JEFFERSON, Iowa — About 120 people filled the Pickaway Americana and Meeting House in Jefferson Tuesday night in order to hear a speech by State Auditor of Iowa Rob Sand, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the Iowa governorship in 2026.
Sand, the state’s only Democrat holding statewide office, launched his campaign for governor in May and has been staging a statewide town hall tour since then. He aims to work “across party lines” and bring “political balance” back to Iowa, he told the enthusiastic Jefferson crowd Tuesday.
Sand described the successes of the Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) program, which has already attracted about one-third of the state’s 1,500 cities, counties and school districts as participants since forming in 2021. The PIE program provides advice, feedback and recognition to government entities for their efforts to save taxpayer money through cost-cutting measures provided by the Sand’s office.
Sand answered half-a-dozen questions from the audience, including one from Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, who asked the candidate “how different will things be across Iowa? What will we notice” under a Sand regime, following 14 years of GOP governors and the still-overwhelming Republican domination of the state legislature.
Sand said the first big difference will be the veto pen he will wield against the legislature’s ideological excesses.
“Why are we fighting culture wars when our economy is 49th in the country?” Sand asked. “The culture war’s over. Don’t pass those bills because I will veto them. Put your time into figuring out why we are number one for cancer, and send me a bill about that. Put your time into figuring how we make Iowa deserve a quarter that says, ‘Foundation in Education’ again, and send me a bill about that. Send me a bill that’s going to make our economy at least in the top half in the country. Put your time into that. Don’t be putting your time into culture wars. Time’s up.”
Under the leadership of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, the state’s lawmakers passed a flurry of laws designed to please their Family Leader-inflected followers, virtually outlawing abortion in Iowa, purging diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from Iowa public colleges and universities and state agencies, removing gender identity as a protected class from the state Civil Rights Act and banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, sending state troopers to patrol the Texas borderlands like so many crisis-actor props — in short, Iowa Republicans stood athwart post-U.S. Civil War history shouting, “Stop!”
Sand is all Iowan and likes huntin’ and fishin’ and quoting the Good Book, so he should not seem too threatening to red-state voters, but then this is no longer the Iowa of Harold Hughes or Robert D. Ray.
