Republicans call for unified support for governor nominee Zach Lahn at state convention

Republican leaders emphasized party unity Saturday at the Iowa Republican State Convention – especially emphasizing the need to rally behind Zach Lahn as the GOP nominee for Iowa governor.

Lahn won victory in the closely contested GOP gubernatorial primary June 2 with 38% of the vote. His vote total was just 0.8 percentage points more than U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra at 37.2%, followed by the three other candidates.

As delegates gathered at the Horizon Events Center in Clive Saturday, Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufmann told convention attendees that Lahn’s victory shows that the Iowa Republican Party reflects the choice of the “grassroots,” not national interests.

“The primaries are over,” Kaufmann said. “The grassroots have spoken. If we truly believe in the grassroots, it can’t be, ‘we believe in the grassroots if they agree with me.’ The grassroots have spoken, we now move ahead in a unified fashion.”

Feenstra currently represents Iowa’s 4th Congressional District and gained endorsements from Republicans like former Gov. Terry Branstad as well as President Donald Trump. He was considered a strong, more traditional candidate heading into the primary compared to Lahn, who has not previously held political office. Trump said Thursday of his endorsement of Feenstra that “had I been given the proper information, which I don’t think I was, I probably would have endorsed the other person … or not endorsed at all,” in the Iowa GOP gubernatorial primary.

In his speech to the state convention, Lahn thanked the candidates he faced in the primary election, and said something he learned through campaign was that “we do have a unifying platform.”

He also encouraged Republican delegates to ask one major question as they choose the party’s nominees for the 2026 election: “Are you going to put Iowa first, or are you going to sell out to lobbyists, corporate interests, and special interests?” Lahn said Republicans “fundamentally rejected” politicians who are willing to “sell out” the state in the primary.

Lahn paints Sand as ‘a divider’

Meanwhile, he said, Democrats put forward a candidate with Auditor Rob Sand, who ran unopposed in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, who does not reflect Iowans’ values but instead is a “a divider, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“You all know what the left has been doing across the country — they’ve been putting up candidates who act like moderates and govern like radicals,” Lahn said. “They think that they can fool us. They think that we don’t know what’s going on. I’m telling you, our campaign is going to lift the veil on who Rob Sand really is and show that he is the radical that he is. This is crucially important that we do this. It’s crucially important that you all talk to your moderate Republican friends and let them know the truth.”

Kaufmann also criticized the Democrats running for state and federal offices in Iowa, saying Sand “pretends that he doesn’t care whether he’s a Democrat or Republican” on the campaign trail, and said Iowa Rep. Josh Turek, D-Council Bluffs, who is the Democratic nominee for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat would be a “puppet” for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Dave Muhlbauer accepts Democrats’ lieutenant governor nomination

Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is not seeking reelection in 2026, also linked Sand’s campaign to national Democrats, saying the upcoming election represented “Iowa common sense versus the national Democrat agenda.”

“He gets his money from the Illinois governor, from some of the biggest Democrat mega-donors in the country, including the Soros network,” Reynolds said, referring to billionaire George Soros. “And then he stands in front of Iowans and asks them to believe that he won’t govern like the people funding his campaign, that he’s just a regular guy who happens to be bankrolled by the liberal elite. Give me a break.”

State Rep. Derek Wulf, who was nominated at the convention as the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor as a part of Lahn’s campaign, also said the “real” Sand is “not the guy in the commercials that we’ve seen.”

“Rob Sand is not a unifier, he is not a moderate, and no, he is not a normal guy,” Wulf said. “He’s a European underwear model who married a billionaire donor who is now wearing a costume of what he thinks a regular guy looks like.”

Wulf faced a minor challenge in winning his spot as Lahn’s running mate. Ann Marie Ross nominated Adam Steen, one of the candidates running for governor in the primary, as lieutenant governor. Ross said Steen “has vast experience underneath Kim Reynolds, giving her the successes that she’s been credited for.”

“Of course, she should be credited for them, because she single-handedly picked Adam Steen to fix what was wrong, and he did so. But he was running to continue to fix it, because he needed enough power to make it happen. With both of them together as a combined team, we will beat, completely demolish the opponent.”

A person speaking on behalf of Steen said he had declined the lieutenant governor nomination and was supporting Lahn as the gubernatorial nominee.