This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 28 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”

Have you ever heard of the fitness app called Strava? It’s a tracking app that lets you post maps of where you’ve gone running or biking. 

Over the past decade, it’s been in the news quite a bit because it is very popular among service members. There have been a whole bunch of stories about how foreign adversaries are getting a lot of data about U.S. personnel and their bases just from watching the workout data on their public Strava feeds.

But now, that app might end up playing a role in the midterm elections.

In Iowa, there is a very hot race for governor between Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn, and that statewide race could be a key election for the country as a whole. Iowa’s senior senator, Republican Chuck Grassley, is 93 years old, and he has two more years on his term. If Grassley were to die before his term ends, the state’s governor would be responsible for naming his replacement, who would serve out the remainder of Grassley’s term.

Grassley is acutely aware of this. During an event last week, he told attendees in taped remarks that “one of the reasons I’m worried about who’s going to be elected governor — I don’t plan on dying in office — but if I did, I don’t want a Democrat governor choosing my successor.”

With that possibility on the table, Republicans have become invested in the race. So invested, in fact, that they flew Vice President JD Vance in to stump for Lahn earlier this month.

But it is not working. A new Marist Poll has Lahn losing by 12 points in a state that Donald Trump won by 13 points just two years ago. (Several other recent polls show Sand with a smaller lead.)

And one of the issues that has dogged Lahn’s “Iowa First” campaign is that it is not entirely clear he actually lives in Iowa. While Lahn says he has been a full-time resident of the state since 2023, last spring it was reported he regularly flies — in a plane owned by one of his businesses — to Kansas. There, he maintains a multimillion-dollar home, which he says he needs to see some of the children he and his wife have from previous marriages.

There is just one problem: Lahn apparently likes to exercise, and last week a reporter from The Daily Beast found a Strava account linked to the Republican. And it showed that whoever’s using that account was riding their bike around the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, and the rides all started and ended at Lahn’s 26-acre estate — almost 400 miles from the Iowa governor’s mansion.

But as soon as the reporter followed Lahn’s Strava account, the rides in Kansas were mysteriously deleted.

A spokesperson for Lahn told The Daily Beast, “Zach has more than one Strava account.” However, the other account is set to private, and so far, Lahn has declined requests to share evidence that he has ever had a workout in the state he wants to govern.

But here’s the craziest thing: Lahn is just one of at least four Republicans who appear, at best, to be part-time residents of the states they already represent or hope to represent.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, who’s running for Senate in Michigan, has a five-bedroom Florida home that he listed as his primary residence as late as 2023. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall has put down ties in Sarasota, Florida. While the senator said he only uses his $1.45 million home there to visit his grandchildren, records show his family has paid roughly five times as much in property taxes there compared with Kansas during his time in the Senate.

Then there’s Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is now running for governor in his state — even though he cut a promo for ESPN back in 2017 saying he had moved to — you guessed it — Florida.

“Six months ago, after 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with the white sands and the blue water. What a great place to live,” he said at the time. Sure enough, Tuberville still has that $4 million beach mansion, and he has even used Senate money to fund his travels there.

Why didn’t any of these guys run for office in Florida? I guess they figured there would be too much competition.

Allison Detzel contributed.

The post A running app might have exposed an Iowa candidate’s residency problem appeared first on MS NOW.