Zach Lahn joins HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for MAHA rally
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CLIVE -- Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn emphasized his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday at his "Make America Healthy Again" rally with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Lahn has long highlighted his support for the MAHA movement spearheaded by Kennedy at the federal level, which he says centers around his positions on healthy food, clean water and safe medications. The candidate, who is running against Iowa Auditor of State Rob Sand in the Nov. 3, 2026, general election, said his top priority as governor "is to clean up our water and to stop the cancer crisis in the state of Iowa." But he also said there are many other health-related proposals he supports as a candidate -- including restrictions on the availability of certain vaccines.
"Even with fake news here, I'm going to say this: The fight to pull the COVID vaccine off the market is a pro-life issue," Lahn said,
Lahn has brought up several policies related to vaccines on the campaign trail -- including his pledge to ban the COVID-19 vaccine if elected governor. He has also said he would scale back vaccine requirements for children to attend school. During a primary-season a debate hosted by Moms for Liberty, Lahn said he would ban mRNA vaccines in Iowa.
The ban discussed in January was about gene-based vaccines that use nucleic acids like messenger RNA -- mRNA -- to create proteins and trigger an immune response. There has been ongoing research on mRNA vaccines for decades, but the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna were the first mRNA vaccines to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. While reviews of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have found the doses were safe and effective, there has been persistent skepticism about the effectiveness and potential adverse health risks caused by these vaccines.
The Iowa Democratic Party held a news conference Wednesday where Dana Drochner, a breast cancer survivor, said addressing Iowa's cancer crisis requires leaders to continue research and development on mRNA vaccines and other medical treatments.
"I benefited from new medical treatments, and there's more and more that are being developed every day, such as the mRNA vaccines," Drochner said. "I feel like all treatments should be up for consideration to fight this disease because it's a very difficult issue, and we should not leave any possible option untouched in this fight."
Speaking to reporters, Lahn said his comment during the primary season was specifically about the COVID-19 vaccine. Speaking with reporters at the rally, Lahn did not clarify whether he would support banning other mRNA vaccines that could receive FDA approval in the future -- but he did say he would support Iowans accessing mRNA therapies developed to treat cancer, genetic disorders and infectious diseases.
"Now they're looking at other interventions -- which are therapies -- that could help treat cancer," Lahn said. "I think those are great. If they're promising, great. We need them in the state for sure. But those are very individualized interventions. It's not a mass-produced product like a vaccine would be. It's a therapy, and I support them."
But Lahn said during his speech that he believes there is reason to mistrust medical experts.
"I believe wholeheartedly that during COVID the veil was lifted, that we saw firsthand what the medical establishment was willing to do to collude with the government to gain power," Lahn said. "And let me just be very clear about this: The medical establishment has completely lost our trust and has done nothing to earn it back. They have not."
There were several speakers who spoke before Lahn and Kennedy that brought up their concerns about vaccinations. Iowa Rep. Bill Gustoff, R-Des Moines, said he joined the "medical freedom movement" after his child had an adverse reaction to the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (known as MMR vaccine), before going on to help the group Informed Choice Iowa, a group founded in 2017 in opposition to vaccine requirements and health mandates.
Former state lawmaker Joe Mitchell, the Republican running for Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, said "the story of MAHA is personal to me," sharing a story about his 93-year-old grandmother died two weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, which he said was given "without anybody's consent" after she became a nursing home resident.
Mitchell also said he was "not a big fan" of former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci, who served from 2021 to 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. If elected to Congress, the Iowa Republican said he would want to serve on the House Oversight Committee "because I want to investigate the hell out of Anthony Fauci."
In May, Kennedy announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. The HHS secretary did not speak about vaccinations at the rally, but instead focused on water quality -- another top issue for Lahn's campaign and in other races across the state.
Kennedy spoke about his long history in environmental protection work as a lawyer and through his work at nonprofits, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Waterkeeper Alliance, which he founded.
He said during this work in the 1980s and 1990s, he spoke with many people who believed they could not turn to government officials for help in combatting companies that were polluting local waterways.
"They had come to the conclusion that many Americans have now come to: that government was in cahoots with the polluters, and that our government had been captured by profit interests, and we're stealing something fundamental from the American people," Kennedy said.
He said he believed Lahn embodied the values needed to address these problems by focusing on ways to improve water and air quality, and to ensure Iowa children are eating healthy -- he said "to me is the most important election going on in this country today."
"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 and enrich our microbiome ... and we need somebody who is really smart, who understands these issues, who is rooted in those soils, who has credibility with everybody in the political landscapes," Kennedy said. "... There are very, very few people in this country who fill that bill. And I can think of one of them, the most important one -- it's the person that we're here tonight to support."
Lahn told the crowd, "you'll notice that not everybody up here believes all of the same things." Though he did not say where he disagreed with other speakers, he said the fact that there were there were different positions being expressed at the rally showed attendees, "you are in the presence right now of people who are not for sale, who are not able to be bought off, who are going to do the bidding of the people."
"This is not a monolith," Lahn said. "This is not what it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be where everybody's thinking the same thing all of the time."