Bulwark Takes - Trump is Crushing Iowans. Can This Democrat Win Them Back? (w/ Rob Sand)

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Andrew Egger is joined by Rob Sand to discuss his run for governor of Iowa, Iowa’s economic struggles, and his effort to unite Democrats and disillusioned Trump voters through accountability over partisanship.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, this is Andrew Egger with the bulwark. The state of Iowa, like much of the Midwest right now, in kind of a weird place politically. Iowa used to be a purple state, elected lots of Democrats, but Iowa is an agricultural state. It's a rural state. It's a largely white state. And the Trump era shifts that have pulled the white working class more and more into the GOP have hit Democrats pretty hard there. I am joined today by what you might call the last Iowa Democrat standing. It is state auditor Rob Sand, who is the only Democrat currently serving in statewide office in Iowa. ways he is trying to lead his party out of the wilderness there. He's running for governor to replace a retiring current governor, Kim Reynolds. Rob Sand, thanks for coming on to talk for a little

bit. Yeah, happy to be here, Andrew. Thanks for having me. So you're a guy who some of our viewers and readers might be familiar with, you know, the real sickos, the real junkies out there, since you have made a bit of a splash online with some of your campaign videos, you've had some pickup in national media. For those who are not familiar with you, can you just start by telling us a little bit about your background, a little bit about yourself and why you're in this race? Yeah, you bet. Born and raised in Bikora, Iowa. My dad's family has been up there in Winnishie County, way northeast part of the state since we got off the boat from Norway. So I grew up hunting and fishing, going to church. All three of those things are still important parts of my life. My first job was catching chickens. I don't do that anymore. Happy to keep hunting and fishing and going to church. And, you know, when I finished my education, went to work at the Attorney General's office, spent seven years.

as the chief public corruption prosecutor there. Prosecuted violent crime, too, sexually violent predator cases, but a lot of financial stuff. So if you ever read about the hot lotto scandal, the largest lottery rigging scheme in American history, I led the investigation that uncovered it and the prosecution for it. And then was elected in 2018 as state auditor and reelected in 2022. We actually uncovered a record amount of misspent money in the state. In my first term, we started a government efficiency. program so good it's been copied into other states. The response to us uncovering all that

misspent money was literally that the legislature and the governor made a new law in Iowa so that state agencies can hide waste and abuse of tax dollars from the auditor's office. Every single national watchdog that weighed in on this regardless of party, every single nonpartisan group that weighed in on this from accounting perspective said this is a terrible idea, don't do it. they took that as all the confirmation that they needed to go ahead and do it because they just don't want to be held accountable. Let me hit you with a bit of a provocative question off the top. Democrats have been getting hammered in Iowa. The last few cycles, you know, Trump, there was some question going into the 2024 election, whether Kamala Harris was going to overperform there. If you remember the Seltzer poll, we all watched at that time, but he cleaned up in the end, right? Why, I've seen a lot of people, at least outside the state, who just see it as a red side. state now, like full stop. So why should people think that you have got a shot in this governor's race in this statewide race? There's two answers to that. Number one, I wish that political journalists had

to use gradients in their maps because the truth is that Iowa Democrats have lost a ton of really close races. So there actually is a lot of people in this state who are happy to vote for Democrats. They haven't been doing it quite as much recently. But again, you look at these margins in a lot of these races. For example, we had two statewide races divided one by less than a, actually, so we had three, right, they were decided by about 1%. Mine, I won, but the other two were Democrats that lost. We have six statewide offices at the state level in Iowa. That means that your average Iowa basically went three Democrats, three Republicans for state level state offices. That's still a pretty fundamentally ordinary state where people are willing to vote for both parties.

Here's the other thing, though. And you and I have talked about this a little bit before. I'm not exactly a defender of the two-party system. I am someone who, in my ads in 2018, as well as in 22, talked about having prosecuted and gone after both Democrats and Republicans. I think that the two-choice system has failed. I don't think that either party deserves a monopoly on our choices at the ballot box. And I think that's actually a lot more reflective of a lot of those people who, yeah, they voted for Donald Trump and a lot of them also voted for Barack Obama once or twice.

And I think they look at me and they see someone who's willing to buck my party, someone who's willing to focus on doing the right thing, and someone whose approach is less about politics and more about public service work. So not only is it still fundamentally a state where you have a lot of people who are willing to vote for Democrats, but what I represent isn't exactly either Democratic or Republican. It's something different. And I think for a lot of people who are pretty fed up with a state of politics, that's what they're looking for. Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you a little bit about that because I have found it interesting watching you campaign the way that you sort of shy away from talking a lot about identifying, certainly at like a deep spiritual level with. you know, the National Democratic Party, you kind of do talk as though you are equally fed up with both parties as institutions and that you're kind of running more as a Democrat just because, well, the alternative would be running as a Republican if you want to win and you're not going to do that.

So as someone who is kind of like one foot in, one foot out of the party, how would you kind of diagnose what ails, what ails, what's ailing you guys over there in the Democratic Party, especially as it comes as far as just the party's brand in states like Iowa that again have been have been reddening is concerned. I guess I'd say this. To me, it's less about shying away and more about boldly stepping into the reality that a lot of us feel like we are in a party because we sort of have to be because these two private clubs have written into the law special legal privileges for themselves.

I mean, that's the kind of bottom line for me is I am registered as an independent when I first registered to vote. I didn't want to register with the political party. Then I realized in Iowa you have to in order to vote in a primary. So I said, okay, I did it. But I didn't leave my independent mind behind. I still think that we should be thinking for ourselves. And when it comes to giving advice, you know, look, I'm not trying to be a Democratic Party leader. I've been the state auditor in Iowa. It's a nonpartisan position as much as one can be for being elected. Prior to that, I was a prosecutor. I'm running to be the governor of the state of Iowa. It shouldn't be true that those, there's nothing about a political party that is inherently tied to any of those

positions. Right. Now, if people around the country, whether the Democrats or Republicans, pick up on the idea of ending the shared monopoly of these parties on our choices, I think that they should do that. I would love to have more people in other states who are picking up on this and pushing us towards reform so that we as voters can actually feel like we're in charge of politicians instead of feeling like we're stuck with them. But until that happens, you know, I'm just going to be over here in Iowa, being myself and doing my thing. And if other people like what that looks like and they want to join in, great. I'm all for that. Yeah. So Iowa, I'm sure it's not news to you, been kind of going through it recently.

The New York Times had a big piece the other day about all of the different kind of novel economic hardships that the state's been going through in the last few months. Some of the worst, you know, first quarter economic numbers of any state other than just Nebraska. And for a lot of the same reasons as Nebraska's suffering, you know, you have a lot of hardships to farmers from tariffs. You have some hardships, you know, to meatpacking companies from the different immigration crackdowns and stuff like that. that. If you are going to win, you are going to need to be able to win over a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump just a little while ago, right? But who might be still kind of culturally with him on a lot of stuff at the same time, not necessarily thrilled about how things are going right now. So like, when you meet voters who like tell you, like, yeah, I was, I was a Trump guy,

maybe I still am a Trump guy in some ways. Like, what's your specific message to those people? Well, I think a lot of them know me too, right? I mean, we've voted for Trump here in Iowa and then each time after that, two years later, people have turned around and voted for me as well. And I think my message is fundamentally about this race, this campaign. You know, I go back to this. I think that most people are looking at the economic pain that we have and they understand that ag is having a hard time in every state, but it's Iowa that is in 49th place in the country in the Federal Reserve's measure of economy where they look at four different indicators, right? It's Iowa that is in 48th or 49th place for personal income growth, right? So it's bad everywhere, and a piece of that is due to tariffs, but it's particularly bad in Iowa

because our state leadership has just left Iowans behind. They're focused on insiders and special interest groups. While we are 48th or 49th in personal income growth, one little reaction. is that there's a company out there that got to double their income from taxpayers from the state of Iowa. It's the company that runs the private school vouchers program in Iowa. They signed a contract with the state, countersigned, agreements finished. The state comes back a couple months later, and for whatever reason, skips the normal approval process. They have only the head of the department approved the amendment, and they double the pay to this company. There's nothing else in the contract that

changes, Andrew, it's literally just doubling the pay for the company. You can't convince me or other Iowans at that point that this is a state government that is still focused on serving Iowans. They're serving special interest groups. They're serving insiders. They came after the state auditor's office because I wanted to do my job because I wouldn't go along with the stuff that they want to do. And again, I think that's why this comes down to. I think it's the well-fed versus the fed up. And I think most people in the Iowa at the state level are pretty fed up with things. That's one of the things that led them to be Trump supporters in the first place. You know, a lot of folks in the establishment of the Republican Party warned them about that

guy. And they said, thanks for the warning. I'll give them a good close look. And it turns out they liked it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it almost sounds like just hearing you talk, you're not running as a referendum on Donald Trump, right? I mean, you are much less so than many Democrats we see right now. And I do, I do kind of wonder, because one thing that we hear when we talk to Democrat, Democratic voters over and over again. I'm sure there are some people who feel this way in Iowa, too, is that one thing that they are really looking for out of, again, Democratic leaders right now is people who are not afraid to go toe to toe with him specifically, right? And obviously, you know, you might have, you might have to do that in certain respects. But like, what is your message

to people like that? People on the other side of the aisle who are like, look, like Trump's kind of a big deal as far as the way our national politics is going right now. And we do need people who are able to kind of like step up and not shy away from various different fights with him. I think the bottom line on that is I will work with anybody to do good for Iowa, but I will also stand up for Iowa against anyone who's trying to do something that's bad for Iowa, period. And again, you go back to the fact that, you know, we uncovered a record amount of misspent money in my first term. And so they decided to literally change the law to stop us. I don't think that people need to be concerned with whether or not I have the courage to do a job. They couldn't stop us.

They literally could not convince us to stop doing our job. And so they changed the law to try to stop us. When it comes to Trump, I think the big difference here is you've got a bunch of people. Our federal senators are four members of Congress who, despite the pain in Iowa, despite the fact that we have not sold any soybeans to China, despite the fact that we are now bailing out Argentinian beef farmers and Argentinian soybean farmers, right? These are people who represent only the state of Iowa, our four people in California. Congress and our two U.S. senators, out of all of them, the only one really willing to stand up is Chuck Grassley. So good for him on that. But you got a bunch of people representing you that

won't fight for you. They're only interested in serving their political leadership. And when their political leadership is making a decision for the country that's bad for Iowa, they got nothing to say about it, nothing at all, right? I'll stick up for Iowans. I'll actually fight for them. And I'll say when, hey, this is bad for Iowa, I'll say it. They won't. They're just going to sit there and hope that they don't get noticed. Can I ask you about that because just the tariff stuff and the Argentina stuff in particular? Because I actually just don't really have a good sense of what any of that looks like at the state policy level. Like I can tell, I can get kind of a sense of what it looks like at the economic level in the state. It's bad. It has

really hurt farmers and particularly soybean farmers that you have quite a lot of because they used to sell a lot of soybeans to China and they can't now. And Argentinian farmers are selling it instead. Is that, I mean, you just talked about, you know, speaking out about that, is that pretty much the extent of it as far as state policy is concerned? If you were governor, I mean, just because this is all just a conversation of national tariff policy and, and, you know, the U.S. Treasury and all that sort of stuff, or are there specific levers that, that you would have access to to do something about any of this? What do you say to farmers who are out there hurting today? For starters, I have to look at this And, you know, the secretary of the treasury was just on television telling people that he's a soybean farmer too.

So I guess I can start by saying, I know my job. I know what I'm here to do. It's not to pretend that I am you, but it is to represent you. And I think that I can do a better job of that than people who run around on television saying like, oh, yeah, that's me too, right? And the bottom line in this in terms of the levers of power, right? a lot of this has to do with the bully pulpit and being willing to stick up for people. And when you find those levers, you got to use them. So this is another thing that Senator Grassley did recently that was interesting. You know, the president has been talking about making payments

to farmers, soybean farmers. And Senator Grassley said, well, you'd have to come through Congress to do that, which I believe he's right about. And so he's willing to say, like, hey, There are rules that we have in this country. There's laws that we have. And having order is what separates us from a lot of third world countries. I think that most people understand that people in positions like U.S. senator or congressman or governor can find levers when they need them. And even if they can't do that, they can use the bully pulpit.

But again, five out of the six that we've got for the state of Iowa right now are literally just sitting on their hands, just hoping this whole thing will blow over so they can go back to their political careers. Meanwhile, Iowa farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy. Corn and bean prices are in the toilet, and everything is hurting here as a result of their, in this situation, lack of willingness to stand up for Iowans, as well as the fact that over here in Des Moines, you know, they're spending their time figuring out, hey, how can we pay this private company more and try to stop the auditor's office from figuring out that we're doing it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I, another thing I wanted to ask just about that bully pulpit, I mean, there, it's such a weird thing like in the age of Donald Trump specifically where, where it almost seems like the leaders who speak out most sort of like prominently against him. He sort of sees them as individual nails to sort of hammer back down, right? And we have seen that with respect to federal policy towards specific states, right? I mean, we've seen Trump's government deny disaster funding to, to different states with blue. governments or the soybean farming is is another sort of thing. Obviously, I would assume some of how we go to Iowa, but, but you know, different energy grants. I'm declaring war on wind power, stuff like that. I guess I'm still just kind of trying to wrap my head around. What does it look like to try to kind of keep your head down and like focused on the issues in some respects when you have this guy out there who is also like just Jones in for a fight against any Democrat at any given time. He would love to go toe to toe with you if you're the governor. You know what I mean? Yeah. I get what you're saying. Let me tell you a story. I went and did a town hall with a conservative group in Northwest Iowa last year. This was as state auditor before I announced run for governor. They'd reached out and they'd said, would you do a town hall with us? And that was kind of the tone, right? They were, they thought maybe I would, but they were skeptical that someone with a D behind their name would go talk to a bunch of people who were conservatives. And I said, yeah, absolutely, I'll come and talk to you. I'll go.

pretty much anywhere, talked to pretty much anybody. And I came out there, we did this town hall. And at the start of the town hall, you know, I let me, well, let me just say this. As it turns out when they announced that they were going to have me as a guest and that I would do a town hall with them, the leadership of the Iowa Republican Party called them out and read them the Riot Act for talking to me. Literally like, hey, you're in big trouble because you're talking to one of your statewide elected officials. I know that that phone call happened because at the start of the town hall, the organizers of the event announced it to everyone, right? Iowans do not appreciate people who are wanting to do things like that.

They were willing to call out the leadership of the Iowa Republican Party when they tried to tell them not to talk to me. I'm going to talk to constituents. I'm going to work with anybody I can work with to do good. And I think Iowans understand that I'm willing to meet them, I'm willing to meet them anywhere, and that I'm going to be doing what I can for them. And I think if people have a problem with that, then Iowans might have a problem with that. All right. I think we can probably leave it at that. Rob Sand, thanks for coming on to talk to us, to all our people out here.

He's, like we said, running for governor in Iowa. I'm sure we'll see a lot more of you over the next year and change, not one of these wacky off-year elections that we're about. to get a couple places in the next three weeks or something like that. So you got a lot of time. You got a lot of time to come back on. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. It might not be so bad if it was done in three weeks. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So thank you. And I'll say thanks as well to everybody out there in TV land. Thank you all for watching for subscribing to our various feeds for heading to the bulwark.com, reading our content, watching our content, listening to our content in your cars, on your phones, on your TVs and your living rooms and your kitchens, all the stuff.