Iowa has been reliably red for more than a decade, but the GOP’s nominee for governor can’t seem to shake questions about whether he actually lives there.
Zach Lahn, a conservative ex-lobbyist and businessman, moved from Kansas to Iowa in 2024 and pulled off a big upset in this year’s GOP primary, but Ed Kilgore wrote for New York Magazine’s Intelligencer that he faces a serious challenge in winning the trust of his new state's voters to become their governor.
"What has made his case interesting — and for supporters of his Democratic opponent, Rob Sand, hilarious — is his difficulty making a clean break with [Kansas]," Kilgore wrote. "He seems very involved in Kansas matters."
He was born and raised in Iowa, and his family has lived there for generations, but Lahn keeps going back to Kansas.
Lahn remains president of the board of an unaccredited Wichita private school he co-founded with his wife, who was previously married to Koch family scion Chase Koch. Children from their blended families still live in Kansas, and the Des Moines Register reported that Lahn has flown his private plane back to Wichita at least 37 times since he started running for governor.
The Daily Beast also reported that a Strava fitness-app user named “Zach Lahn” logged four long bike rides starting at Lahn’s Wichita estate in early 2025, well after his supposed move to Iowa.
Lahn hasn’t exactly put the questions to rest, Kilgore wrote. Asked in May how much time he’d spend away from Des Moines as governor, he told the Register, “We’ve already had discussions about this and how that would work. But if I’m elected governor, it would be a different arrangement, and we’d work it out. Because, you know, we’d be in Iowa as much as humanly possible.”
That’s an awkward fit for a campaign running on a Trump-style “Iowa First” message. Lahn switched his voter registration to Iowa on Oct. 17, 2024, and Iowa requires two years of residency to run for governor, so he “got in just under the wire,” Kilgore noted.
Sand’s campaign has seized on the issue, offering Lahn Iowa travel tips, and the Democrat's backers even recruited Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly to join the trolling.
Sand, Iowa’s only Democrat in statewide office, leads by 7.3 points in the Silver Bulletin polling average, though recent polls show the race tightening. The Trump administration has rushed to deliver goodies to Iowa voters, including fuel relief for farmers and a federally assisted steel mill.
It’s shaping up as a strong Democratic year in Iowa. Democrats have even odds of winning Sen. Joni Ernst’s open seat and could flip three of the state’s four House seats.
If Sand wins, Kilgore concluded, Republicans will wonder whether a more “Iowa-centric” candidate could have held the seat, “and Lahn may wonder whether he picked the wrong ‘home state’ for his gubernatorial dreams.”