Can a love-thy-neighbor, stop-the-division campaign win over masses of rural voters? Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, has his hopes pinned on it.
Key to Sand’s campaign is a promise to end the red-blue warfare in politics. He’s made embracing independents and disgruntled Republicans a core part of his campaign, in addition to ending government corruption, holding big agriculture and big chemical companies responsible for the state’s high cancer rates, and addressing cost-of-living concerns. And his pragmatic approach seems to be working.
Polls have reliably shown Sand, who currently serves as Iowa state auditor, ahead of his Republican opponent, Zach Lahn — despite the GOP’s significant voter registration advantage. Democrats haven’t won the governor’s mansion in Iowa since 2006.
On top of the gubernatorial race, Iowa also has competitive Senate and House races, which could be key to Democrats’ hopes of gaining control of Congress during this November’s midterm election.
To break down what’s happening in Iowa, Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Laura Belin, publisher and reporter for the Iowa political website Bleeding Heartland.
Noel and Belin discussed Sand’s unique candidacy, whether it could have lessons for other Democrats looking to succeed in Midwestern states that have grown redder, and how President Donald Trump’s policies could be laying the groundwork for a rural backlash in this year’s midterm elections.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
This midterm season, all eyes seem to be on Iowa. Why is Iowa so crucial?
What has happened in Iowa, where we used to be a swing state and we’ve moved into the red column, is not unique to Iowa. Every part of the country that looks like Iowa has seen the same trend of voters moving away from Democrats. It’s happened especially in these working-class communities where the electorate is predominantly white people without a college degree.
Iowa as a whole voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump three times. So if Democrats can figure out how to start winning again, or at least losing by less, in that kind of area, it could have implications not only for the future of Iowa, but for other states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
What are the main issues that people there are voting on and campaigns are campaigning on?
The high cost of everything is definitely the top issue. Democrats have really been hammering on the tariffs and the war in Iran, driving up the cost of everything.
Also, healthcare costs have skyrocketed.
We’ve seen healthcare access be an issue, because we’ve already seen some clinics close, and the companies that control those hospitals or clinics have talked about how it’s partly a reaction to the big Medicaid cuts that were passed in the [GOP’s 2025] budget reconciliation bill.
According to many polls that I’ve seen, Trump is underwater in Iowa. His policies are not popular; the tariffs are not popular in Iowa. They’re widely understood to be hurting the Iowa economy. Anyone can see that the cost of everything has gone up.
So Trump is less popular this year. What are the Democrats doing to campaign on that? Are they running on Trump?
Most of the Democrats are not running directly against Trump. Rob Sand, the candidate for governor, hardly talks about Donald Trump at all. He really focuses on statewide issues.
Josh Turek, the candidate for Senate, is running [on] the idea that [Republican Senate nominee] Rep. Ashley Hinson has just been a rubber stamp for policies that have hurt Iowa, whether that be the war in Iran [or] tariffs. It’s more running against the Republicans who have been a puppet [for Trump] rather than running against Donald Trump himself.
Let’s talk about that governor’s race and Rob Sand. This guy has gotten a fair bit of national interest. What do you know about him?
I’ve followed his career for a long time, since he was running for state auditor the first time in 2018. He’s been very visible. He’s gone out every year, done a hundred town halls a year, done them in every county.
He is reaching out to independents because Iowa Republicans have a pretty large voter registration advantage. So he’s talked a lot about trying to empower independents more in our political spaces. He’s talked about getting Iowa back to divided government. He’s talked about how, with the large Republican majorities we have in the legislature, he would be a check on what they’ve done with 10 years of one-party rule.
He used to be a model.
A long time ago, when he was in college. It’s funny, Republicans post these old modeling photos of Rob Sand from the ’90s and even [Sen.] Chuck Grassley’s campaign account posted some of those over the weekend.
And I always wonder — I mean, Republicans seem to think that they’re going to get traction out of that, but I don’t really see that as something that Iowans care about at all. I think a more common criticism that I hear is that Rob Sand has a very strong social media presence and has for years. In addition to making videos talking about political issues and what needs to be done in state government, he does a lot of things like reviewing pizza and donuts.
They try to portray him as someone who’s not serious about his job. But I think that that’s just more [that] he has this goofy online persona. And I don’t really think it’s a detriment to his campaign.
Tell me more about the town halls. We’ve seen a certain type of Democrat emerge in the last few years and become very visible this campaign cycle: angry at the Democratic Party, angry at the direction of the country.
Rob Sand — from what I’ve seen of him, it does not seem like anger is what he wants to tap into. Tell me what you’ve seen when he’s out in public.
No, he does not strike an angry note. And he’s not really part of this whole debate between progressives and moderates or centrists in the party. He’s really tried to chart, I would say, a completely different course of saying that he wants to get back to common-sense government, focusing on the issues that people can agree on.
He’s talked about how if he’s governor and the legislature sends him culture war bills, we’re gonna have veto ceremonies instead of bill signing ceremonies. He doesn’t want to do any of this culture war thing. And one thing that he does at the beginning of every town hall is he asks people to raise their hands if they’re a registered Republican or a registered independent, and then he asks everybody to applaud for those people.
He has everybody in the room sing the first verse of “America the Beautiful” together.
And he talks about how our politics has become so divisive. The way he frames it is that two private clubs, as he frames the major parties, he says, ‘They’re trying to make us hate people we used to love. And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the division.’
Sometimes he asks for a show of hands: How many of you have had a family relationship or a longtime friendship disrupted over the last 10 years because of politics? There are always a lot of hands that go up. And he says, ‘I’m just sick of this.’ So he is running on trying to bring people together, but it’s not really in a kumbaya way, like we’re all going to agree on everything.
When he’s criticizing his Republican opponent, Zach Lahn — and one of his main talking points is that Zach Lahn doesn’t live full-time in Iowa, that he’s a part-time Iowan and spends a lot of time in Kansas — but before he even gets to that, he leads into it by saying, “There’s one thing that I want you to remember about my opponent that’s the most important thing. He’s a human being.”
The Democrats need a type of candidate who can win in red states. Rob Sand is interesting because it seems people have identified him as possibly that template. What do you think?
I don’t know how easy it would be to replicate Rob Sand. He grew up in a small town; he grew up hunting and fishing. He talks about his faith. I don’t know that everybody would be able to pull that off so naturally.
But sometimes when people ask me, well, what happened to Iowa? It’s not anything specific to Iowa. It’s every part of the country that looks like Iowa has seen the same trend of Democrats losing ground. It’s the same reason Trump was able to win the states that used to be called the Blue Wall: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. It’s the same reason Ohio has moved into the red state category.
I think people are watching Iowa, especially Rob Sand and Josh Turek, the candidate for Senate, because if Democrats can find a way to turn things around in those types of areas — working-class communities that are predominantly white — there could be lessons that apply to other states.
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