Zach Lahn, the Republican candidate for the Iowa Governor race, stopped in Story County Community Building in Nevada for his Story County Town Hall Wednesday. The evening opened with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance after Lahn came in with his wife and seven children. Lahn immediately got into it by bringing up the debate from last night, which led to a lot of clapping and hollering from the warm crowd. “I am very proud to be a Republican,” Lahn said. “We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, of Frederick Douglass, of Theodore Roosevelt, of Ronald Reagan, who taught us to be proud of being American and those are people that we should be proud of and proud of their history. ”
Lahn talked a lot about how important knowing and teaching American history is in this segment of the night, and it was brought up several more times throughout the night. Along with history, he was very adamant about protecting the culture of Iowa. “I don’t talk like a politician because I’m not,” Lahn said. “I’ve never run for office before, and as I said, I didn’t quite run for this office. I just saw these issues and institutions being deteriorated, and I have read enough history to know that this is a planned assault. ”
Lahn said figures such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels promoting these ideas are intended to undermine Western cultural values. “It’s an extension of pushing corporations, which is all a part of Marxism,” Lahn said. “You can call it what you want, socialism, Marxism or communism. It’s this idea that there is an oppressor and oppressed, and the goal is to divide them and make them hate each other. ”
Lahn briefly dove into the topic of rights next. “We were founded on this idea that we are all endowed by a creator, every individual, with inalienable rights that are not natural rights,” Lahn said. “They don’t just come from nature, they come because we are created in the image of God. That’s where rights come from, and unless you understand that you will not ever understand how to defend culture. ”
After that, Lahn leaned more into his thoughts on big corporations owning things versus Iowa-owned businesses. “I’ve also been running against this idea of the uniparty,” Lahn said. “They’re politicians that have been drawn off by special interests, big corporations, lobbyists and these career politicians will do whatever they say. ”
“When I was growing up in Northwest Iowa, we had 400 companies selling seed, input and fertilizer for the farm,” Lahn said. “ Now, three companies control 85% of that market.