Rob Sand encourages UI students to be ‘part of this movement’ and change the direction of the state

“We have one week to change the direction of the state of Iowa,” Rob Sand said at a get-out-the-vote event in Iowa City on Wednesday afternoon. “… So I’m asking you, think about what you’re doing the rest of this week, think about what you’re doing this weekend, think about what you’re doing next week.”

The GOTV event was focused on University of Iowa students, and almost all the roughly 90 people gathered in the upstairs room at ReUnion Taproom on Wednesday were UI students. So was the person who introduced Sand.

Zoe Smith said she started volunteering for the campaign over the summer, and decided to take the fall semester off to work for it full time. 

“Because I believe in a better Iowa for my generation, and for generations to come, and I think that starts with Rob,” Smith said. 

“What I want to do is talk to you about the direction of our state,” Sand said, when he took the microphone. 

As he has since the start of his campaign, Sand argued 10 years of one-party control over both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office has undermined Iowa’s civic traditions. 

“When I was growing up in Decorah, we always were a common-sense state… It felt like a state where everybody always was welcome,” he said. “I think a big piece of that was because we elected both Democrats and Republicans, and they had to work together.” 

Sand listed major problems the state currently faces, including the faltering economy, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis ranking Iowa as 49th in personal income growth, public school testing averages sinking into the bottom half of national scores, the water quality crisis and the soaring cancer rate.

“When you have too few people in charge, only representing a small group of people, they will only work for a small group of people,” Sand said. “They will not be focused on representing the interests of the entire state.”

It was a point Sand made repeatedly in his debate with Zach Lahn on Tuesday night. 

Asked by a moderator why he promised to veto any culture war bills the legislature passes, Sand said, “The bottom line to me is this: I want us to be focused on the issues that affect everyone in the state of Iowa.” 

“A lot of the time these issues get advanced because the people who are in charge who are pushing them want to distract you from the fact they’re picking your pocket. That they’re giving special interests and insiders deals, instead of serving all Iowans.”

Lahn staked out a very different position, one that drives the most committed segment of the MAGA movement and helped set the agenda for the Reynolds administration on education and eliminating civil rights protections for transgender Iowans.

“There has been an attack on many of the institutions of Western culture,” Lahn said. “This is something that has come up in my lifetime radically.”

Lahn routinely stokes fear about what he sees as the danger of schools acknowledging the existence of transgender people, something the Reynolds administration has tried to restrict. And during the Republican primary, Lahn spent $1 million airing an ad in which he vowed “to reclaim the curriculum [in Iowa schools] from the Marxists.” 

“There is an issue with these ideologies infiltrating into our culture,” he said when answering the culture war question during the debate.

Lahn talked about how “it is absolutely important we put every single protection in place to make sure our daughters are protected, that girls are protected, that women’s sports are protected,” and continued by saying, “I also believe that we shouldn’t be putting certain books in our elementary schools, books on transgenders [sic] or topics that are just not age appropriate or not appropriate for schools, quite frankly.”

Sand has said since the beginning of his campaign that he supports the ban on transgender girls and women playing on school and college sports teams that match their gender identity. It’s not something he mentions in his speeches, but it did come up during Q&As at town halls he’s held in Johnson County. At both the IMU town hall in September and last year’s town hall in North Liberty, Sand has explained that he supports the sports ban, but opposed the governor’s other bills aimed at trans Iowans, including the one that stripped protection for gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. At both town halls, there were shouts of “coward.”

Sand did not mention transgender rights or other civil rights issues at the GOTV event Wednesday. He focused on how he would reform government by introducing legislation to impose terms limits and age limits for elected officials, a civics test for candidates before they qualify for the ballot and cognitive tests once they’re in office. Sand also wants to ban stock trading by elected officials. 

He also proposes making fundamental changes to how elections are run in Iowa. 

“We should end the two-choice system on our ballot,” Sand said. “The two-choice system is more a method to control us than to serve us.”

“We know this, because what it means is that either of those options thinks that they can reliably convince 51 percent of the people that are responsible for their election that the only other option on the ballot is completely unacceptable. Then that enables them to be corrupt and get reelected. It enables them to be lazy and get reelected. It enables them to serve insiders and special interest groups and get reelected.” 

“But if we have more than two options, if we don’t feel trapped into voting someone, if we can actually vote for as many of the candidates as we want, then we will force them to actually work for us to have those jobs,” he continued. “We always talk about the value of competition, and yet the people who talk about it who’ll run for office don’t want it.”

For the most part, Sand’s 15-minute speech was an abbreviated version of the 30-minute stump speech he’s been delivering since he launched his campaign in May last year. It covered the same topics, and contained familiar lines that apparently work better at his typical rallies — where the audiences skew much older, as they do at almost every Iowa event — than at an event for undergraduates. 

At his rallies, Sand cites Lord Acton’s famous maxim about power. He starts the line, “Power corrupts,” and gets the audience to finish it. Normally, almost the entire audience responds, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but on Wednesday, only a few, scattered voices in the room finished the line from 1847. And when Sand said he was in favor age limits for elected office, because “it’s absurd that we would be governed by people who are — oh, I don’t know… 93,” not many of the UI students seemed to realize that was a reference to 93-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley. 

Asked after the event which of the issues he’s running on college-age Iowans seem most interested in, Sand told Little Village it was his plan to legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol. 

Sand finished his speech by encouraging the people at ReUnion to volunteer in any capacity they’re able for the final days of the campaign. 

“The single most impactful thing you can do in Iowa City to get a person to decide to vote, or to make up their mind who to vote for, is the same as anywhere else: face-to-face conversation with another human being,” he said. 

If they do, then on election night, “you’ll be able to say that you’re part of this movement.”

“I don’t think ‘movement’ is an overstatement,” Sand said. “We have over 3,400 Iowa Republicans that have donated to this campaign for governor. That’s actually more Iowa Republicans than my opponent has donating to his campaign.”

Sand ended the event by inviting anyone who was interested to take a photo with him. Almost everyone did. The line stretched across the room as people waited to shake hands and speak briefly with Sand. The photo session lasted almost as long as the speech did.