Wonder school's expenses beat its revenue in five of six years. The Lahns propped it up with $615,000 in loans, and the debt reached $4.5 million. They are the school's officers, its only publicly disclosed trustees, and its largest creditor — a conflict Wonder has disclosed to the IRS every year since 2021.
Lahn told the Des Moines Register he likes that Iowa's governor has no term limits — then told a podcast he'd like twenty years in the job. Kansas, where he voted in three elections and owns a $2 million home, limits its governor.
Lahn ran the Koch group's Montana branch and fought Medicaid expansion there. Now he runs for Iowa governor as an anti-corporate populist — while Koch is one of four firms holding 84% of North America's nitrogen fertilizer capacity.
The Wichita private school Lahn co-founded — financed by Chase Koch — answered to none of the rules Iowa's public schools must follow. His plan for Iowa: expand the $314 million voucher program and 'wipe out' the board that licenses teachers.
At a January debate, Iowa's Republican nominee for governor said he'd pull all COVID shots off the market in Iowa and end all childhood vaccine requirements for school enrollment. 'We cannot trust the medical establishment in Iowa anymore.'
At the Hancock County Fair, Zach Lahn defended Iowa's privatized Medicaid system and defended an attack ad built from edited TV news clips. The state audit he's brushing past found privatization drove an 891% increase in illegal denials of care.
Zach Lahn runs for Iowa governor as a plain-spoken farmer and political outsider. The Wall Street Journal found a millionaire Koch operative who voted in Kansas as recently as 2022.