Not everyone at Field Day Brewing in North Liberty last Thursday night was there to see Rob Sand, something he acknowledged as he started the Johnson County stop on his 100 Town Hall Tour. Some people were just there to eat, which is why the clatter of knives and forks on plates was the background sound at the approximately hour-long event. But most of the overflow crowd at Field Day was there to see Sand, the likely Democratic nominee for governor next year. They were attentive and enthusiastic.
Sand was considered a rising star among Iowa Democrats years before he launched his first run for office. In 2015, Iowa Starting Line profiled Sand in its series on the most promising potential Democratic candidates of the future. At the time, Sand was the chief public corruption prosecutor in the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, and had just secured a conviction in a years-long, multi-state lottery-rigging scheme, one of the highest-profile cases he handled as an assistant attorney general. (Jackport:: America’s Biggest Lotto Scam, a new documentary about the case, is available on YouTube.) At that time, Sand said he didn’t have plans to run for office, but didn’t rule it out, because he considered serving in elective office to be an important form of public service.
In 2018, when Sand ran for Iowa State Auditor, his first run for public office, he was the only nonincumbent Democrat to win a statewide office. Two Democrats who had been in office for decades, Attorney General Tom Miller and Treasurer Micheal Fitzgerald, were reelected that year. Four years later, Sand was the only Democrat elected to statewide office. Miller and Fitzgerald were defeated by their Republican opponents.
Speaking to the crowd at Field Day last Thursday, Sand said it was his experience in the Attorney General’s Office that inspired him to run for Iowa State Auditor. As the chief public corruption prosecutor he worked with the auditor’s office, and came to find it had “this tremendous capacity to be an engine for government efficiency.” He also realized that adding a leader with a legal background to an office staffed by CPAs would improve how the auditor’s office worked.
“When all the people making the decisions only think one way, that’s not good,” Sand said. “It’s actually better to have situations where people who think differently are working together. You get better outcomes that way.”
Sand said that belief will be “a theme over the next 14 months” of his campaign.
North Liberty was the 48th stop on Sand’s tour, which will feature town hall events in each of the state’s 99 counties (including two stops in Lee County, which has two county seats). Sand’s speech, which took up the first half of the event, followed the pattern of the previous 47.
Near the beginning of the speech, he asked the audience to sing America the Beautiful to create a sense of unity. At the end of his speech, Sand referenced the story of Jesus driving the money-changers from the temple, saying Jesus “saw people in a position of trust and power, abusing that trust and power to further their own ends instead of serving ordinary people, [and] he got angry and he flipped their tables.” (Sand referenced the gentler version of the story found in the Gospel of Matthew, not the version from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus flips tables and brandishes a whip of cords.)
“Johnson County, there are tables in Des Moines that need flipping and I would love your help with that,” he added, before moving onto the Q&A.
Between the singing and the call for table-flipping, there were plenty of things familiar to anyone already acquainted with Sand. But those people weren’t the intended audience for his stump speech. This tour is meant to introduce Sand to voters and provide a chance for them to ask him questions. Another 100-stop tour that will focus on policy positions is planned for next year.
Sand talked about growing up in Decorah in a family with Norwegian roots, and recalled hunting, fishing and going to church on Sundays when he was young.
“All three of those things are still important parts of my life,” he said. “A lot of people think that those things sound like someone who belongs to one particular political party. That to me sounds like a person who grew up in a small town in Iowa, plain and simple.”
“My wife is from the Dennison area, mostly Danish family, so it’s a mixed marriage,” he said, and the crowd laughed. “And our boys are Axel, who is 9, and Tate, who is 11. No diapers, no naps, no teenagers — life is good.” That line got a bigger laugh.
Christine Lauridsen Sand is the CEO of Lauridsen Group, Inc., a human and animal nutrition company headquartered in Ankeny that has sales and manufacturing facilities in 20 countries. The company was founded by her father, Nixon Lauridsen, who is now retired.
Lauridsen Sand and her parents are Sand’s biggest campaign contributors. Sand reported raising $8 million in 2024. His wife contributed $3 million of that total, and her parents contributed $4 million. The remaining $1 million came from approximately 26,000 donors.
In May, the Sand campaign reported raising $2.25 million in the 24 hours after he announced his run for governor. In its news release about its first 24-hour fundraiser, the campaign noted that none of that amount was self-financed or contributed by family members, and came from not just Democrats, but also Republicans and independents.
Sand didn’t mention his family’s campaign contributions during the town hall.
At the beginning of his speech, Sand said the real divisions in politics often aren’t “Democrats versus Republicans, but insiders versus outsiders” and “people who just love politics versus people who just want public service.”
Our political system is broken, he said.
“And I think most of us understand why,” Sand continued. “It’s broken fundamentally because politicians have figured out solving problems is really hard. You have to listen to people, you have to pay attention to the facts. You have to figure out where people stand, and what you can do that other people are going to be able to agree upon to make a difference.”
It’s easier to retreat to partisan politics, and count on party ID to act as a shield against being held accountable by voters in the next election, he said.
“We shouldn’t accept that. It’s a broken system that lets people get reelected over and over again without actually solving problems for any of us.”
Sand talked about the fact his work as auditor has been met with fierce opposition from Republican leaders in the legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds. In 2023, Republicans pushed through a bill allowing state agencies to refuse to provide documents requested by the Auditor’s Office when it is auditing them. The National State Auditors Association, the Institute of Internal Auditors, and the Association of Local Government Auditors all publicly opposed the bill as undermining essential government oversight. Gov. Reynolds, who frequently complains about Sand — especially after he caught her administration misappropriating $21 million in federal pandemic assistance — signed the bill into law.
“What have we, as the state of Iowa, gotten out of this?” Sand asked about the Republicans’ efforts to avoid accountability. “An economy that is in 49th place in America, personal income growth that is in 48th place in America, a cancer growth rate that is number one in the country, a cancer incident rate that is number two in the country, an education system that is an embarrassment to our state quarter.”
According to Sand, there will have to be cultural change that bridges the partisan divide before the structure of our politics changes. That’s why he tries to make sure Republicans and independents attend his town halls, he said.
“Because I believe we need to start talking to each other again.”
Talking about his own political experience, Sand said, “When I first registered to vote, I registered as an independent. I registered as an independent because I don’t like political parties.”
He said he later decided to change his registration, so he could vote in primary elections.
“I registered as a Democrat,” Sand said. “And here’s why: I think Jesus is for the little guy, and I think the Democratic Party is for the little guy, plain and simple.”
Sand didn’t bring up his earliest work in party politics during the town hall. After returning to Iowa from Rhode Island, where he earned his undergraduate degree at Brown University, Sand worked on Democrat Ed Fallon’s 2006 campaign for governor. After Fallon was defeated in the primary, Sand became the manager of Democrat Denise O’Brien campaign for Secretary of Agriculture. O’Brien lost to Republican Bill Northey in the general election.
“I am a Democrat, but I didn’t leave my independent mind behind,” he told the crowd at Field Day Brewing. “And I’ve said things in the course of this campaign that I believe people in my party are upset with, some of them. Probably going to happen again over the course of the next 14 months.”
One of the issues where Sand is at odds with many Democrats came up twice during the Q&A period.
Elizabeth Koehler of Iowa City told Sand she’d been following his campaign since he announced his run “and so far I’ve been impressed with your ability to work with voters on both sides of the aisle. However, I have noticed a lack of conversation surrounding transgender Iowans.”
Attacks on the rights of transgender Iowans have been a central part of Republican culture war politics in Iowa since 2022, when Reynolds and legislative leaders passed a ban on trans girls and women participating in school and college sports on teams that match their gender identity. The ban wasn’t created in response to any problem in the state; there had never been any complaint filed about transgender athletes. And the ban was imposed despite opposition from every medical, mental health and education professional who testified about it.
The ban was followed by other bills targeting trans Iowans, culminating in a bill this year that eliminated gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, making Iowa the first state to repeal part of its Civil Rights Act to allow discrimination against a minority group. The bill also changed key definitions in state law to remove the possibility of legally recognizing trans people as trans people.
Koehler said she could understand Sand’s desire to campaign in a bipartisan style might make him reticent to discuss the rights of transgender Iowa, but “at the end of the day you are campaigning for the governorship in a state that has a group of people who do not have the same civil rights protections as the rest of the population.”
“You say you want to be a governor for all, so this includes them. What is your plan to restore their rights in the state and start working towards restoring a safe space where everyone can exist and thrive in our state?”
Koehler’s question received some of the loudest applause of the evening, much louder than Sand’s reply did.
Sand began his reply by calling Koehler’s question “important.”
“Because people who are doing what I’m doing right now should be challenged by people about the things they say or about the things they have not said,” he continued. “Right?”
“Now, I’ve been clear … the civil rights repeal for transgender people was wrong,” Sand said. “It was wrong. You should not be fired from your job in the state of Iowa for being different. You should not be evicted from your apartment in the state of Iowa for being different.”
“This to me is a question of faith. My faith is all about the outcast, it’s all about the people who are pushed aside, who are not favored. And I think that we have to be making Iowa a place where state government is as welcoming as Iowans are.”
As for restoring the civil rights protections that were repealed this year, Sand said he wouldn’t be able to accomplish that as governor. Even if he wins, Republicans will still control the legislature.
“I’m going to be working with the same legislature that repealed those rights,” he said. “If someone comes here and says to you they are going to unilaterally restore them, this is exactly the kind of strongman mentality that brings us to dangerous places.”
Sand did say that as governor he would veto any “stupid culture-war-Trump bill” the legislature passed, adding, “and I would be proud to do so.”
But there is one culture-war bill that Sand supports: the school sports ban for transgender girls and women.
The day after he launched his campaign, Sand was a guest on one of the state’s most popular conservative radio talk shows.
“Do you think biological boys or men should play women’s sports?” host Simon Conway asked.
Sand gave a one-word reply: “No.”
Conway moved on to another topic.
Sand later put out a written statement that began, “I’ve been clear that I support common-sense policies like the law protecting fairness in women’s sports, and that this year’s law legalizing discrimination in all places of life is wrong.”
“Common-sense policies” and “protecting fairness in women’s sports” is the same sort of language Gov. Reynolds uses when talking about how proud she is that she signed the ban into law.
Koehler didn’t mention the sports ban in her question, and Sand didn’t mention it in his reply, but a later questioner wanted him to address the issue.
“You’ve been really clear that as governor you would govern based on facts and evidence,” Becca Mallon of North Liberty began. “I believe the trans ban in sports is based on fear and discrimination. I was just wondering if you had any statistics to back up that ‘common sense’ stance, or that’s something you might like to reconsider.”
Sand did not cite any facts or statistics in his response.
“This is a conversation I’m interested in having,” he said instead. “I’ve met with One Iowa, I’ve talked to a lot of other trans advocates, and I’m listening to them. I’m open-minded about it. I don’t have anything different to say than what I’ve said before. But again, hearing from you is important, and I don’t think that we recognize how important it is that we just talk to each other. Right?”
“Everybody is welcome here. Everybody is welcome at this event, everybody should feel welcome in the state of Iowa. I might not offer you full agreement with everything you believe … I’m doing my best to do what I think is the right thing to do, but I also want to make sure that it’s doing the right thing. Which is why I’m interested in listening to people about that, and I’m going to continue to listen to people.”
As Sand moved on to the next questioner, someone in the back of the crowd called out, “Coward!” Sand heard the voice, but apparently misheard the word, thinking it was “louder.”
“Louder, they said,” he told the person asking him a question about the lack of affordable childcare in Iowa.
Other than transgender rights, the topics people asked about were all ones where Sand and most Democrats agree. He favors introducing universal preschool as an important step in addressing the lack of affordable childcare. He said he would push to expand mental health services, and create more beds for people in need of care. He pledged to protect IPERS, the retirement system for state employees. Regarding reproductive rights, Sand said he would veto any further restrictions, but a Republican legislature would stop him from being able to repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban.
“We have work to do in the state of Iowa to stay where we are,” he said. “Getting back to where we were before, restoring something like Roe v. Wade, that might be a long ways down the road, but it’s worth the work.”
The longest answers were in response to questions about education and water quality.
“I am proud that my kids right now are going to Iowa public schools,” Sand said. “I am disgusted by the invitation to waste, fraud and abuse that is the school vouchers law that passed in this state.”
The law prevents the auditor’s office from getting documentation of how private schools are spending the public money they receive through the Education Savings Account-style voucher system. The law’s only restriction on how private schools can spend that money is a prohibition on paying rebates to parents. Sand said he not only wanted to introduce state oversight to the voucher system, but wants to make private schools that accept public money to follow the same rules that public schools must.
As for water quality, Sand said he was amazed that in 2025, some people could still deny not just the extent of Iowa’s water quality crisis, but that there’s even a problem.
“How could you think there isn’t?” he said. “We know the answer to that question: the people in charge are literally making it harder to find out if there’s a problem. We went from 80 nitrate monitors in the state of Iowa to 20 … Their answer to our water quality problems is to bury your heads in the sand. Because what you don’t know can’t hurt them or their political careers.”
Sand said he’s “talking to people on all sides of this issue,” and reading water quality studies as he works “to put together a plan that I think is going to be two things — the most effective and achievable thing that we can do for water quality in the state of Iowa. Because there is a problem.”
“Now I want to be clear,” he continued, “if somebody comes to town and says, ‘I’m going to do this and this and this as your governor,’ and ‘this and this and this’ doesn’t acknowledge the fact that the legislature is going to have a say in it, we should second guess that person.”
“’Cause here’s the reality: we are going to have, if I get elected governor, a Republican legislature. I think that would be a vast improvement, having shared power over what we’ve had for the last 10 years. But it doesn’t mean that I just get to say what’s going to happen. I’m going to have to work with people and push them.”
Sand ended the Q&A by returning to the frustration many people feel with the current political system, and what he tells those who believe things can’t change.
“I just remind them that the only thing I’ve ever delivered to my supporters is a win.”
