As Democrats’ confidence in retaking Congress in November begins to swell, swing-district insurgents and populist, outsider candidates such as Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner have commanded most of the public’s attention. But a key test of Democratic strength in the midterms will take place in Iowa’s gubernatorial contest, where state auditor Rob Sand, the lone Democrat elected to statewide office since 2022, is mounting a serious challenge to the ruling Republican establishment in Des Moines.
Though polling remains limited, Sand is seen as one of the best Democratic opportunities for a major upset in red territory this year. If he prevails in a state that has experienced one of the largest shifts to the right in the extended Trump era, the narrative about Democrats’ dismal prospects in the farm belt—and perhaps even their pathways in the Electoral College—could flip overnight.
Sand’s viability no doubt reflects the worsening national environment for Republicans, particularly due to how some of Trump’s most unpopular actions have affected this quintessential farm state: the spike in energy and fertilizer prices catalyzed by the Iran war, the fallout from Trump’s chaotic tariff policy, cuts to Medicaid spending and food assistance in rural areas, as well as stubbornly high food prices and housing costs that have deepened consumer pessimism.
Still, Sand’s momentum will most likely be determined by local concerns. He will face off against a non-incumbent—Rep. Randy Feenstra is poised to win the Republican primary on June 2—and an unusually divided Republican electorate, which has grown discontent under two-term governor Kim Reynolds, a Christian conservative who has prioritized an increasingly maligned “school choice” private school voucher subsidy program, a cap on property taxes and municipal spending, and severe restrictions on abortion, including via medication.
Sand’s message shrewdly reformulates populist anger against the “establishment” as a matter of conscience and patriotism.
Iowa is surprisingly competitive this cycle. Amid talk of a new, 1980s-style farm crisis, Republicans are at risk of losing at least two House seats and an open Senate seat currently held by Joni Ernst, who is retiring. The deeply local focus is terrain that Sand seems more than comfortable with, and may well give him an advantage in a state where registered Republicans and independents significantly outnumber Democrats.
An evangelist for transparent and effective public administration, Sand seems most at home discussing the needs of local communities and Iowa’s declining quality of life. Like virtually every Democrat running for office this cycle, he has gamely emphasized the affordability crisis, pointing to the harms that result from conglomerates and middlemen squeezing community businesses and consumers. But Sand’s signature theme is really “accountability”—and its unacceptable deficit in Iowa. His argument is that unless public officials and powerful industries are held to a rigorous standard, the problems that afflict the state—from one of the highest rates of cancer in the nation to rising food insecurity—will only worsen.
This emphasis on accountability, competence, and effective public service will be central to converting rural and blue-collar Iowans disinclined to support Democrats. The trick for Sand, though, is to make his race a referendum on the state GOP without inadvertently insulting the voting habits of those he needs to win over. So far, his candidacy seems calibrated to do just that. Sand eschews familiar Democratic attack lines against Trump and MAGA, expressing instead dismay over the cronyism and malfeasance that pervades state government. And as auditor, he has doggedly exposed misconduct by officials from both parties, a record that aptly reinforces the juxtaposition between accountability and deceit that his campaign is eager to present.
He has framed his responsibilities as both a defense of basic public goods like clean water and a demand for honest government, condemning opaque budgets, attempts to eviscerate government oversight, and outright theft and fraud. In a new ad, Sand promises to make “jail time mandatory for public officials who steal your tax dollars.” The message is at once high-minded and blunt, tailored to remind regular Iowans that they deserve more from public officials than what an insular and underhanded GOP machine has offered.
SAND’S PITCH TO UNDECIDED VOTERS is a throwback to good governance, the kind of appeal that may at first sound quaint in our bare-knuckled, hyperpolarized era. Yet the message shrewdly reformulates populist anger against the “establishment” as a matter of conscience and patriotism. It is also seemingly guided by a conviction, bolstered by Sand’s travels through all of Iowa’s 99 counties, that regular Americans hunger for a politics that rises above the zero-sum thinking and rancor of our time. The message has evidently gained traction—Sand has recently touted the number of Republican small donors to his campaign.
A boyish, 43-year-old married father of two, a Christian, athlete, and avid deer hunter, Sand possesses a solemn demeanor and is known for leading audiences in singing “America the Beautiful.” Doug Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist, says Sand exudes an “instinctive connectivity” that has built rapport with the rural communities he is courting. Depending on one’s perspective, though, Sand’s approach might sound either overly idealistic or a tad calculating. Sand frequently criticizes partisanship, which may put off grassroots progressives and stalwart Democrats from outside the state. Sand’s outsider brand, meanwhile, is potentially limited by the fact that his wife, Christine Lauridsen Sand, is a major philanthropist and CEO of the Lauridsen Group, a global agribusiness, and his campaign is partly bankrolled by his in-laws.
Sand is also not the first up-and-coming millennial Democrat to focus their campaign on character and principles that transcend the partisan divide—Pete Buttigieg built an entire political persona on exactly this theory of change. While a certain breed of pundit pines for this return to “civility,” the results in the Trump era have been uniformly underwhelming if not wildly out of sync with what a restive Democratic base actually wants.
Others may conclude that the contours of winning on conservative turf don’t afford Sand any other choice than to present himself as a middle-of-the-road candidate more concerned with ethics. Iowa may have elected Barack Obama twice, but its religious right, under the aegis of activist Bob Vander Plaats and former Gov. Terry Branstad, has enjoyed outsize influence for years, while the local labor movement has always been weaker than in the neighboring Great Lakes states. Sand, accordingly, has leaned into themes, encapsulated by his campaign motto “better and truer,” that are meant to attract swing voters but which urban progressives might find anachronistic and pallid.
“In order to win in Iowa,” observes Democratic state Rep. J.D. Scholten, a Sand ally who calls himself an “old school” prairie populist, there are “two paths for a Democrat [running] statewide: There’s Rob’s approach, and a really hard economic populist approach.” Although he “encourages” Sand to pursue a more comprehensive attack on monopoly power, Scholten is confident Sand’s style of outreach is an overdue course correction for Democrats, noting in an interview that numerous registered Republicans he’s spoken with in the state’s conservative Northwest have expressed support for Sand’s message. “Everything [he] says is with the mind of welcoming a non-Democrat into our coalition—it’s [still] not an easy thing for [many] Democrats,” says Scholten.
Sand’s distinctive brand of anti-partisanship, however, should not be mistaken for an anchorless anti-politics bereft of a clear and coherent vision. While he may reject ideological labels, he is taking a stand for the public interest, more local control, and a definition of economic liberty that champions the little guy. Like other farm belt Democrats who have fashioned themselves as pragmatic populists, along with Dan Osborn, the Nebraska independent making his second bid for a U.S. Senate seat, he has made free and fair competition central to his message, highlighting the pernicious effects of pharmacy benefit managers and Medicaid privatization and the importance of enacting “right to repair” legislation. This attack on market concentration and shadowy middlemen dovetails with his withering verdict on Gov. Reynolds and the Republican state legislature’s neglect of Main Street businesses and working families. Rather than lambaste a “conservative” agenda, Sand portrays the state GOP as an appendage of monopoly power—a mere vehicle to serve vested interests and entrench their undue advantages.
In these respects, Sand harks back to an older strand of progressivism that the new antitrust movement likewise channels. Although Sand may not be as vehement as Platner or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in his opposition to corporate abuses, his outlook illustrates how much former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan and her fellow neo-Brandeisians have shifted the center of gravity in the Democratic coalition. Democrats as different as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, or members of Congress like Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) have distilled the sometimes-arcane methods through which businesses engage in predatory behavior, helping to name and shame practices that have made everyday financial decisions harder for Americans. In Iowa’s case, outsourcing and the decline of rural manufacturing have compounded the effects of unfair competition, with dominant firms effectively enjoying a captive market.
Sand’s mix of indignation and idealism is well suited to the particular character of Iowa’s electorate.
Then again, Sand may simply be invoking a tradition closer to home. In the pantheon of early 20th-century reform movements, Iowa has typically been overshadowed by Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Nebraska, states whose progressive and left-wing insurgents contributed variously to the growth of modern regulatory agencies, agrarian- and mechanic-led “producer populism,” and municipal socialism in American political life. Yet Iowa had its own assortment of reformers, drawn principally in that period from an intraparty struggle within the dominant Republican Party.
Led by Albert B. Cummins, who served as governor before becoming a U.S. senator, this faction sought to wrest back control of public policy from the railroad monopolies, advance tariff reform (protectionist measures had devolved into naked rent-seeking), and strengthen the state’s education system. As with Robert M. La Follette’s “Wisconsin Idea,” the overarching goal was to deter corruption, promote consumer welfare, and ensure that leading industries, particularly those that provided essential public services, actually furthered the development and economic integration of the state.
There are echoes of this legacy when Sand laments lost economic opportunities, vanishing family businesses, and struggling small towns. Burns thinks the profound hunger for a sense of community purpose and a restored economic foundation are a big part of why Sand’s campaign is resonating beyond reliable Democrats. “You can see the physical manifestation of the stress, the lack of opportunity in people’s physical presentation, in the way their homes are maintained—it’s palpable,” Burns says. “The economic anxiety is going to be the defining issue in the campaign.”
Sand’s method of tapping into this discontent—by leading with empathy and an affinity for local customs—likewise recalls the “happy warriors” of liberalism’s past. At his most spirited, Sand appears ready to assume the mantle of the state’s former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who along with Minnesota’s Paul Wellstone championed stronger social protections and kept alive rural progressive opposition to rampant offshoring and financial deregulation. If Sand triumphs and lives up to his potential, Democrats could have a shot at expanding their competitiveness in the Midwest, which despite the allure of Sun Belt states like Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, is no less crucial to their hopes of assembling a majority coalition before next decade.
IN A MATTER OF WEEKS, HOPEFUL DEMOCRATS will learn whether Sand can defy the onslaught his opposition is no doubt preparing. One hurdle facing Sand and other promising Democratic challengers, warns Scholten, is that a large campaign war chest can’t substitute for local surrogates who can effectively counter the right-wing media that have contributed to Iowa’s partisan drift. As with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, Republicans are trying to depict Sand as a disingenuous operator who intends to smuggle in an ultra-progressive agenda under the guise of faith and civic-mindedness. That effort may quickly fizzle out, considering Sand does not readily fit into either of his party’s two warring factions. Iowa’s Democratic Party is hungry for a comeback, and the issues and fights roiling the party coalition at the national level do not seem as urgent compared to the opportunity of regaining power. Still, it is unclear how much Sand, who won re-election in 2022 by a mere quarter of a percentage point, might grow (or damage) his coalition if he is forced to wade into the culture wars.
Sand briefly made waves last summer when he told a radio host he didn’t think transgender girls and women should participate in women’s sports, and he has not rejected cooperating with ICE, despite raising concern over the detainment of working immigrants who have no criminal record. That said, he has otherwise avoided the issues that some Democratic strategists—particularly those aligned with Third Way, a newly assertive centrist group—insist will cost Democrats votes in must-win districts, preferring to focus on matters that will determine whether Iowa becomes a healthier state with new sources of sustainable development, or a poorer and rapidly aging one.
Of course, in the event of a Sand victory, it is possible both factions will feel vindicated and declare his strategy affirms the wisdom of promoting the common ground. Scholten, for one, is hopeful the “Dollar General coalition”—comprised of rural and urban workers tired of low wages and vacancy-ridden Main Streets—will rally to Sand, in the process lifting Democratic congressional candidates to victory as well. That in itself would upend the conventional wisdom about what is realistic for heartland Democrats.
While his campaign does not connote an insurgency of raised pitchforks, Sand’s mix of indignation and idealism is well suited to the particular character of Iowa’s electorate, which despite its Trumpian direction still enjoys a reputation for deliberative, town-hall traditions. In an era marked by the “nationalization” of politics—in which virtually every issue is filtered through a tribalist lens—Sand is betting that principled independence and local concerns are the surest path to ending a bankrupt status quo. If he’s right, we can expect many other insurgent Democrats to follow his lead.
