GRUNDY CENTER – After a decade of Republican control of state government, gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand thinks it’s time for a sea change in Iowa. But rather than overcorrect in the opposite direction, the Democratic state auditor is instead asking voters to remember their roots and chart a more independent course in the open race for Iowa’s next governor.
“I’m not telling you that the answer is to give the other private club 10 years of total control,” Sand, 43, said Wednesday morning to a crowd of about 75 people gathered at the Grundy Community Center for the 50th stop on his annual 100 Town Hall Tour. “We didn’t send Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley to the United States Senate together because we, oops, didn’t notice they were in opposite political parties. We did it because as Iowans we recognized that if they were going to try to do something too far out on the extremes, they’d cancel each other out. … If you give one party all the control, it’s awfully tempting to just ignore the other.”
Iowa has boasted a Republican trifecta at the state level — governor, House and Senate — since the 2016 election when Republicans engineered a takeover of the Iowa Senate with a six-seat pickup. The governor’s mansion has been in GOP hands since Democratic incumbent Chet Culver lost his 2010 reelection bid to former Gov. Terry Branstad. Seven years later, Branstad handed the reins to then-Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds to serve as the U.S. ambassador to China. As the state government steadily transformed into a solidly red state, rural local governments that had traditionally been politically balanced, like nearby Tama County, followed suit. It’s a transformation Sand connects to Iowa’s decline in public education, water quality, health care and more. But in particular, Sand dislikes Iowa’s primary system, which excludes voters who don’t register as Republican or Democrat.
“Our political system is broken,” he said. “And it’s broken largely because it’s run by two private clubs who are more interested in beating each other up than they are in solving our problems. … Democratic and Republican parties have written into the law special legal privileges for themselves. I think that system is broken. And I’m really sick of Iowans seeing high cancer rates, high costs and increasing corruption. And I think we see that – and that lack of accountability – because we are constantly forced to pick between the lesser of two evils, which enables evil.”
As state auditor, Sand – a native of Decorah, attorney by profession and father of two preteen boys with his wife, Christine – is currently the only Democrat in statewide office. After working as an assistant attorney general of Iowa as a prosecutor, he ran for state auditor in 2018 and won by defeating Republican incumbent Mary Mosiman, becoming the first Democrat to hold the office since Lorne R. Worthington lost his 1966 reelection campaign. Four years later, Sand narrowly won reelection to become the last Democrat standing at the state level.
Sand has spent the past 15 months officially campaigning for governor as a pragmatic Democrat with an independent streak. As part of his stump speech Wednesday morning, he told the Grundy Center crowd made up of mostly registered Democrats alongside a healthy crop of no-party voters and at least one self-identified Republican that moving the state off the whiplash track of one-party control is the “number one issue” he wants Iowans to focus on because it has led to a “problem-solving system” that “isn’t solving problems.” To that end, he told the room, Iowans need to stop demonizing each other based on political party. And then, as has become tradition at a Rob Sand town hall, he led the audience in singing the first verse of the patriotic hymn “America the Beautiful.” The Grundy County group enthusiastically and quite skillfully sang along.
‘From sea to shining sea’, Sand told the audience, “we’re in this together” and “that’s what politics should be like.”
‘Approval voting’
So why is Sand a registered Democrat despite his professed hatred for partisanship?
“I am a Democrat because when I realized that I had to pick a party in order to vote in a primary, I did so. That’s un-American, by the way,” he said. “I joined the Democratic Party because I think Jesus is for the little guy, and I think the Democratic Party – at its best – is the party that represents the little guy.”
Sand, a practicing Lutheran, grew up in Decorah generations after his father’s Norwegian family settled in the area. His father, Kevin, is a retired family doctor, while his mother, Leslie spent her career working as a physical therapist for the local Area Education Agency (Keystone AEA). Sand is a 2001 graduate of Decorah High School.
“I really appreciated growing up in a small town, especially one where my family had roots,” Sand said. “It really helped me learn what community means.”
During a pre-town hall interview Wednesday morning in the community center’s kitchen, Sand told the newspaper he cast his first vote in a general election in 2000.
“I know I voted for Chuck Gipp, a Republican, for the Iowa Legislature,” Sand recalled. Gipp ran unopposed that year for District 31, which included parts of Allamakee and Winneshiek counties.
When asked if his parents talked about politics much while he was growing up, he said politics was hardly a kitchen-table issue .
“No, they didn’t talk about it. My parents were public service-focused. They were both registered independents until after I had graduated from college,” he said. “My grandpa Bob was a Republican. My grandma Verna was a Democrat. They mostly canceled each other out. … [My parents] might have had conversations about issues or what was going on or what was impacting our community, but it wasn’t like a partisan political debate. I don’t remember hearing the word ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican’ in my house growing up.”
But bucking his own political party at times for what he believes to be the ‘greater good’ has not always played well for Sand, he told the Wednesday town hall. His quest to populate the state auditor’s office with a mixture of political ideologies – not just Democrats – has irked some folks in his party.
So why not just run as an independent, no-party candidate? It seems the answer is that doing so would almost guarantee a loss due to Iowa’s two-party political system. Sand would like to change that system.
“I want us to have a single public primary. Open to all candidates. It’s the people’s primary. Everybody’s on it. Every eligible voter can participate. So all the Democrats, independents, Republicans, Libertarian, Green Party, whatever. If you qualify for the ballot, you’re on the ballot,” he said.
By Sand’s thinking, all registered voters, regardless of party, could then vote in the “people’s primary.”
“Then we send the top four (vote-getters) to the general election,” he continued. “You notice that I didn’t say the top Democrat and top Republican, because who cares if you join the private club? If the voters don’t choose you, then you shouldn’t get to advance just because you wear the right-colored shirt. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s illogical.”
In the general election, Sand wants to follow Fargo, N.D., by using a system called approval voting.
“Here are four candidates. Vote for as many of them as you approve of, and the person with the most people approving them wins the race. Pretty simple,” he said.
Sand thinks a voting system like this would give Iowans “real accountability” over their elected officials by “forcing them to address issues like cancer … corruption and costs.” Such a system, he said, would also hand the electorate “the ability to kick them all out if we don’t like them” because now they “actually have to compete” and not just rely on their “right colored shirt” to win.
Q&A
During the Q&A portion of the town hall, which took place just ahead of 11 a.m. after a 10:30 a.m. start, Sand addressed several issues raised by the audience, including the state of mental health care and Medicaid in Iowa.
“It’s a mess,” Sand said of Iowa’s behavioral health service system. “And the truth is that we’ve done three mental health reorganizations in six years in Iowa. … It’s a terrible way to do it. So I want to be clear about one thing: If you’ve done three reorganizations in six years, you shouldn’t be contemplating another reorganization. Just let the dust settle, for goodness’ sake. Calm things down. And instead of doing wholesale reorganizations, look at things piece by piece and figure out what we can do to make this work better.”
One of the most poignant moments during the Q&A was an exchange between Sand and a young mother from the Conrad. Seated in the back of the room so as to allow space for her 17-month-old son’s stroller, the young mother had a question about education for Sand.
“My son is deaf,” she said into the microphone, her son lying on her lap. As she spoke, her voice filled with emotion. “I guess I worry about a lot because he won’t have the same education I did growing up with all the cuts to the AEA and special ed. We talked about moving, but this is our home. What are you going to do about those cuts?”
As part of his response, Sand talked fondly about his time growing up as the son of an AEA physical therapist. He said some of his favorite memories were when his mother came home celebrating a ‘win’ with a student. He referred to Iowa’s AEA as “a wonderful and innovative system” that many states, particularly rural states, coveted due to the manner in which it dispersed services fairly across both rural and urban school districts. Following an overhaul of the system by Republicans in 2024, signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds, the funding and management of Iowa’s AEAs shifted dramatically as money flowed out of the regional agencies and into local school districts’ hands. The change has disadvantaged many school districts, particularly rural school districts, critics argue, due to an inability to procure the same specialized services the AEA once offered.
“I do 100 public town halls every year – never did a single person come to me and say, ‘I have a slight concern about the AEAs.’ Nobody. It worked for Iowa,” Sand said. “And instead, ideology went first. We should privatize it. We’re going to totally upend the AEA system – which makes it more difficult for families like yours to get the care they need. … It doesn’t make sense. … The more we can help kids develop so that they can contribute to society, the better off we all are.”
But like his solutions to Iowa’s privatization of Medicaid and the private school voucher system, Sand said the answer isn’t a wholesale reversal.
“AEA reform is two years old. … We’ve got to figure out where we are before we decide where we want to go. I want to make sure that kids like yours have the access that they need.”
We’re not in Kansas anymore
In his race to replace retiring Gov. Kim Reynolds as governor, Sand is running against Republican Zach Lahn, 40, of rural Belle Plaine. The MAHA-backed businessman, farmer, and Iowa native owns a roughly 155-acre sixth-generation family farm purchased over a decade ago after it was sold following his great-grandmother’s passing in 2005.
Lahn previously lived in Kansas, among other states. He has taken quite a bit of heat, both in the press and online, on his residency. Sand briefly addressed his opponent at the end of his Grundy County town hall Wednesday.
“I’m going to talk about my opponent for one minute. Maybe two,” he said. “The first thing I want you to know about him is that he’s a human being. Please do not forget that in the course of this campaign. My opponent is a human being. God bless him.”
But then Sand pivoted, calling out Lahn for essentially trying to have it both ways in terms of where he spends his time.
“There are 3.1 million people in the state of Iowa. We have real problems. I do not think we are going to address as many of those problems as possible, or address them as fully, with a part-time Iowan as our governor,” Sand said. “I can tell you that [Lahn] has real obligations in the state of Kansas. … He’s mostly lived outside of Iowa for 20 years. He voted in Kansas in 2018, 2020 and 2022.”
Lahn and his wife, Annie, have seven children between them as a blended family. While the Lahns today call rural Iowa home, they continue to maintain a significant presence in Kansas – including a second home – as part of the balancing act inherent to blended families, Lahn told the Des Moines Register in May.
Sand continued Wednesday morning, “After announcing that he was running for governor, the plane [Lahn] uses to travel around spent 75 nights in Wichita, Kansas, to 51 in Belle Plaine, where he says he lives. That, to me, tells you pretty clearly where he lives. … I’m a numbers guy, folks; 75 is a lot more than 51 in this kind of circumstance.”
Additionally, Sand said he believes Lahn’s views on many issues will continue Iowa “on a very bad path.”
During Sand’s pre-town hall interview, he was asked if he believes Lahn to be an honest person.
“I don’t need to judge his character in order to know that he has put himself in circumstances where he has been willing to lie during this campaign,” Sand said.
When asked to comment on the observed phenomenon in some rural Iowa communities of Lahn campaign signs popping up next to Chris Jones signs — Jones is the Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture and has staked his run on cleaning up Iowa’s water — Sand said he “had not noticed that anywhere” himself but felt pairing Lahn with Jones was not to Iowa’s benefit.
“I’m going to be certainly better on water than [Lahn] is,” Sand told the newspaper. “I certainly have a more specific plan. He talks about it, but he hasn’t said what he would do. He has said that he’s against a regulatory approach. He’s made that clear. So maybe those folks just need to come out to a Rob Sand event.”
Earlier this summer, Sand announced his “Truer Better Agenda: A Healthier Iowa for All,” which addresses both water quality in Iowa and the state’s “sky-high cancer rate.” That plan can be viewed on Sand’s campaign website. And while Sand does not wholly fault Iowa’s water for rising cancer rates – he also cites radon, alcohol consumption, smoking, weight gain and diet among the issues – he does believe the amount of nitrates in Iowa’s water is a contributing factor.
In terms of electing another Republican governor, Sand told the town hall, “I think Iowans are ready for something that feels a lot more like Iowa. … The Iowa that we all know. … Where the people who are in charge are working together to serve everyone in the state. Not serving insiders or special interest groups.”
He then likened replacing politicians every so often to crop rotation.
“That works for politicians like it does for corn and beans,” he quipped.
Guns and a ‘different kind’ of Democrat
During Wednesday’s Q&A, Sand, a hunting enthusiast, was asked to comment on his “feelings on gun control” by a male member of the audience.
“Uh, which of my guns do you want me to give up?” he initially joked before later turning serious. “I was raised shooting. I enjoy shooting.”
Sand said his favorite hunting season in Iowa is bowhunting for deer, followed by shotgun season for deer and then turkey hunting (he said getting a turkey with a bow is still a bit beyond his abilities).
“I like guns,” he continued. “I’ve been a lifelong gun owner. I’m a big believer in the Second Amendment. And if someone’s scaring you, saying, ‘Oh, Sand, he’s a Democrat.’ Well, I guess I’m a different kind.”
But is he the kind that can win after a decade of Republican one-party control? At least 70 or so people of varying political leanings in ruby-red Grundy County seemed to think so.