If there is one thing that Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa, definitely does not want to talk about, it’s his connection to the Koch family.
To hear Mr. Lahn tell it, he is a self-made businessman, a father of seven and a farmer running against powerful corporate interests. He has campaigned on his financial independence, pointing to the $2.5 million he lent himself during the primary.
He rode that cash and a right-leaning brand of prairie populism to the nomination, defeating President Trump’s preferred pick in the primary. Now he is facing Rob Sand, the Democratic state auditor, in a race that Democrats view as one of their best shots to flip a governorship.
But there is a more complicated tale of Mr. Lahn’s rise that is interwoven with the Kochs, one of America’s richest and most influential political dynasties.
The story includes years of work for Koch-funded endeavors, a divorce and a new marriage to a former Koch who had just received a sizable divorce settlement of her own. It involves an expanding investment portfolio — including a million-dollar stake in a manufacturer of high-tech penis rings — accusations of carpetbagging and a private plane that has shuttled back and forth to Kansas with two words emblazoned under the wings: “Iowa First.”
“My wife used to be married into the family,” Mr. Lahn, 40, said at a recent town-hall event in Humboldt, Iowa, when asked by a voter about his connection to the Kochs. “But if anyone understands how those situations go, they’re not exactly wanting to support me. I think that’s quite clear.”
In fact, some of the Kochs did not even know his campaign was coming.
Years of ties
At the town hall, Mr. Lahn downplayed his ties to the Kochs. “I have worked for one group that was funded by them one year — for one year — 10 years ago,” he said.
His connections are deeper.
In 2014, Mr. Lahn was hired to lead the Montana chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group in the Kochs’ political network. He held the post for about a year and then served as a fund-raiser for the organization into 2016.
At a Koch-funded education conference, he met a woman named Annie Koch, the wife of Chase Koch, son of the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, one of the nation’s richest men and leading political financiers.
Soon, Mr. Lahn moved to Kansas, where he co-founded a private school with Annie Koch, called Wonder, that was bankrolled by her and her husband.
In 2017, Mr. Lahn started working for the school, which opened in 2018.
Two years later, the Kochs were divorced, and so were Mr. Lahn and his wife. Mr. Lahn and the future Annie Lahn applied for a marriage license 11 days after his divorce was finalized, in June 2020, court records show.
Mr. Lahn’s financial arrangement with the school was unusual.
From 2017 to 2024, he worked 50 hours per week for Wonder, according to Internal Revenue Service records. The records say he was never paid.
“The school was a passion project, 100 percent,” Mr. Lahn said in an interview with The New York Times, adding that the “school never paid me anything.”
He was, however, being paid at the time. Mr. Lahn was directly billing Annie and Chase Koch through a limited liability company, according to an email and invoices later obtained by The Times. Mr. Lahn sent the Kochs monthly bills for “consulting services.”
In 2019, his monthly billings were $20,883, which would add up to an annual salary approaching $250,000. One internal email refers to his compensation as “salary.”
In an email following the interview, Mr. Lahn’s campaign manager, Paul Cordes, stood by Mr. Lahn’s claim that he was never paid by Wonder. Mr. Cordes said the bills were “related to consulting work that also predates the school.”
Mr. Lahn and Annie have also lent money to the school in recent years; tax records last year showed a balance due of about $4.5 million.
A surge in financial activities
Court filings in Mr. Lahn’s divorce offered little hint of the wealth he would later tap into in his run for governor. In the interview, he said the documents did not require him to list all his assets because he went through a “collaborative divorce.”
Many assets, however, were listed, including $6,401 in a retirement account. He reported about $50,000 in joint savings and checking accounts and another $51,000 in a business account. His $210,000 Iowa farmhouse had a $163,750 mortgage balance.
He listed an annual income of $240,000 on one document and an annual income of $380,000 on a child-support worksheet.
The attorney for Mr. Lahn’s ex-wife declined to comment on his finances.
The Kochs’ divorce records are sealed, but a person with knowledge of the settlement, who was granted anonymity to discuss a private agreement, said that Annie received a sum in the eight-figure range.
In the years since marrying Annie, Mr. Lahn’s investment activity surged, mostly through limited liability companies, public records show.
In 2021, he bought a “ski-in, ski-out” lot at the base of a mountain in Whitefish, Mont., valued at $1.5 million, and he bought and sold a home in the same resort valued at $4.5 million. He and Annie bought and sold a three-bedroom home near their farm. He also bought a 1930s-era movie theater in Belle Plaine, Iowa, for $250,000 in 2023 and roughly 435 acres in surrounding Benton County.
In 2021, one of Mr. Lahn’s limited liability companies bought a $1 million stake in FirmTech Inc., a men’s sexual health company that makes penis rings promising longer erections and more intense orgasms. At one point, the company sought to trademark hats that read, “Make America Firm Again.”
Campaign officials say he resigned his position with the company in 2023.
In the interview with The Times, Mr. Lahn noted that before his second marriage, he purchased a Montana apparel company for $3 million, which he said was “100 percent my own money.”
“There’s been plenty of money that I have made prior to the divorce,” he said, citing work for start-up companies and the purchase of rental property in Montana. His campaign declined to provide any details or documentation.
Mr. Lahn bristled at the suggestion that his wife’s divorce settlement had fueled his business career or contributed to the $2.5 million he lent his campaign.
“Silly question,” he called it.
‘Our family dealings are our family dealings’
On a windswept day last November, Mr. Lahn began his campaign at the Belle Plaine farmhouse that was built by his great-great-grandfather in 1900. He was surrounded by the seven children he now shares with his wife, Annie.
(The Lahns each had three children from their previous marriages and have since had one child together.)
The event came as a surprise to Chase Koch.
Mr. Koch learned of Mr. Lahn’s campaign — and the supporting role of his children — only when he saw them in media clips, according to two people close to him, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Mr. Lahn declined to say whether he had alerted Mr. Koch about his children’s role in the campaign kickoff.
“We’ve had good communication on this, but I’m not talking about the kids or the family,” he said, adding, “Our family dealings are our family dealings.”
A representative for Mr. Koch declined to comment, citing the children’s privacy.
Not in Kansas anymore
Mr. Lahn’s residency has emerged as one of the most fraught issues of the race, with Mr. Sand repeatedly accusing him of being a “Kansas carpetbagger.”
Mr. Lahn has said that he lives full-time in Iowa but that his children split their time between the two states.
Flight records first reported by The Des Moines Register showed Mr. Lahn’s private plane frequently shuttling between the states.
“The airplane goes back and forth to pick up the kids as they split time,” Mr. Lahn, a pilot, said in the interview, adding that he was not always flying the plane with “Iowa First” under the wings.
The Lahns also own a 26-acre Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired estate appraised at $1.8 million — complete with an indoor pool and a private lake — just north of Wichita, Kan.
Mr. Sand has aired a pointed TV ad that calls him an “Iowa public school dad.” Mr. Lahn has repeatedly berated Mr. Sand for what he framed as attacks on his children, who attend school in Kansas.
“I am not going to be intimidated on this,” Mr. Lahn said in a heated exchange during a recent debate, vowing to “defend my children from people who’d like to exploit them like you.”
Mr. Sand responded: “This is not about why you’re in Kansas. This is about the fact that you’re not in Iowa.”
Mr. Lahn voted in Iowa years ago but voted in Kansas in 2018, 2020 and 2022. He re-registered in Iowa in October 2024 — just in time to qualify to run for office in 2026.
Mr. Lahn cast an Iowa ballot in the 2024 general election. But voting records that have not previously been reported show he requested that his ballot be mailed to him — in Kansas.
“All my official mail has gone to my assistant for years,” he explained.
‘They’ve supported my campaign in no way’
Mr. Lahn has tried to turn the tables on the question of familial wealth.
He has repeatedly invoked Mr. Sand’s wife and her family, who for years have been his major political benefactors.
Mr. Sand is married to Christine Lauridsen, who leads her family’s conglomerate, Lauridsen Group, Inc. She and her family have contributed about $5.8 million to Mr. Sand’s campaign for governor.
“He is a billionaire,” Mr. Lahn claimed in a recent ad. “He doesn’t get what regular folks go through.”
Mr. Sand’s campaign declined to respond to the criticism.
Mr. Lahn’s line of attack has puzzled some political observers who are aware of Mr. Lahn’s connection to the Koch family.
“It seems like the objective is more to muddy the waters,” said Eric Woolson, a Republican consultant in Iowa. “I don’t know that it’s going to resonate with most Iowa voters.”
At the Humboldt town hall, Mr. Lahn dismissed talk of his Koch connections as “conspiratorial” and stressed his opposition to the role played by the family’s multinational conglomerate in the agricultural industry.
“They’re not supporting me in any way, shape or form,” he said. “Not a dollar of inside help, a dollar of outside help. Nothing.”
The Koch super PAC, Americans for Prosperity Action Inc., has spent more than $13.3 million on Iowa’s Senate race this year.
The group has spent nothing for Mr. Lahn.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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