As Feenstra sinks, GOP establishment hits panic button

The warning signs were there for months. This week, they became impossible to ignore.

Hours after a new poll showed U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra trailing rival Republican candidate Zach Lahn, President Donald Trump gave Feenstra his coveted “Complete and Total Endorsement” for governor on May 29. In a Truth Social post, Trump declared Feenstra to be “MAGA all the way!” and promised, “RANDY WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”

Trump has sometimes jumped on the bandwagon of candidates poised to win their primaries. But this intervention looks more like a salvage operation.

The wildest part is, Feenstra could still lose the June 2 primary. He is that bad a candidate.

The invisible front-runner

Feenstra had been seeking Trump’s support for the past year. His campaign spent heavily on digital and television advertising depicting the candidate as a “Trump conservative” and a “Trump trusted” fighter.

The MAGA faithful have never embraced Feenstra, though. As a member of Congress, he has avoided public town halls and candidate forums, even in the reddest parts of his deep-red district. He has been AWOL as landowners fought Summit Carbon Solutions’ efforts to seize private property for a CO2 pipeline. He didn’t endorse Trump until after the 2024 Iowa caucuses.

Those were all factors in Feenstra’s underwhelming victory (by 60 percent to 40 percent) over little-known primary challenger Kevin Virgil in 2024.

Feenstra kept his campaign for governor in an “exploratory” phase for more than five months last year, skipping large Republican gatherings and rallies where other candidates made early pitches. Even during weeks-long recesses from Congress, he was rarely seen in public. He didn’t start holding his own round tables and meet and greets until after his official launch in late October.

Since then, his campaign has done little to broaden his appeal. Instead of building crowds, his staff rarely publicized Feenstra’s upcoming appearances and kept the candidate in safe spaces, often speaking to 20 or fewer people.

Here is what Feenstra called a “packed house” at the Carroll Pizza Ranch in February. I routinely see more people at events for state legislative candidates.

Feenstra continued to avoid debates and multi-candidate forums, even when he was in the same city where other contenders were taking unscripted questions. For instance, in December his campaign organized their own small meet and greet in Sioux Center a few miles away from an event hosted by the Sioux County GOP, featuring his four competitors.

The front-runner and his handlers were counting on establishment support, an aura of inevitability, and heavy ad spending to deliver the primary win. Then Iowa’s rightward drift and large GOP voter registration advantage would carry the nominee to a victory over Democrat Rob Sand in November.

Even without an enthusiastic base, that strategy could have worked in a five-way primary. Feenstra’s internal polling showed “a commanding lead” in mid-April: 41 percent for Feenstra and all other candidates in single digits.

I was skeptical of the survey, recalling that Feenstra’s campaign released a poll in May 2024 showing him 54 points ahead of Virgil, just before he won the fourth Congressional district primary by a 20-point margin.

Anyone could see that grassroots hostility to the front-runner was building. For a good read on the trend, see Brianne Pfannenstiel’s April 21 story for the Des Moines Register on Feenstra’s “difficulty connecting with the GOP base.” Podcaster Justin Brady has described Feenstra as “remarkably unpopular” and not well-liked even among those planning to vote for him. Skipping both televised debates this month only reinforced the narrative that “runaway Randy” was hiding from Iowans.

The question was, could someone consolidate enough of the non-Feenstra vote to win on June 2? Zach Lahn was the best-funded candidate aside from the front-runner, while Adam Steen had the endorsement of The FAMiLY Leader, an influential Christian conservative organization. I thought either could beat Feenstra one-on-one, but in a larger field, each might prevent the other from pulling ahead.

That’s clearly no longer the case.

The implosion begins

Going into this election cycle, Feenstra may have assumed no competitor would match his spending on paid media. He raised about $4.3 million during 2025, including some $1.4 million transferred from his Congressional committee. But without an army of grassroots donors, he has largely drained his war chest this year.

Lahn wasn’t on many people’s radar a year ago. He loaned his campaign $2 million in 2025 and has raised nearly $1 million from other donors since January 1. That allowed him to invest heavily in TV and digital advertising, as well as a field operation. Former U.S. Representative Steve King, whom Feenstra defeated in a 2020 primary, endorsed Lahn in April, saying he was the only candidate with momentum, “fantastic ideas,” and “the resources to fight this out.”

Feenstra trailed Lahn in fundraising from January to mid-May. His latest campaign finance disclosure, covering the period from May 15 to May 26, showed just $38,566.44 raised from 22 individuals. Despite getting big checks from several establishment figures—the CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership and the owners of a trucking company, a huge pork production business, and a rural real estate firm—Feenstra had less than $150,000 in the bank going into the last week of the campaign. Meanwhile, Lahn was flush with cash, having loaned his campaign another $500,000 on May 22.

Tom Barton of the Cedar Rapids Gazette learned from Republican contacts that Feenstra’s recent polling put him at 28 percent, with Lahn only a few points behind. According to Barton, Lahn’s internals showed him and Feenstra almost tied in the mid-20s.

I can’t independently confirm those numbers, but here’s a data point supporting them: Feenstra launched a negative TV ad on May 27. Drawing on the Des Moines Register’s reporting about Lahn’s investment in a “men’s sexual health company,” the ad claims: “Zach Lahn says he represents Iowa values. But Lahn invested a million dollars in a sex toy company called FirmTech. They’re even connected with PornHub, a website hurting marriages and harming children. Zach Lahn’s phony values end where his profits begin.”

(Lahn’s campaign told the Register that FirmTech initially produced “medical devices,” and that he stepped down from the board in 2023, before the company released “pleasure” products.)

An outside group called Right America Inc., with ties to a Lahn consultant (the Sage Advisory Group), launched a hit piece on Feenstra on May 27. That TV ad claims Feenstra “doesn’t agree” with Trump that the first duty of the U.S. government is protecting Americans. It asserts that as city administrator of Hull in the early 2000s, he “ran a program that gave taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants” and didn’t check immigration status at public meetings.

That strikes me as a misleading portrayal of outreach to provide new Latino residents with information about employment, housing, education, and so on. But it’s hard to feel too sorry for Feenstra, given his own demagoguery about immigration.

Against this backdrop, the little-known firm JMC Analytics and Polling released findings from their own survey first thing in the morning on May 29. Among 550 Republican voters surveyed on May 27 and 28, Lahn was slightly ahead of Feenstra (24 percent to 22 percent). Adam Steen was in third place (15 percent), followed by Brad Sherman (8 percent) and Eddie Andrews (4 percent). The other 27 percent were undecided.

When undecideds were pushed to choose, Lahn led with 27 percent, followed by Feenstra (24 percent), Steen (16 percent), Sherman (9 percent), and Andrews (4 percent).

Lahn also had better favorability numbers (48 percent favorable/16 percent unfavorable) than Feenstra (41 percent favorable/38 percent unfavorable). Steen was a distant third (37 percent favorable, 12 percent unfavorable).

The math was simple: if undecideds broke for Lahn, he would surpass Feenstra and the 35 percent threshold needed to win the nomination outright on June 2.

Enter Donald Trump.

A risky endorsement

A truism of U.S. politics in the 2020s is that endorsements never matter, except for Trump in a Republican primary. By that logic, this rambling post with its weird selection of capitalized letters could seal the deal for Feenstra.

Within hours, Feenstra’s campaign put out a new 15-second ad. “MAGA Alert,” a male voice announces. “On May 29th, President Trump endorsed Randy Feenstra because, as governor, Feenstra will stand with Trump to freeze property taxes, lower costs for families, and put Iowa first.” The viewer hears Trump say, “Randy, thank you very much,” before the narrator’s closing line: “Trump-endorsed Randy Feenstra for Governor.”

I don’t know why they use a voice-over with such an odd, non-Iowan accent.

Feenstra also spread the word through interviews, speaking to local radio and television stations and outlets with larger conservative audiences (Fox News, WHO Radio’s Simon Conway).

Did Trump’s blessing come too late? You could argue it did not, since the vast majority of Republicans who will vote in the June 2 primary haven’t cast their ballots yet. Data from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office indicates that county auditors had received 17,908 Republican ballots as of the morning of May 29. Just under 199,000 Iowans participated in the 2022 GOP primary elections.

But I would argue that Trump weighed in far too late to prevent Lahn’s surge. And he may not be able to change his fans’ minds about Feenstra.

Lahn closing strong

I don’t know whether Lahn expected Trump’s intervention, but he was ready with a counterpunch. Less than an hour after Feenstra landed the “Complete and Total Endorsement,” Lahn proudly announced “the endorsement of my longtime friend Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action. Charlie and I first became friends when he was just 17 years old. Much of our campaign is centered around the issues he and I both cared about for a very long time.”

Getting Turning Point involved gives Trump fans who also admired Charlie Kirk a reason to stick with Lahn.

On Friday evening, more than 200 people showed up for Lahn’s rally in West Des Moines.

photo posted by Lahn’s campaign manager

Instead of ignoring the big news of the day, the candidate put a good spin on it:

Let me tell you: I believe the president received bad advice today. I believe that there’s people around that were not telling the full story. They were not telling the story that Randy Feenstra won’t show up, that he won’t debate, that he won’t answer to constituents. That he’s created taxpayer-funded programs for illegal immigrants, things that Donald Trump is adamantly opposed to.

But here’s the deal: on June 3, I look forward to talking to President Trump and saying let’s win this race in November.

Lahn characterized the race as “a fight of the grassroots against the machine” and warned that if Feenstra wins on June 2, Democrat Rob Sand “will be the next governor of Iowa.” He said the “miscalculation” would affect Republicans in down-ballot races.

Other Lahn supporters have echoed that line. Here’s State Representative Zach Dieken: “Trump endorsing Feenstra is essentially Trump endorsing Rob Sand for Governor. He must be completely out of touch with Iowa.”

The MAHA PAC sent out text messages to Republican voters on May 30. Excerpt:

Iowa families deserve healthy food, protected farmland, and LEADERS WHO ANSWER TO IOWANS.

Randy Feenstra has taken money from Pfizer, the drug companies, and the insurance lobby. Over 70% of his Washington campaign cash came from outside of Iowa.

That’s funny, since most of Lahn’s donors also live outside Iowa.

The MAHA PAC text message goes on to say, “With MILLIONS in his own campaign account, he decided to spend YOUR TAX DOLLARS on radio ads promoting himself.” (That’s a reference to my exclusive reporting about Feenstra using his Congressional office budget to pay for radio ads and political mailings from January through March.) The text continues:

Feenstra represents the swamp, not Iowa.

Zach Lahn is THE ONLY MAHA-ENDORSED CANDIDATE for governor.

A real Iowan and family man fighting to keep chemicals out of Iowa’s water and bring Real Food into schools.

My hunch is that MAGA loyalists who weren’t already leaning to Feenstra won’t be swayed by Trump. They will conclude “bad advisers” led their “good tsar” astray.

A Steen supporter defects

Lahn could also pick up support from conservatives who had been leaning toward other candidates. Steen has lagged far behind in fundraising and will struggle to get his closing argument in front of late Republican deciders. Sherman and Andrews have even smaller campaign budgets.

Right-wing radio and television host Steve Deace, who endorsed Steen last November, recorded a video on May 30 telling Republicans, “If you want to stop Randy Feenstra from handing our state over to Rob Sand, then you need to vote for Zach Lahn on Tuesday. Zach is the only candidate with the momentum and the possibility of beating Randy Feenstra. […] conservative MAHA warrior Zach Lahn can beat Randy Feenstra and Rob Sand.”

Deace threw in a token line about how he will still vote for Steen, “but if I can’t get you to join me in that vote, and you agree with me, that we cannot let Randy Feenstra turn our state from red to blue, then you need to vote for Zach Lahn on Tuesday.”

The Lahn campaign has been texting the Deace video to GOP voters and sharing on social media.

It’s a cruel twist of fate for Steen, who branded himself as a “pro-Trump Christian conservative.” I’ll be watching to see what The FAMiLY Leader does to help him GOTV.

“Iowans are fired up”?

Feenstra scheduled a lot of events for the home stretch, but he’s not reaching large audiences. This crowd of fewer than 50 people is the most I’ve seen in a photo on his social media. Senator Joni Ernst, Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, and local Republican legislators joined him for this event in Council Bluffs on May 27.

That evening, Feenstra had a house party at the home of West Des Moines Mayor Russ Trimble, who is also a longtime Iowa Senate Republican caucus staffer. Erin Murphy of the Cedar Rapids Gazette described the attendees as a “who’s who of Iowa Republican political leadership.” Former Governor Terry Branstad was there to emphasize the importance of winning the governor’s race.

Dave Price observed on the Iowa Down Ballot podcast that the house party felt like something a candidate would do for VIP supporters six months before the primary, not a way to close out the campaign. He noted that Feenstra gave his standard stump speech (including the story about meeting his future wife at a Pizza Ranch), which everyone in the crowd had surely heard already.

This photo shows about 20 people at Feenstra’s May 28 “rally” on the Delaware County farm of his friend, State Senator Dan Zumbach.

On Saturday, May 30—one day after Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement,” three days before the primary election—Feenstra had this “rally” on a farm in Clay County.

It looks like fewer than 30 people attended. I’ve seen larger house parties for city council or school board candidates.

“Iowans are fired up to win BIG on June 2nd,” Feenstra posted on social media. “With President Trump’s complete and total endorsement, we will defeat Extreme Liberal Rob Sand and keep Iowa red!”

Don’t be too sure.

If Feenstra loses the primary, or staggers to the nomination and loses in November, Trump will be furious. He doesn’t like the narrative that he backs a lot of underperforming candidates.