The candidate, whose official support was previously expressed by US President Donald Trump, has lost his chance to become governor of Iowa. Congressman Randy Feenstra lost to businessman and farmer Zach Lahn in the June 2 primaries by less than 1 percentage point, according to Associated Press (AP) data based on 99% of the ballots counted.
As Newsweek notes, Feenstra's defeat marked the first time in this US election cycle that Trump's support did not work in favor of the candidate. Prior to this, all politicians endorsed by Trump in the Republican Party primaries, whether running for Congress or for executive office, beat their opponents.
Unlike Texas and Kentucky, where Trump has previously supported outsiders running against incumbent lawmakers, Feenstra, 57, was seen as the party's establishment candidate.
The Republican has been sitting in the US House of Representatives for more than five years, and before that he was a local senator in Iowa for more than ten years. Feenstra actively supported the course of current Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, the first woman in this post, who decided not to run for a third term.
Lan has not previously held elected office and has become an official candidate of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Its leader is considered to be the Secretary of Health in the Trump government, Robert Kennedy Jr.
As AP and Newsweek note, the movement is generally loyal to Trump, and he himself regularly uses his slogan, but Lan was able to rely on farmers' dissatisfaction with some elements of the current administration's policies. He spoke out, in particular, against the authorities’ reliance on large agricultural holdings and the large-scale use of pesticides.
“I will take on the agricultural cartels, break up their monopolies and ensure fair conditions for Iowa farmers,” Lan said in his victory speech on Tuesday, also mentioning his commitment to addressing the “cancer epidemic” in the agricultural state.
“We have to find out what Big Ag and Big Pharma knew about the safety of their products and when they knew it.”
Republican nominee for governor, Zach Lahn, says solving Iowa's cancer crisis will be a top priority if elected.
“Iowa has the fastest growing cancer rate in the… pic.twitter.com/EpoGz9nL60
— MAHA Action (@MAHA_Action) June 3, 2026
To win, the businessman needed a lead of 1,600 votes, Fox News notes. By the way, at the time of writing this material, when searching on Google, a pre-prepared headline from the channel’s website probably appeared, announcing Feenstra’s victory.
NBC News also notes that until the last moment when counting ballots, there was a risk of cancellation of the results. If neither Feenstra nor Lahn had received 35% of the vote, instead of an open primary, a vote would later have been held at the local party convention. In the end, Feenstra received the support of 37.2% of Republican voters in Iowa, and Lan – 38%.
According to the AP, Feenstra's defeat suggests that Trump's coalition in Iowa, where Democrats have not won governorship since 2006, is “beginning to come apart at the seams.”
An unnamed strategist on Trump's team told NBC News that responsibility for the defeat lies with the candidate himself. Trump expressed support for Feenstra four days before the primaries, and Reynolds, by the way, generally refrained from expressing preferences in the race.
“The problem is obviously Randy [Финстре]. He barely won even in his own district. As it is, it is, we will work with Lan, that’s normal,” said the channel’s interlocutor.
Lan's opponent in the Nov. 3 Iowa gubernatorial election will be the state's current auditor general, Democrat Rob Sand. As Politico notes, he is the only representative of his party who has recently managed to win a general election at the state level. He has been elected twice since 2019 to the position of auditor, who is responsible for checking the expenditure of the state budget by executive authorities and protecting the interests of citizens in this area.
