Iowa's Republican nominee for governor, Zach Lahn, spent the week of August 19, 2026 defending a roughly $1 million investment in FirmTech Inc., a men's sexual-health company — with The Bulwark and Raw Story both running the story and Lahn insisting the product at issue is a medical device rather than a sex toy. The controversy originated in the primary: on May 28, 2026, rival Randy Feenstra released a 15-second attack ad reported by Little Village, stating "Lahn invested a million dollars in a sex toy company called FirmTech" and asserting the company is "connected with Pornhub" — a reference to FirmTech content published on Pornhub's Sexual Wellness Center. Lahn won the nomination anyway in an upset.

Why It Matters

Strip away the electoral noise and this is a live regulatory-classification dispute being litigated in campaign ads. FDA Class II is exactly where nocturnal-erection monitoring and constriction devices sit — the same category as Eddie by Giddy — while general-wellness pleasure products sit outside device regulation entirely. Lahn is not spinning when he invokes the classification; he is describing a real distinction the industry has spent years trying to make legible. The problem is that his own portfolio company sits on both sides of it, which is the structural reality for most of male sexual health. That convergence is the point. The men's sexual-wellness sector has deliberately blurred the medical/pleasure boundary because the medical framing unlocks retail, insurance conversations, telehealth pathways, and legitimacy — see testosterone prescribing at an all-time high, MISTR bolting ED treatment onto PrEP infrastructure, and prostate massagers migrating from clinical to consumer positioning. When a device measures cardiovascular risk markers and also functions as a pleasure product, "which is it" has no clean answer. The political test result is worth logging for anyone doing diligence in this space. An attack ad naming a sex-toy investment and invoking Pornhub, in a Republican primary in Iowa, did not stop the candidate from winning. That is a data point on where the stigma line actually sits in 2026 — closer to the ad-maker's assumption than to reality. Founders and investors in the category should note that the reputational exposure is real enough to generate attack ads, and apparently not decisive enough to win them.

The underlying product is genuinely interesting, which is what makes the fight instructive. FirmTech sells a Fitbit-style constriction ring that measures the firmness, duration, and number of nocturnal erections — metrics that function as indicators and predictors of cardiovascular disease and erectile dysfunction. The company also sells rings intended purely for pleasure, plus a line of vibrators. Both facts are true simultaneously, and the campaign is a running argument about which one defines the company.

Lahn's position has been consistent. "What I've invested in is not a sex toy," he told reporters. "It's a grade two medical device." His investment, he said, "is purely and specifically around the technology underlying it, which I think is actually going to help save men's lives." His campaign says he was an early investor drawn to the erection-tracking ring, served on FirmTech's board, and resigned in September 2023 over concerns about the company's direction — before, the campaign says, any pleasure products were released.

Little Village noted that Feenstra's ad was the first time either Pornhub or sex toys had been mentioned in an ad by a candidate for Iowa governor. Donald Trump endorsed Feenstra the day after the ad dropped; Lahn won regardless.

Sources

Update — 2026-08-22

{Initial entry — story first created.}

Update — 2026-09-04

The archive won the argument. On September 3, 2026, SEXTECHGUIDE published a review of FirmTech's own archived blog posts that directly undercuts Zach Lahn's "not a sex toy" framing — using the company's words rather than a journalist's characterization. A June 2022 post opens flatly: "Cock rings are sex toys which are worn by men and people with penises," and goes on to market FirmTech's Performance Ring. In January 2023, FirmTech announced that XBIZ had recognized the Tech Ring as, in the company's own phrasing, "Most Innovative Sex Toy of the Year" (XBIZ's own winners list files the category as Innovative Sex Toy of the Year). A June 2023 post titled "2023 Sex Toy Trends" calls the Tech Ring "not only a sex-enhancing toy that prolongs erections, but also a valuable personal wellness tool."

All three predate the September 2023 resignation Lahn's campaign cites — and none of them load on FirmTech's site today. Per SEXTECHGUIDE, all three now redirect away. One post that survives, promoting the Max Performance Ring launch and published in June 2026 (long after Lahn says he left the board), still uses the descriptor: "makes our performance rings easy to put on, either by yourself or with a partner, making them the go-to male sex toy for enhancing sexual performance."

The investment details are now firmer. Lahn joined FirmTech's board as one of three directors in 2020, and in September 2021 paid $1 million through his wholly owned Selah Group LLC for 1,250 shares — making him the company's second-largest shareholder at a 28.2% stake. The Bulwark, drawing on SEC filings and company literature, reported that FirmTech "marketed these erection rings, also called 'cock rings' or 'c-rings,' as devices for generating pleasure," and that the company announced a clitoral vibrator to investors in documents bearing Lahn's signature.

FirmTech is treating the label as legally actionable. Co-founder and CEO Dr. Elliot Justin told Raw Story: "Calling our products 'toys' is inaccurate and shallow. If you claim that we are a 'sex toy' company, we will seek correction and if necessary take legal action." He argued the framing "could interfere with men getting diagnostic information and intervention." The Bulwark's article now carries a note that it was updated to include the text of a letter from FirmTech's general counsel. Justin has also made the more defensible version of the case: "One sector's toy is also the progressive urologist's answer to the most common cause of [erectile dysfunction]."

Why this update matters for the industry, not just the race. The classification argument this sector has spent a decade building — that intimate devices belong in the wellness and clinical aisle as much as the sex shop — works as a description. It does not work as a shield, and this is the clearest test case yet of the difference. A device can be a Class II diagnostic instrument and a sex toy simultaneously; FirmTech's own marketing department reached that conclusion years before its second-largest shareholder ran for office. The Bulwark was explicit that its interest was narrow: "whether Lahn has been honest in how he has described himself to potential voters," not who buys sextech. Lahn faces Democratic state auditor Rob Sand on November 3.

A useful contrast from across the Atlantic: SEXTECHGUIDE notes that Samantha Niblett, Labour MP for South Derbyshire, launched a campaign this year calling for lifelong sex education and will display sex toys and sex education aids in Parliament in the autumn — having first checked with security that they aren't on the banned items list. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch's response at PMQs: "They're promoting sex toys in Parliament. It gives a whole new meaning to 'fiddling while Rome burns.'" Different stigma gradient, same underlying fight.

New Sources