “was closely associated with” corporate interests “that control 75 percent of the nation’s fertilizer market” and have been accused by Iowa farm groups of monopolistic practices.
- During his long career in politics, Lahn spent years working as a political fundraiser for an out-of-state dark money group that “campaign[ed] for Republican candidates in Iowa who were friendly to Big Ag and corporate interests.”
Iowa farmers are now questioning “whether Lahn’s transformation into an anti-corporate crusader is sincere.” Despite the fact that “Lahn often rails against out-of-touch, out-of-state owners of Iowa farmland … he was one of those out-of-state landowners until recently.”
Lahn’s self-proclaimed farmer act, which fails to paper over his long history in politics, is also under scrutiny. Reporting shows Lahn actually lives in Kansas, and his campaign “declined to answer our questions about Lahn’s role in the farm’s day-to-day operations.”
🏥 Health care plan on life support: Lahn promised to ban all mRNA vaccines, including a lifesaving skin cancer treatment
This week, a groundbreaking study found that mRNA vaccines prevent “cancer from coming back or spreading in … high-risk melanoma patients” and are a “new life-extending treatment” for people battling skin cancer. It’s more proof that Zach Lahn’s promise to ban all mRNA vaccines in Iowa makes him too dangerous and extreme to be governor.
- Cancer and water quality have become a central issue in the race, but Lahn has no real plan to address Iowa’s high cancer rates.
- Instead, he has come under fire for working for corporate polluters and supporting “cuts to cancer research funding and rural healthcare … undercut[ting] Lahn’s message on fighting cancer.”
Lahn has also “cast himself as the heir to” Kim Reynolds’ failed status quo, including her legacy of downplaying and doing nothing to address Iowa’s cancer crisis.
Catch up on how Lahn has “called for banning all mRNA vaccines” in Iowa:
- Lahn said he would “absolutely,” “100 percent” ban “any mRNA vaccine in Iowa.”
- Lahn said he wants “to end vaccine requirements to attend schools, a position that has concerned public health experts who fear a resurgence of preventable diseases” like measles.
- Lahn defended banning mRNA vaccines as “a pro-life issue.”
- Lahn touted an endorsement from Stand for Health Freedom, “which advocates against vaccine mandates.”
📲 Tweet of the week:
That’s a wrap for this edition of Frequent Flyer Fridays. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.