Zach Lahn’s win in Iowa is a rare rebuke to Trump, who still has an iron grip on the party

Zach Lahn speaks to an environmental studies class at Drake University on 6 May 2026 in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Brittany Peterson/AP View image in fullscreen Zach Lahn speaks to an environmental studies class at Drake University on 6 May 2026 in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Brittany Peterson/AP Analysis Zach Lahn’s win in Iowa is a rare rebuke to Trump, who still has an iron grip on the party Chris Stein While president’s last-minute endorsement of Randy Feenstra failed, he has enjoyed successes in Texas, Indiana and Kentucky Zach Lahn’s victory in Iowa’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday is a rare instance of Republican voters rejecting Donald Trump , who has used his endorsement to elevate proteges and oust rivals nationwide ahead of the November midterm elections. In the race to replace Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Republican governor, who is not seeking re-election, the president had given Randy Feenstra, a congressman, his “Complete and Total Endorsement”, which would normally be enough to see him to victory. Instead, Lahn, a farmer and businessman, won Tuesday’s Republican primary with 38% of the vote to Feenstra’s 37.2%, according to the Associated Press. The congressman’s shortcoming is unlikely to be an indication that the power of Trump’s endorsement had waned – a streak of victories have ousted Republican incumbents at the state and federal level. In recent weeks, Trump-endorsed candidates have triumphed over Thomas Massie , a Kentucky congressman; Bill Cassidy , a Louisiana senator; John Cornyn , a Texas senator, and five of the seven Indiana state senators who defied his redistricting demands. In most of those races, Trump and his allies spent months orchestrating the successful primary challenges. But in Iowa, the president intervened in support of Feenstra only last week, amid polling that showed him struggling against Lahn and raised the possibility that no candidate would clear the 35% of the vote required to win the nomination and avoid a party convention. “Nobody thought this could be done. We were outspent, opposed by the establishment, told to wait our turn,” Lahn said in a victory speech on Tuesday. “Well, tonight the people of Iowa had something to say about that, that we’re not going to wait anymore.” The owner of an eastern Iowa farm that had been in his family for 105 years, Lahn campaigned against big agricultural businesses that he accused of ripping off farmers and driving up the state’s cancer rate, which is the second highest in the nation, according to the Iowa Cancer Registry. “We have to find out what big ag and big pharma knew about the safety of their products, and when they knew it,” he said in his victory speech. Turning Point Action backed his campaign, as well as Maha Pac, the political arm of the “make America healthy again” (Maha) movement. Though tension has developed between its supporters and the Trump administration in recent months, Tony Lyons, the co-president of the Maha Pac said in a statement: “Tha