Zach Lahn Is MAHA’s Great Farm Country Hope. Is He the Populist Hero He Claims to Be?

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. jumped on Donald Trump’s bandwagon in 2024, he brought with him the wellness-obsessed, vaccine-rejecting, food-label-reading Make America Healthy Again voters—who’ve been credited with helping Trump take back the White House. But there are signs the MAHA-MAGA alliance is wearing thin, from squabbles over inaction to a tense stand-off over regulating the herbicide glyphosate. In our MAHA and the Midterms series, a partnership between Mother Jones and the Food & Environment Reporting Network, we consider how MAHA is shaping the political landscape and upcoming elections.

“Do you fear you’ll be attacked as a liberal for bringing this up?” Tucker Carlson asked Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn on his podcast in February, back when Lahn was still a long shot in the state’s primary race. After bonding over their love of God and distrust of the “wokeism”—a “mental disorder,” according to Lahn—the two men had gone deep on Lahn’s political vision, which he admitted could sometimes make him sound like a “hippie.”

Over the course of the interview, Lahn railed against “unchecked monopolies” and lambasted the Environmental Protection Agency for being captured by corporate interests and failing to acknowledge the links between the weed killer glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, and cancer. For Lahn, such traditionally crunchy, left-populist talking points is par for the course. In ad spots, he’s wandered through golden hour corn fields and promised to “tax the heck” out of Wall Street hedge funds. In stump speeches and podcast appearances, he’s praised organic farming and called agribusiness multinationals “cartels” that “have pillaged our state” and need to be broken apart with antitrust litigation (a position he shares with Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren). 

The crowds at his events often agree. “Bust ’em up!” someone shouted from the audience during Lahn’s victory speech, shortly after he secured the Republican nomination in June.

“Let’s gooooo!” Lahn shouted back with a grin.

Frustrated by Washington’s permissive attitude toward pesticides, food additives, and a slew of other health-related threats, the Make America Healthy Again movement is flexing its political power with its own slate of midterm candidates, several of whom have gone head to head against longtime incumbents or candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump. So far, the group’s breakout star has arguably been Lahn, one of the first candidates to be endorsed by MAHA Action, a nonprofit political organization founded by political activist and publisher Tony Lyons.

Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor in Iowa, at a campaign event in Newton, Iowa. Photo by Erin Murphy/The Gazette via AP

A sixth-generation Iowan who’s never held elected office, Lahn made national headlines this summer when he dispatched Rep. Randy Feenstra in the Republican primary, even though Feenstra had years of political experience and Trump’s endorsement. That makes Lahn one of the few Republicans to beat a candidate the president had backed. Now, Lahn is running about 6 points behind his Democratic opponent, Rob Sand. (Lahn’s campaign declined my request for an interview.) 

Lahn has achieved this by making Iowa’s political third rail the cornerstone of his campaign. As a Republican candidate in a red state that’s politically defined by agriculture, he frequently criticizes the ag industry and proposes traditionally progressive reforms to the problems it’s created. On the campaign trail, he presents himself as an outraged Iowa farmer and native son who doesn’t “even wanna be a politician,” as he said on the Shawn Ryan Show in March, but was called by God to become one. As he tells it, agribusiness is peddling unsafe pesticides and getting away with it, Iowa’s cancer rates are going up, and “we all know that something is terribly wrong.”

These MAHA talking points are a pivotal part of Lahn’s pitch. But for a long time, he was one of the last people you’d expect to believe them. He spent years working for political projects funded by the Koch family, which made some of its fortune in agribusiness and particiThese MAHA talking points are a pivotal part of Lahn’s pitch. But for a long time, he was one of the last people you’d expect to believe them. He spent years working for political projects funded by the Koch family, which made some of its fortune in agribusiness and participates in the same monopolistic, polluting practices Lahn now rails against.

Perhaps he’s undergone an ideological transformation. But Lahn, “at his core, is an all-star, major league political operative,” says Austin Frerick, an expert on Iowa politics and agricultural antitrust policy and the author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. Some Iowa insiders suspect Lahn’s simply one of the first to recognize MAHA’s political power in farm country and the edge it gives him.

Few politicians are willing to criticize Big Ag the way Lahn has. The agribusiness sector spent about $224 million on lobbying last year, and its spending often outpaces the defense and oil and gas industries. While MAHA’s anti-vaccine activists have secured major wins under the Trump administration, the branch of the movement that’s more focused on food safety has been foiled repeatedly. The nation’s top pesticide regulator and its undersecretary for food safety are both former Big Ag lobbyists, and Trump signed an executive order that declared the production of glyphosate critical to the United States’ national security. (In June, the Supreme Court also ruled that states cannot sue Bayer, the producer of glyphosate, over its failure to warn consumers of the herbicide’s alleged dangers, because federal agencies consider the product to be safe.)

These roadblocks have infuriated MAHA activists, who are credited with helping swing the election for Trump in the first place. “What’s frustrating is to have [Agriculture Secretary] Brooke Rollins saying that she’s a MAHA mom and then doing things to perpetuate the toxic agricultural system that will poison us all,” says Kelly “Glyphosate Girl” Ryerson, a longtime advocate for regenerative farming and a leader in the MAHA movement. “The machine [we’re up against] is just so big.”

That machine can run roughshod over farmers, consumers, and rural communities, and Iowa is a cautionary tale of what happens when it does. “We have hit a level of corporate control that we’ve never gone through before,” says Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation corn and soybean farmer and president of the Iowa Farmers Union. Seeds, fertilizer, and other tools of the trade are controlled by multinational companies that gouge farmers on pricing, and the state’s farmland is also increasingly owned by out-of-state investors. As a result, the average farmer makes less than 15 cents on every food dollar paid by consumers.

This corporate consolidation has also fueled a remarkable uptick in pollution. “Iowa is one of the most heavily modified ecosystems on the planet,” says Silvia Secchi, a professor and natural resources economist at the University of Iowa. The corn and soybean industry’s use of pesticides and high-nitrogen fertilizers, combined with the hog industry’s manure lagoons, has laced the majority of Iowans’ drinking water with unsafe contaminants. The state has the nation’s second-highest cancer rate, and it’s one of only three states where that rate is increasing, a trend the Iowa Environmental Council explicitly tied to agricultural pollution in a recent report.

“When you live in these [agricultural] areas, you’re living in a crisis,” Frerick says. And until recently, “neither party has tapped into it.”

Until recently, Lahn didn’t appear particularly worried about Big Ag’s machine—to some extent, he was closely associated with it. After going viral as a college student for challenging President Barack Obama to an “Oxford-style debate” at a town hall, Lahn worked in Republican politics for a few years, then was hired to direct the Montana branch of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ flagship right-wing advocacy group, in 2014. At the time, the group was waging a war of attrition against Obamacare, and Lahn urged Montana’s Republican legislators to vote against the state’s Medicaid expansion, then tried to run them out of office if they supported it. In the award-winning 2018 documentary Dark Money, Lahn is singled out by name as an example of just how Machiavellian the Kochs’ political operation can be. Americans for Prosperity was also busy campaigning for Republican candidates in Iowa who were friendly to Big Ag and corporate interests. While Lahn was not involved in the agricultural arm of the Kochs’ business, it is worth noting that Koch Ag & Energy Solutions is one of four companies that control 75 percent of the nation’s fertilizer market and that farmer advocacy groups have accused it of monopolistic practices in Iowa.

Lahn hopes to capture a precious, and politically volatile, slice of the voter pool: MAHA voters may be among the only remaining swing voters in the country.

In 2018, Lahn co-founded a private school in Kansas with Annie Koch, the wife of Koch scion Chase Koch (who financed the project). Lahn still serves on the school’s board of directors. On a personal level, Lahn and the Kochs became even more entangled. In 2020, Chase Koch and Lahn got divorced from their respective wives within months of each other. Lahn filed for a marriage license with Annie 11 days after his divorce finalized.

The couple left Kansas and moved to the Lahn family’s farm in Belle Plaine, Iowa, which Lahn acquired with his first wife in 2014. When exactly they moved there is a point of contention. Lahn didn’t register to vote in Iowa until October 2024, barely meeting the state’s two-year residency requirement for gubernatorial candidates. And the Daily Beast recently reported that Lahn never claimed the Belle Plaine farm as his primary residence, suggesting that he might not live in Iowa at all. (Lahn says he moved to the farm in 2023.) Last summer, Lahn met with MAHA leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, for the first time. (He says he now considers Kennedy a friend.) In July 2025, Lahn’s wife registered to vote in Iowa. Four months later, Lahn launched his campaign for Iowa governor from the front porch of his family’s farmhouse, and his wife assured voters that her husband has the “courage and grit and toughness” Iowans are looking for.

Today, Lahn presents himself as a regenerative farmer who grows organic oats on his great-great-grandfather’s homestead, some of which he’s transitioning back to its native prairie habitat. “We’re having this pride in our work—this pride in our land [and] the health of our people,” he told Carlson. (Lahn’s campaign declined to answer Mother Jones’ questions about Lahn’s role in the farm’s day-to-day operations.) Lahn says Iowa’s agricultural pollution crisis is personal for him: His father was diagnosed with cancer after working for decades as a crop consultant (he’s now in remission). “Iowans are going to funerals for people dying at 60 whose parents lived to be 80,” Lahn said in his primary victory speech in June. “ We have to find out what Big Ag and Big Pharma knew about the safety of their products and when they knew it.” If elected governor, he has promised to fight laws that shield agribusinesses from liability and implement programs that will help Iowa transition toward greener farming practices.

In a nod to MAHA’s anti-vaccine wing, Lahn has vowed to pull mRNA COVID shots off the market and end school vaccine requirements.

It’s hard to overstate how much of a departure this is from typical Iowa Republican rhetoric, but the political winds are changing and Lahn has received his fair share of support. In notable contrast with his Republican primary opponent, Feenstra, and the Democrat he’s now running against, Lahn did not fund his primary campaign with six- or seven-figure donations from Big Ag: He made a roughly $2.5 million donation to himself, and MAHA’s burgeoning political machine helped fill in some of the gaps. Sardar Biglari, CEO of Steak ’n Shake and a vocal MAHA acolyte, donated $25,000 to Lahn’s campaign earlier this year, and the political advocacy group MAHA PAC has initiated hundreds of thousands of get-out-the-vote calls and texts on his behalf.

Lahn hopes to capture a precious, and politically volatile, slice of the voter pool: MAHA voters may be among the only remaining swing voters in the country. “We know that we’re valuable,” says Ryerson, the MAHA activist.  Democrats, of course, would love to get these swing voters, too. “You know, some of [Lahn’s] positions are not very different from mine,” says Chris Jones, a retired water scientist and Democrat running to be Iowa’s next secretary of agriculture. Jones has spent decades fighting Big Ag’s pollution of Iowa drinking water, and among Iowa Democratic candidates, he and his politics are to the party’s left. Some party insiders are concerned that more centrist Democrats could cede agricultural pollution as a wedge issue to the GOP. The Democrats’ moderate candidate for governor, Sand, has also pledged to hold Big Ag accountable for its pollution. His wife is also the scion of a major agribusiness corporation, and she and her family poured over $11 million into his primary campaign.

But when it comes to attacking Lahn, Democrats still have plenty to work with. Much of Lahn’s “Iowa First” rhetoric revolves around restoring the state to an idealized past glory, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he’s paired his anti-corporate messaging with right-wing social positions, some of which might scare off moderate voters. In a nod to MAHA’s anti-vaccine wing, Lahn has vowed to pull mRNA Covid shots off the market and end school vaccine requirements. In ads and debates, he’s promised to drive “Marxists” from Iowa schools and push for a life-at-conception law, effectively eliminating Iowa abortion access. He accepted an endorsement from former Iowa Rep. Steve King, who lost his seat in 2020 after making a slew of racist comments, including questioning why the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” were offensive.

A concentrated animal feeding operation near the Gordon Garrison farm, in Estherville, Iowa, in 2018. The farm sued a nearby operation with 4,400 hogs, contending manure from its croplands fouls a creek that runs through his property and feeds the Des Moines River. AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Then there’s Lahn’s portrayal of himself as an Iowa farmer. In May, the Des Moines Register reported that Lahn still flies to Kansas an average of once a week; the Iowa Democratic Party has portrayed him as a “Kansas carpetbagger” ever since. While Lahn often rails against out-of-touch, out-of-state owners of Iowa farmland, his critics note that he was one of those out-of-state landowners until recently. “It takes one to know one,” says Secchi, the University of Iowa natural resources economist.

For some Iowa farmers, the biggest question is whether Lahn’s transformation into an anti-corporate crusader is sincere—and whether he’s also willing to stand up for them on issues outside MAHA’s wheelhouse. In the months since Lahn became the Republican nominee for governor, the party’s mainstream has rallied around him. A PAC associated with the Republican Governors Association recently contributed $5 million to his campaign, and Trump endorsed him as a “patriot.”

But Trump has not been a reliable friend to Iowa farmers, who are being crushed by tariffs and gutted by fertilizer costs, which have steadily risen as the war in Iran drags on. The Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts to USDA services and regenerative farming initiatives were brutal. So were the One Big Beautiful Bill’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, which agricultural communities increasingly rely on. “We need a governor who will stand up for Iowa when our Iowa interests are being ignored,” one soybean farmer, who asked to go unnamed, told me—including, he added, by the president.