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 called out for attacking public schools and running a private school in Kansas that’s millions of dollars in debt. He entered the final two months of the campaign still on defense and failed to speak out against cost-raising tariffs, while political observers put him on blast for being an out-of-touch career political operative. Meanwhile, Lahn’s running mate was exposed for being under an ongoing criminal investigation, accused of theft and fraud, and having close ties to big pesticide companies.
Let’s get into it.
📍 Where was Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn this week? Skipping a convention with faith leaders about water quality and cancer rates because he has a history of working for corporate polluters.
🔥 Lahn in the hot seat: Teachers and parents call out Lahn’s attacks on public schools
On Tuesday, Council Bluffs leaders, teachers, and parents gathered to hold Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn accountable for attacking public education and supporting Kim Reynolds’ unaccountable private school voucher scheme.
New reporting has revealed that Lahn is the president of an unaccredited private school in Kansas that is millions of dollars in debt, underpays teachers, and turns away students with disabilities. Lahn has claimed Iowa “is spending too much money on education,” said he is “all for ESAs,” and wants to expand the school voucher program to include homeschooling — leaving the door open to even more public school funding cuts.
Here’s what Iowans are watching and reading about Lahn attacking public schools:
KMTV: Council Bluffs educators question gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn’s commitment to public schools
- A group of Council Bluffs public educators are questioning Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn’s commitment to Iowa public schools. Iowa was consistently a top-five state in education in the 1990s. Now, it has slipped to 27th in national assessments and some neighbors worry budget cuts are to blame.
- Council Bluffs School Board Member Patrick Peters attended the press conference in a personal capacity. He says more than $300 million in taxpayer funds now go to Iowa private schools. “I think it’s really important that when a candidate says they want to expand ESAs even more, what that means to the other school districts,” Peters said.
- Lahn has also been questioned about the financial viability of a private school in Kansas he co-founded. Nonprofit news outlet The Kansas Reflector reported that Lahn has loaned the school $4.5 million.
Daily Nonpareil: Council Bluffs educators back Rob Sand for governor, criticize Iowa’s ESA program
- Speakers pointed to the rapid growth of the ESA program as a concern, particularly as more state education dollars are being directed by families attending private schools.
- Cordell said public schools have a responsibility to educate all students and argued that Iowa’s public schools need more funding. He also pointed to what he described as a decline in Iowa’s national education rankings since he began teaching in 1979.
- Lahn and his wife, Annie, helped found Wonder, a private school in Wichita, Kansas … Multiple speakers Tuesday raised concerns about the standards and requirements placed on private schools receiving public education dollars, using Wonder as an example.
🧾 We’ve got the receipts: Lahn’s running mate is under criminal investigation and accused of “fraud and theft”
Lahn’s running mate Derek Wulf made headlines for all the wrong reasons this week. A new investigation from the Des Moines Register revealed how Wulf is under criminal investigation and accused of “fraud and theft, alleging that he misled … creditors about his finances and failed to alert them to livestock transactions.”
- According to the report, Wulf is involved in multiple disputes with farmers, lenders, and contractors, and is millions of dollars in debt. Farmers said they’re “offended” by how Lahn has tried to spin Wulf’s financial troubles as those that any Iowa farmer would face, given Wulf’s close ties to “powerful” agricultural interests, in addition to having “married into one of the state’s elite farming families.” Farmers said Wulf’s predatory business practices even “contributed to their strain” as the agricultural economy declined.
- Lahn’s campaign was also caught lying about Wulf’s finances. In July, they claimed Wulf’s $900,000 debts were settled — yet refused to say who paid for his bailout. But the Des Moines Register now reports that a local judge ordered the bank to “take over Wulf’s farm on Tuesday, Sept. 1, after … Wulf failed to provide a refinancing commitment letter.”
It’s the latest in a long series of embarrassments for the Lahn-Wulf ticket. It was also revealed this week that Wulf “voted to protect farm chemical polluters,” took “significant” donations from big pesticide companies, and backed a glyphosate immunity bill.
- Wulf also “attended a White House event in June … expediting the approval of new pesticide ingredients” that “have been linked to reduced fertility rates and endocrine disruption.”
🚨 Lahn on defense: Two months out and Lahn has no answer for the lies he’s told Iowans
With less than two months to go until Election Day, Zach Lahn has entered the final stretch of the race deeply damaged from his inability to answer for his frequent trips from Kansas and weighed down by the lies he’s told Iowans. Iowans have learned Lahn lied about where he lives, is a career political insider who spent years working for special interests, and is running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed legacy.
Here’s what Iowans know about Zach Lahn:
- Lahn lied to Iowans about where he lives and spends more time in Kansas than Iowa: Lahn “regularly flies in and out of Wichita to attend” campaign events in Iowa, voted in Kansas for years, and still holds a job in Kansas as president of a private school. Lahn said he would only “move to and live in Iowa” if elected.
- Lahn lied about his career as a political operative working for special interests: Despite claiming to be an outsider to politics, Lahn has actually worked in politics since 2009. He spent “years on the campaign trail” as an out-of-state operative for D.C. politicians and got his “big break” working for corporate polluters and against Medicaid expansion in Montana.
- Lahn is running to continue Kim Reynolds’ failed legacy: Lahn has “cast himself as the heir” to Kim Reynolds, the most unpopular governor in the country for over two years in a row. He has embraced her failed status quo that’s made Iowa the number one state for new cancer growth, the state with the second highest number of farm bankruptcies, and left public schools underfunded.
💸 Tariff lover Lahn: Two weeks of silence from Lahn on tariffs raising costs on Iowa families and farmers
It’s been two weeks since Washington announced a new 50 percent tariff on Canada, Iowa’s largest trading partner, and Zach Lahn has failed to speak out.
Lahn defended tariffs that are making life unaffordable for working families, claiming they don’t raise prices and saying they “worked as intended.” Now he’s gone silent on tariffs that the Iowa Department of Revenue warned will “affect key industries in the state, including machinery producers” and “raise input costs for businesses.” Tariffs are already raising costs for Iowans on school supplies, farm equipment, building materials, and transportation. Even Chuck Grassley said new tariffs will hurt the economy and our national security, but Lahn is too weak to speak out.
Lahn-backed tariffs are making life unaffordable for Iowa families:
- Des Moines Register: Tariffs squeeze Iowa along with other Midwestern states, study finds
- We Are Iowa Local 5 News: Canadian tariffs affecting local housing and automotive markets
- Washington Post: Squeezed by tariffs and Iran war, farmers say they face a new crisis
📖 What Iowans are reading: Lahn “commutes on the wing” and “doesn’t understand what has happened to rural Iowa”
Longtime political observers are putting Zach Lahn on blast for supporting unaccountable private school vouchers, living a luxurious out-of-state lifestyle in Kansas, and backing tariffs that are making life unaffordable for working families.
What Iowans are reading about how out-of-touch Lahn is:
- Storm Lake Times Pilot’s Art Cullen: “Lahn doesn’t understand what has happened to rural Iowa in the years since he quarterbacked the Sioux City East football team, and wound up working for the [fertilizer industry] … Lahn is okay with what has been done. He applauds the education record of the legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds. Vouchers for private school and home-school corporations are a good thing because Lahn owns such a home-school business in Kansas. The vouchers are suffocating rural public schools in a zero-sum funding game against home schools and private schools, while reducing revenue through income tax cuts.”
- The Gazette’s Todd Dorman: “Lahn also is wealthy. The Daily Beast reported this month that he sold his “ski-in, ski-out” home in Montana for nearly $5 million. His Kansas home is worth $2 million, including a lake and indoor pool … Lahn would eliminate state income taxes, which would surely make fat cats purr. How he pays for improving public schools and paying more farmers to curtail nitrate water pollution is a mystery.”
- Wall Street Journal’s Faith Bottum: “On Mr. Trump’s recent tariff fight with Canada, Mr. Sand immediately wrote, ‘30% of Iowa’s exports go to Canada. This is going to hurt us.’ His Republican opponent, Mr. Lahn, danced around the issue.”
📲 Tweet of the week:
That’s a wrap for this edition of Frequent Flyer Fridays. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.