Iowa Gubernatorial Debate Focuses on Taxes, Education

Iowa’s candidates for governor stuck to the granular issues and largely avoided personal attacks at their debate on Wednesday night, with differences between Republican businessman Zach Lahn and Democrat State Auditor Rob Sand most vivid on taxes and education. Lahn, a first-time candidate who defeated U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra in a Republican primary upset, continued to pitch an outsider message. He advocated for ending property taxes on primary family residences and “radical transparency” in state government spending. He said he talked to senior citizens and young families who said fear renting their homes from government, blaming property taxes for squeezing them on top of other costs. Sand, meanwhile, pitched raising taxes and said Republican income tax cuts had not helped the state grow. He is a strong proponent of recreational cannabis and taxing it at the same rate as alcohol. Both candidates agreed on increasing efficiency in government and ending tax breaks for data centers. Said Sand, “We also want to make sure that data centers are paying their full freight. They shouldn’t be getting tax breaks. I think that’s wrong. I think the tax breaks that have been given to them are wrong and they should be paying every penny.” Lahn added, “I do agree on the idea of removing all tax breaks for data centers. I’ve been very loud on this. I’ve probably been one of the people that’s been hardest on data centers in the state. We have to stop giving things away.” On education, Lahn called for a “moonshot” goal of 80 percent of the food for Iowa school lunches to be locally sourced, saying, “I love when I find something that somebody tells me that is going to be very difficult to do, because it makes me think that this is something that we really need to do.” He said he wanted to see Iowa companies and farmers benefit more than national corporations. Sand tried to one-up Lahn on this topic, saying he supported free breakfast and free lunch for Iowa students. He has campaigned on increasing education funding by 5 percent for the state education system, largely backed by his marijuana tax plan. He claimed Republican leaders have not prioritized public education in the state, saying, “I just think we have to start reinvesting in education. I think that’s incredibly important and we need to do that now,” while also criticizing families benefiting from the state’s private school voucher program. Lahn enthusiastically backed school choice and highlighted his work building schools across the country, pointing out that per-pupil spending increased in Iowa by 50 percent (inflation-adjusted) yet the state dropped 27 points in national rankings. “This is something that I don’t believe either side likes, that we are dropping in the rankings like this,” said Lahn, who also said the state should look at returning to phonics-based reading and citing the statistics of the “Mississippi miracle” in public schools. The debate again returned to the topic of data centers, where Lahn praised companies coming to the table and said the state must negotiate properly and set the rules of the game. Sand, meanwhile, said data center companies should stop requiring NDA’s with local officials when negotiating data center deals. Follow Matt Mercer on X: @mattmercer.