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Transcript: Zach Lahn, Iowa GOP nominee for governor, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Oct. 4, 2026

2026-10-04T12:41:00-0400 / CBS News

The following is the transcript of the interview with Zach Lahn, Iowa GOP nominee for governor, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Oct. 4, 2026.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation. We turn now to the Republican running for governor of Iowa, Zach Lahn. He joins us from Belle Plaine. Good morning.

IOWA REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE ZACH LAHN: Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We look at diesel prices. They’re north of six bucks. President Trump’s trade war with Canada and China have made things expensive for farmers. You know that well in Iowa. Are the president’s policies a headwind for your party?

ZACH LAHN: I think when you talk about what’s going on with affordability for farmers, and by the way, this is something we launched our campaign on in the beginning. You have to take a step back and really understand what’s been going on for decades in the agriculture industry, where we’ve seen consolidation after consolidation of businesses taking choice and competition away from farmers, we’ve reached monopoly stages there. And now what we’re seeing with some of the increased prices on diesel is kind of just another one of these pieces that’s adding up to that. And we’ve been focused, you know, in the state on how do we cut the gas tax and other priorities to help farmers have more affordable fuel when they go into harvest. So this has been a part of our campaign since the very beginning, and I really think farmers understand that for a long time they have been treated as price takers, and really the deck has been stacked against them. And now when you add in the higher cost of diesel, we really have a problem.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well – you just mentioned there big AG. You are campaigning with a promise to break up big AG monopolies. You said you’re going to tax the heck out of Wall Street hedge funds that own farmland. Those sound more typically like progressive policies than conservative ones. How do you convince Iowa Republicans?

ZACH LAHN: Well, I just say that, you know, breaking up monopolies was first done by Republicans. The Sherman Antitrust Law is a Republican. Teddy Roosevelt broke up two of the biggest companies in existence. A monopoly is a failure of the free market. I think we forgot that in large part, and now we’re paying the consequence for it. So my priority is to increase the funding to the Attorney General’s office to take on these anti-competitive lawsuits because farmers across the country are waiting for someone to take the first step here and really give them a fair deal, and so I think that these are ideals of the Republican Party. But really, they’re just the right ideas, the right thing to do.

MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s – it’s an interesting position, though, given that the party has typically been very close to the agriculture industry. I know you have focused in your campaign on the cancer rate in Iowa. It has the second highest cancer incidence in this country. You say it’s nitrates and pesticides, including glyphosate, that cause it. President Trump signed an executive order to boost production of glyphosate based herbicides. How do you reconcile those presidential decisions from the policy you have?

ZACH LAHN: Well, I would just say first that I was one of the first people to come out and say that this was the wrong move to sign that executive order. I think that if we could give the president the advice on that, that he would understand that better. But what we have focused on a campaign that’s focused on Iowa issues specifically, and this is something that Iowans are facing. We have the fastest rate of new cancer anywhere in the country, number one. And if you move out of the state of Iowa to say a state like Nevada, your chance of getting cancer any given year goes down by 40 percent. These are very specific Iowa based issues, and we’ve been focused on them. High nitrate load in water is one of the top causes of colon cancer, bladder cancer, ovarian cancer, and we’ve got some of the highest levels in the country, if not the highest levels. So, we are focused on providing incentives to farmers, real incentives, to adopt different types of practices to allow them the ability to really change what they’re doing to stop these products from getting into the streams in the first place, clean up our water at the source, and help farmers make sure that they’re not losing money by doing it by providing real incentives that help them actually make money by adopting these practices. Because it really goes back to farmers are operating on razor-thin margins right now, and the idea to experiment with something new is not very appealing when you could be the first in a line of five generations that loses your family farm.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right and that’s one of the arguments – for continuing to use this herbicide that has arguably ties to – cancer. Is that it’s just frankly cheap – Your position —

ZACH LAHN: Okay —

MARGARET BRENNAN: — You just said if the president had more information, maybe make a different decision. Just for the record, RFK Jr., the HHS secretary, says he opposed it. Told the president he opposed it, and the president did it on national security grounds. But he has been out there, the HHS secretary. He’s been campaigning for you. Many of your platform issues are very popular with the MAHA movement. Should America view your race as a test of Kennedy’s popularity?

ZACH LAHN: Well, I think that Kennedy is very popular, and Iowa is very popular across the country. But it’s more so the principles that he represents, which are similar principles to what I represent. Look, we all want healthy kids. We want clean water. We want to make sure we have less medications for our kids. We want to solve these issues that have been causing a rise in, you know, chronic illness, in autoimmune conditions, not just amongst kids but amongst adults, and we believe that food is medicine. That it’s the first line that you need to be looking at is, what food are we putting into our body, and this is one of the reasons that a top priority of mine, my moonshot for the state of Iowa is to see a day in which 80 percent of the food served in our public schools is grown in the state of Iowa and we can do that. It will take time, but this might be, you know, the only nutritious meal a kid has all day and Iowa has the best farmland in the world, the best farmers in the world. We can do this and lead the country on it. And this is one of the first steps that we can take to really make sure that we’re cleaning up our food supply, we’re getting kids healthy food.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we will continue to watch your race – and see if Iowa, as you say, is -is an outlier here and maybe starting something new. Thank you, Zach Lahn, for your time today. We’ll be right back.