Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn is putting another $1 million into television advertising, his campaign announced, intensifying his efforts to build momentum in the final weeks of the Republican primary race.
The Tuesday, April 21 announcement, shared first with the Des Moines Register, follows a previous six-figure ad buy the campaign launched earlier this month.
Lahn’s first ad called to protect Iowa ownership of farmland. The new ad homes in on an education.
“Too many schools today teach kids to hate our country, our history and our religion,” Lahn says in the ad. “When I’m governor, we will reclaim the curriculum from the Marxists who’ve hijacked it. We’re going to teach the meaning of America again, and our kids are going to learn what is good, true and beautiful about our country and about the western tradition.”
Lahn, who announced in November 2025 he would run for governor, is new to the Iowa political scene.
He and his wife founded Homeplace Ventures, a company that invests in agriculture, real estate and technology. The pair also co-founded Wonder, a nontraditional private school in Wichita, Kan.
Lahn has campaigned on education, promising to be a champion for both public and private school options. He has said public schools need to root out indoctrination and drive innovation.
U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, who entered the race with higher name identification as a sitting congressman, is the perceived frontrunner of the primary race.
He appears to be the only other Republican in the five-person Republican field with the financial resources to air TV ads. Feenstra has announced two rounds of advertising and recently rolled out his third ad in what the campaign called a “multimillion dollar ad buy.”
A poll of the primary field conducted April 14-15 by Victory Enterprises, an Iowa-based Republican consulting firm associated with Feenstra’s campaign, found that Feenstra led the GOP field with 41% of the vote.
Steen followed with about 9% and Lahn earned 8%. Sherman and Andrews both sat at about 5%, while undecided voters made up 31% of respondents.
The margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
The winner of the June 2 primary will take on Democratic state auditor Rob Sand, the lone Democrat running for governor this year.
Sand, who announced raising about $18 million through the end of last year, has also launched his first round of TV ads.
Nonpartisan elections analysts at the Cook Political Report noted his sizeable war chest when they reclassified Iowa’s gubernatorial election as a “toss-up” earlier this month. That ratings change came as a March poll by Democratic pollster GBAO showed Feenstra trailing Sand by 8 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup.
Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Des Moines Register. She writes about campaigns, elections and the Iowa Caucuses. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on X at @brianneDMR.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Zach Lahn launches $1M TV ad blitz in Iowa GOP governor race
Reporting by Brianne Pfannenstiel, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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