An outsider candidate in Iowa won the Republican primary for governor after he announced that he would oppose the hiring of foreign H-1B contract workers in the state’s universities.
“The reason is, Iowa people will do these jobs,” farmer Zach Lahn told Republican voters. “I reject the idea that our people won’t do these jobs.”
The stance against visa workers may have been a small part of the upstart campaign — but it helped him win by a small margin of 0.8 percent, said Chris Chmielenski, president of the Immigration Accountability Project Action.
“A victory of any type for an underdog defeating an establishment candidate is much bigger than what the vote margin says,” he told Breitbart News.
Lahn won 38 percent of the primary vote, while establishment-backed Rep. Randy Feenstra only won 37.2 percent, despite President Donald Trump’s support for Feenstra.
The result shows that “the H-1 B issue is a pretty populist issue, and you can get a large majority support for a pushback against H-1B,” despite the many investors and university executives who fund politicians to preserve the inflow of H-1Bs and other visa workers, he said.
“If Lahn wins the governorship, it would be big” for national politics, Chmielenski said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have already curbed H-1B hiring at state universities.
Other Republican politicians, such as Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia’s Senate race and Jake Merrick in Oklahoma’s gubernatorial race, oppose H-1B visas.
Other GOP candidates, including Rick Jackson, now running for Georgia’s governorship, have backed the visa programs in prior years.
Many other state politicians could take up the issue to win elections and help citizens, said Chmielenski.
The Iowa legislature has already indicated it would support Lahn’s ban on H-1Bs in the state’s universities, despite protests from foreign contract workers at the universities.
In April, Iowa public radio described a Chinese-led political rally against the popular H-1B curbs at the University of Iowa:
Zhengyuan Zhu, one of the organizers of the rally, is part of the Chinese Faculty and Staff Association. It was one of four groups behind the event, along with the Chinese Association of Iowa, the Iowa City Area Chinese Association and Iowans for a Brighter Future. Zhu called the bill discriminatory.
“I have dedicated my career to Iowa’s future,” claimed Di Hu, a Chinese H-1B contract worker who is holding a medical researcher job at the university in place of a qualified American. “My work is not just a job — it is a critical mission for the health of our state,” the Chinese national insisted.
Most reports credited Lahn’s victory to his support for healthcare reform, or “MAHA” policies.
“31% of independents describe themselves as frustrated with both parties,” said a June 3 statement from the Cygnal polling firm, which added:
Zach Lahn beat a Trump-endorsed incumbent by speaking directly to that voter, winning by running on MAHA. Democrats cannot court these voters while running entirely as the anti-Trump party, which is all Rob Sand is. Republicans carry real headwinds into November. Vance has shed 25 points among independents since taking office, and Lahn’s victory shows the party has a path that doesn’t require the top of the ticket to be popular. A health-freedom populist who absorbed the primary’s anti-establishment energy can enter the general with a self-sustaining argument.
The Associated Press (AP) said Lahn’s defeat of rival Feenstra “delivered a rare electoral setback for Trump in a primary season that had previously handed him back-to-back victories.”
The AP also credited Lahn’s victory to his health reform policies, including skepticism about large-scale use of pesticides. “I will take on the big ag cartels. I will break up their monopolies, and I will get Iowa farmers a fair deal,” Lahn said after his win was announced.
The H-1B program keeps roughly one million foreign workers in the United States in white-collar jobs that would otherwise have gone to U.S. graduates. A growing number of those candidates are imported by universities and non-profits, which are allowed to import an unlimited number of foreign workers.
In 2025, at least 126 foreign graduates were imported by Iowa universities, including one to work as a “Residence Hall Life Administration Coordinator.”
Some H-1Bs may be imported as a favor to Indians who already work at the universities, and who fear their adult children will be forced to go back home to India.
Nationwide, at least 50,000 H-1Bs or J-1 visa workers hold university jobs that could be accomplished by American professionals.
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