Clive, Iowa — In the closing days of the 2026 campaign, Iowa Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn is trying to court both conservatives and those in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
As he attempts to turn out both the Republican base and MAHA voters, Lahn is trying to blend traditionally conservative priorities with those that MAHA activists have championed.
“The fight to pull the Covid vaccine off the market is a pro-life issue,” he said at a rally Wednesday evening put on by the MAHA PAC at a convention center just outside of Des Moines, as hundreds of attendees snacked on complimentary Steak ‘n Shake.
Lahn has long centered the MAHA movement in his campaign, in which he trails the Democratic nominee, state auditor Rob Sand. Earlier this year, Lahn pulled off an upset win in the GOP primary against Representative Randy Feenstra, who carried President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Lahn has supported ending vaccine mandates for Iowa schools and blamed high cancer rates in the state on agricultural runoff and contaminated water. The latter campaign theme has put off some farm groups in his state — the state’s Farm Bureau did not endorse him.
“We have environmental issues that are going on,” Lahn told National Review in a brief interview. “We have water pollution issues that are going on — processed food, all these things. And here’s the thing: I really believe the people of Iowa understand this, and we’re trying to give them better options.”
With less than a week to go before Election Day, Lahn is paying special attention to the MAHA voters who flocked to him in the primary.
“This is a battle of corruption, of people that would put the bottom lines of a company ahead of the health of our children,” he said at Wednesday evening’s rally.
Guests at the event included Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, who has sought to end vaccine mandates in his state, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who brought the MAHA movement into the Republican Party with his endorsement of Trump in 2024.
“We have to figure out a way to grow food without poisoning our kids, without giving ourselves cancer, without destroying the soils that enrich us,” Kennedy said in his remarks.
But as he attempts to energize his MAHA base, Lahn is also trying to ease the concerns of conservatives to whom MAHA priorities might be foreign.
“We believe in the free market, but we also understand that for a long time, a select few have gotten very rich off the backs of the health of our children,” he said in his rally speech.
Lahn is also trying to cater specially to traditionally Republican constituencies. At an event earlier Wednesday in a small-town restaurant on the eastern side of the state, he spoke less about MAHA and emphasized cultural issues, such as transgender ideology in schools.
“We’re fighting for the culture of our state. This is a battle that we’re in,” Lahn told supporters. “This is not Republican-Democrat. . . . This is a battle about our culture. This is preserving the state that we love.”
For Lahn, many issues that most would consider political are actually cultural.
“The effort to defund the police is an attack on our culture,” he said. “The effort to get rid of voter ID is an attack on our culture. The effort to allow illegal immigrants into our state and into our country is an attack on our culture. The erosion of our Second Amendment rights — the same thing.”
Asked if he was centering on cultural issues because it was difficult this midterm cycle for Republicans to run on affordability and economic issues, Lahn noted that Sand, who has attempted to distance himself from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, served as the Iowa co-chair of a Biden campaign project in 2020 and listed economic failures during the former president’s administration.
“They literally have the worst track record in the country of doing this,” Lahn told NR of Democrats and the economy. “The reason they’re trying to talk about this is because they believe voters will have amnesia, and I’m not going to let them have amnesia.”
Voters will decide next week whether Lahn’s pitch is enough to overcome his rough polling numbers and whether the coalition of MAHA activists and traditional Republicans is a winning one. For Lahn, MAHA and culture go hand in hand.
“They’re the same thing,” he said at the MAHA rally. “The fight to have clean water in our state — it’s a pro-life issue. It’s a fight to make sure people can live long, healthy lives.”