Zach Lahn

I saw your video.

That might be where, in the deepest part of me, this really, like, gets me, is that, you know, my dad was a 30-year conservationist.

He was a pastor, conservationist.

And as I was growing up, the lessons that he was teaching me about stewarding creation, about taking responsibility and doing the right thing with your land and with your property...

That all ties back to, as Jordan Peterson would say, beauty is a pathway to God, to the divine.

It all connects in.

And so, when I take a look at what's happening around the state of Iowa, with our farmland being owned by people who don't live here, which you can't steward land properly if you don't live in the state.

You can't take care of it the way that you would.

And you look at single family homes being bought by trillion dollar, you know, Wall Street hedge funds.

Or you look at agriculture companies extorting farmers and putting monopolistic practices in place.

This comes back to like something of faith for me, meaning there is such thing as right and wrong.

There are things that we are called to do.

And you know, of all the laws that were given in the Old Testament, Jesus boiled them down to two.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And he actually, when he was pressed on this by the Pharisees, who's your neighbor?

He kind of came back and said, no, the question is, to whom are you being neighborly?

Because it's not a law of like, oh, this person, that person, like who's within proximity of where I live.

It's actually much deeper that we are tasked with working to make life better for the people around us and the people in our communities and our state.

And this key question that the Amish have asked for a very long time before they make a big decision, which is, what will this change do to my community before they make the decision, has not been asked by politicians in a very long time.

And so when I'm thinking about running, that's what it comes back to for me, is this idea of, when I'm gone, what are my kids going to be able to look back?