At a latest cease at a brewery in Des Moines, Rob Sand, a Democrat working for governor, didn’t maintain again about what the matter with Iowa is.
The state has among the many worst economies of all 50 states within the nation, he mentioned. Faculty-educated Iowans are leaving the state in droves. The state is within the grip of a well being disaster, he mentioned, with a quickly growing fee of most cancers.
Iowa additionally has sky-high charges of alcohol consumption, Mr. Sand added, prompting a couple of nervous chuckles from the bar.
“We should always discuss the truth that consumption of alcohol is linked to most cancers,” he mentioned, going through a crowd holding pints of lagers and I.P.A.s. “So end your beer, however assume twice about having one other one.”
Mr. Sand, the state auditor, is campaigning for governor by asking Iowans to take a tough take a look at their very own state and the way it has fared in recent times, when Republican legislators and governors have been in cost.
It’s a counterintuitive pitch in a spot that was as soon as a swing state, electing each Democrats and Republicans within the statehouse and serving to ship Barack Obama to the White Home in 2008. However in latest election cycles, Iowa has turned strong pink, with Republicans occupying the governor’s mansion for the final 15 years, dominating each chambers of the State Legislature and filling all six of the state’s seats in Congress, and with President Trump winning re-election there in 2024 by greater than 13 proportion factors.
To win in Iowa, Mr. Sand, 43, must persuade a major variety of Republicans or independents to vote for a Democrat. (More voters in Iowa are registered with no get together affiliation than with the Democratic Get together, election information exhibits, and nonetheless extra are registered as Republicans than both as Democrats or independents.) Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who turned governor in 2017, introduced final 12 months that she wouldn’t search a 3rd time period.
But the governor’s race in November is shaping as much as be an unusually aggressive one. Up to now, Mr. Sand has collected a formidable struggle chest: In 2025, his marketing campaign amassed $9.5 million, out-raising all of his Republican opponents mixed.
And in a midterm election 12 months when polls counsel that President Trump is sinking in recognition, nationwide Democrats see Mr. Sand as a candidate with an actual probability to win. In addition they see his practical-sounding pitch that spurns strict partisanship as a check of the way to broaden the get together’s enchantment.
Mr. Sand portrays himself as somebody who eschews get together id in favor of frequent sense: Since first declaring his candidacy final 12 months, Mr. Sand has marketed himself as a “governor for all” and repeated the slogan “Not redder or bluer, however higher and more true.”
Greater than 1,500 registered Republicans have donated to his marketing campaign, mentioned Emma O’Brien, a spokeswoman for his marketing campaign, together with greater than 4,000 registered voters in Iowa who don’t have a celebration affiliation.
Mr. Sand’s marketing campaign indicators don’t look notably Democratic, designed in shades of forest inexperienced and blaze orange, a reminder of his oft-mentioned fondness for looking, a convention that’s nonetheless sturdy in rural Iowa.
Although Mr. Sand is standard with nationally identified Democratic leaders, he isn’t publicly leaning on them for assist. Requested in an interview on the State Capitol which nationwide Democrat he wish to marketing campaign with him in Iowa, he paused and mentioned, “Nice query.” Then, he modified the topic.
Mr. Sand would relatively discuss how Iowans have been mistreated by what he calls a collection of poor selections by state leaders and a damaged “two-choice political system.”
“The underside line is, I feel we’re in a spot right here the place a whole lot of the stuff that the parents working the state have finished, they know of their hearts is definitely a nasty factor to do,” he mentioned, citing the ballooning funds deficit and a faculty voucher program that he says provides preferential therapy to personal faculties.
At city halls throughout the state, Mr. Sand makes some extent of asking viewers members which get together they belong to, applauding every political get together after which asking the gang to sing “America the Stunning” collectively. Then he talks concerning the woes of the state and the way his expertise as state auditor and as an assistant legal professional normal who labored on white-collar-crime circumstances will help resolve them.
“He’s definitely attempting to make the race a referendum on how the state goes in the intervening time,” mentioned Megan Goldberg, a political science professor at Cornell Faculty in Mount Vernon, Iowa.
Mr. Sand nonetheless has an uphill battle forward of him. The problem, Ms. Goldberg mentioned, is to put out the issues the state is going through with out coming throughout as overly essential of elected officers that Republican voters assist.
“He’s not even speaking about Republicans,” she mentioned. “But when he begins saying, ‘Hey, that is Gov. Reynolds’ fault — that is President Trump’s fault,’ and also you establish as a Republican, you’re feeling attacked.”
Mr. Sand strikes as an uncommon political determine in Iowa. Born in a small city within the northeast a part of the state, he’s the son of a health care provider and a bodily therapist for youngsters with disabilities, and has been an avid hunter and fisherman since he was younger. He attended Brown College to review political science, after which returned dwelling to Iowa for regulation faculty, rejecting a proposal from Harvard.
In his workplace within the State Capitol, he has hung rows of taxidermied deer heads and a darkish bison cover, and he drives in a big Ford pickup across the state, the place he has held city halls with voters for years.
To political observers in Iowa, it could actually really feel as if Mr. Sand has been working for governor for a very long time. He was the one non-incumbent Democrat to win statewide in Iowa in 2018, and received re-election by lower than a proportion level in 2022.
Mr. Sand’s opponents have begun to warn that if elected, he would transfer Iowa additional to the left, as some Democratic governors have finished in different states. “We can’t have this state seem like Minnesota or Illinois or California,” Consultant Randy Feenstra, a Republican from northwest Iowa, informed a gaggle of voters in February. “That scares me.”
Polls counsel a good race within the Republican major on June 2, when 5 candidates, together with Mr. Feenstra, will compete for his or her get together’s nomination. Mr. Sand is working unopposed on the Democratic aspect.
That has led even some Republicans to see Mr. Sand as an actual risk to their maintain on the governor’s workplace. Within the Legislature, lawmakers have moved to restrict the governor’s emergency powers in a invoice that’s seen as an acknowledgment that Mr. Sand may very well be Governor Reynolds’s successor. In March, Mr. Sand was sitting on the steps of the State Capitol for an interview when a lady in a swimsuit, a Republican lobbyist, half-jokingly greeted him as “Governor” as she hurried previous.
Mr. Sand can be the primary Democrat to win the governor’s workplace in 20 years, after Chet Culver, who served one time period from 2007 to 2011 earlier than dropping to a Republican, Terry Branstad.
In April, the Cook dinner Political Report moved the Iowa governor’s race from “leans Republican” to “tossup.”
