Iowa Governor-elect Rob Sand

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[KAY HENDERSON] Iowans elected the first Democratic governor in 20 years and a decade of Republican trifecta control at the Iowa Capitol will soon end. We'll talk to Governor-elect Rob Sand on this edition of Iowa Press. 

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[ANNOUNCER] Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation. 

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[ANNOUNCER] The Bob and Doreen Sheppard Family, proud supporters of educational programming seen only on Iowa PBS.

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[ANNOUNCER] For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, November 6th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson. 

[HENDERSON] Our guest on this edition of Iowa Press, has been at the Iowa Press table before. He has been your state auditor for the past eight years. On Tuesday, he collected 150,000 more votes than his Republican competitor, Zach Lahn. Governor-elect Rob Sand, welcome back to Iowa Press. 

[ROB SAND] How are you doing, Kay?

[HENDERSON] Okay. And you? 

[SAND] I'm actually great. Rested. Ready.

[HENDERSON] Joining our conversation, Brianne Pfannenstiel of the Des Moines Register. 

[BRIANNE PFANNENSTIEL] Rob Sand, you won by about 11 percentage points on Tuesday. Do you believe that voters are giving you a mandate to take your vision to the Iowa Legislature? 

[SAND] When you consider the swing from 2022 it's hard to argue anything else. I think that was about a 60/40 race. This one we picked up about 15% of the electorate. But a piece of my mandate has always been or my message, I should say, has always been, I want to do the stuff that we talked about in the campaign and what I plan to do is what I talked about in the campaign. It's a lot of policy that is common sense that both parties can get behind. Returning to our history of being a state leader in good government reform. We've always been good at that. We should restore that history. And getting back to balanced government and everything that folks heard me talk about, that's what I want to do. And I hope we get a lot of it done. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] And zooming out a little bit to the national picture, do you believe that we saw a blue wave come through the country on Tuesday? And if so, what do you think voters are telling their elected officials right now? 

[SAND] Well, I suppose people can argue about what those two words mean. We all can see what the results were. I'm a big believer that no matter what you think voters say there's always one really good overarching conclusion to reach. If you win an election, serve the people who voted you in. Do right by them. Be less focused on left versus right, more focused on right versus wrong. I think some of the mistakes in the past that we've seen at the national party level are politicians thinking, oh, these voters love us. A lot of people are voting somebody out more than they're voting somebody in. And what they're really doing is saying, you know, those folks that were throwing out, they weren't helping us. You're going to get a chance to help us now. And I think that should be the priority for everybody that gets elected, no matter their party. 

[HENDERSON] For the next ten weeks you're preparing to take the oath of office in January. You've named a transition team, and you have talked on the campaign trail about your plan to have Republicans and independents be part of your team. So, number one, will you be keeping any state agency directors? 

[SAND] Great question. I am not planning to ask for any resignations. And if you're a state director and you're watching this right now, with two exceptions, I'm not planning to ask for any resignations. Those exceptions are Department of Education and Department of Management. But I think I want to have conversations with people. We want to have those doors be open. We want to understand what is going on. I want to be able to sit down with these folks, talk to them about their approach, what they think their agency should be doing, and listen to them. You know, when I came into the auditor's office, Kay, there was no one that I fired. The chief of staff ended up deciding to take a different job before I had made any decisions. There was a person who was an executive assistant who I think maybe assumed that they would have been fired, but I just think that you want to make sure that you have public servants in these positions. And my assumption is going to be that I might have alignment with some of these people until I know that I don't and I can't do that unless I've got those doors open and I'm able to have those conversations with people.

[HENDERSON] It's not just agency directors. There are a lot of people in state government that may be choosing at this time to leave. How gargantuan is the task? 

[SAND] Not too gargantuan. It's a big one. We're up for it. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] What specifically are you looking for in those two offices? You mentioned Department of Education and Department of Management. Why are those exceptions? 

[SAND] Red flag in the Department of Education. I mean, again, this is a situation where the state doubled the pay of the private company running the state's vouchers program, with no other amendments to that contract whatsoever. That process skipped the normal process of approval. There was no one at the lower level that signed off on that amended contract that just gave away literally millions of taxpayer dollars for nothing in return. That, to me, is disqualifying. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] You're entering office with your running mate, Dave Muhlbauer. We've seen governors put their lieutenant governors in charge of various projects over the years, giving them various directives. What do you hope to have Dave Muhlbauer do when you both take office? 

[SAND] Dave Muhlbauer and I need to talk about that. He's a really capable guy. Obviously, he's been county supervisor, been elected there in Crawford County. He's capable of so many different things. Really talented, great listener. Again, if folks haven't heard this before, it speaks so much of him, so highly of him, that there were multiple electeds, Republicans across the state of Iowa who endorse our campaign just because I picked Dave Muhlbauer. I hadn't spoken to these folks. I had not met them. But when they saw me pick Dave Muhlbauer as my lieutenant governor, despite the fact that they are in their county as a Republican elected official, they said, I'm endorsing the Sand campaign. He's tremendously well respected across the state. And he and I will talk about it. And whatever he says he's interested in, it'll be in that world of what he's interested in. 

[HENDERSON] One of the responsibilities for governor, right after they are inaugurated is to present a budget plan to state legislators. You mentioned that you'll be having a new budget director. What do you expect that person to recommend, and what will you ask them to do in regards to perhaps cuts in the state budget? Because you've already said that you want Iowa's public schools to get a 5% increase in general state. 

[SAND] That's right. Well, there's a number of things that we talked about in the campaign. Right now, although we don't have a budget director, we have an excellent, well respected former Iowa Budget director, Randy Bauer, who God bless him, he's putting in some time helping us get ready for that. And he's putting in the numbers that I talked about putting in. We should put a cap on income for qualifying for the state vouchers program. We should treat cannabis the way that we treat alcohol. That's year one, a smaller figure, maybe 54 million. But after that, hundreds of millions of dollars. We should have data centers paying all of their taxes. So, there's a number of things that we talked about. Randy has gotten to work, thankfully. Thank you, Randy. Making some of that real and putting pen to paper on that. But at the end of the day, like I said, I really want us to make strides towards covering at least half, if not more of that budget deficit, cutting it in half so that our runway with our surplus is much longer in case, you know, we have bumps in the road. 

[HENDERSON] So what are you estimating half to be? Is that half a billion dollars? 

[SAND] Yeah. I want to find a way to right now -- let's look at it this way -- our budget deficit right now, $1 billion, $1.3 billion. I would love to have a proposal, I think it's, I tell you this, I'm pretty sure I'll have a proposal that at least cut that in half. And then I should add, we’ve got to fund IWILL. This is important. This is something that Zach Lahn talked about in the campaign. It's something that people in both parties want. We know that because 63% of us voted for it in 2010. Time to do it. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] Are some of those things predicated on the legislature acting, though? You mentioned taxing marijuana. You mentioned the cap on the income cap on the school education savings accounts. Are you accounting for that at the beginning and needing those to pass later? Or, or how are you going to get the legislature on board with those things? 

[SAND] Well, this is, again, any budget that we pass, any budget the legislature passes is going to have to have my support for it to become law. Any budget that I want to become law is going to have to be passed by the legislature. Right. I mean, this is part of why I think that Iowans were moving my direction in this campaign. They want us to be working together, and they just made a decision that forces us to do that. And I think that's a good thing. So, there's always going to be room and there's going to be a reality where we have to negotiate. But again, I think it's going to be the stuff that the vast majority of Iowans can agree are good. Now, there will be plenty of people out on the far right and the far left that are disappointed by whatever we do. I think the 80, 70% of us that are somewhere in the middle will probably look at it and say, that's good, but those folks are, you know, given the reality, which is me working with a Republican legislature, those folks out on the edges are probably bound to be disappointed no matter what. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] The Iowa voters also approved a constitutional amendment that limits the government's ability to raise income taxes. How are you -- and you said on Tuesday that you opposed that measure, that you would vote against it -- so how are you thinking about that in terms of your ability to fund services going forward? 

[SAND] Well, again, I've really been focused on the three things that we talked about, right, which might be able to get us there on their own. And then we should add in our PIE program, making that mandatory at the local level, moving it into state government to have state government doing that work as well to improve government efficiency. For those who aren't familiar, the PIE program that we have is our government efficiency program we started in my first term in the state auditor's office, and then there's IWILL as well. 

[HENDERSON] Let's turn to IWILL and sort of dig in because it wasn't a full 1% sales tax increase that would fund IWILL. Are you talking about a full 1%? Are you talking about the fraction that was mentioned in IWILL? 

[SAND] Look, there's a range of numbers that you can look at. It's 3/8 of a cent IWILL. In order for that trust fund to actually be permanently funded, you have to do that 3/8 of a cent, my opponent was talking about 2.5%. I don't like that idea. But there's a lot of different directions that we can take this. Obviously, we had a lot of Republicans in the legislature just within the last month, talking a lot about revenue concerns when they were looking at the steel plant, too. So, I think there's a lot of people up there who want to see the budget move in a good direction. And we'll figure out in conversation with each other how we get that done. 

[HENDERSON] So are you going to recommend a sales tax level, or are you going to negotiate that with legislators? 

[SAND] We will propose a budget. Whether or not I have prior conversations with legislators before we propose it, we'll cross all those bridges when we get there. 

[HENDERSON] How will that sync, if you will, with your water quality initiative? You've talked about a series of steps that you would like the state to take in regards to improving Iowa's water quality. Can you do any of them without raising the sales tax? 

[SAND] It's a good question. Again, so you're asking about sales tax, right? What can we find from efficiency measures has always been my first reaction. Right. I prosecuted the theft of tax dollars to try to get fewer people to steal them. We created a government efficiency program that was so good at saving money it got copied in two other states. That's always my priority. And we're going to be looking around making sure that that continues to be the priority. 

[HENDERSON] But when you heard candidates like Chris Jones, who ran for state ag secretary, talk about Iowa's water quality, he talked about a massive amount of money that was needed to improve it. Is efficiency going to be enough? 

[SAND] We'll see. Again, you've got me here today. We don't elect a dictator, right? We don't elect a king or a queen. We elect a governor. And what that governor does is dependent in part on what the legislature does. And my message to the legislature, you know, I think this is really important, it's a departure from past practice. I said this in my victory speech on Tuesday. Any bill that you vote for as a legislator is a bill where if I sign it, you are invited to the signing ceremony. I think that's really important. This is a common sense thing to most Iowans. You say credit given where credit is due. And if you're a legislator supporting something that I then also support, it should be that you are happy and welcome to be there with me when we celebrate actually getting something done together. So, I want to be working with them. The direction that we go could be creative, and I don't want to say something right now that's going to wed me to not doing something else. If there's some legislator that has a really good creative idea that I haven't heard yet, I want to be able to think about that, and maybe that's the right decision. 

[HENDERSON] There was a lot of discussion about attacking Iowa's cancer rate during the campaign, and the University of Iowa is going to start a next level of research to talk about, to actually examine environmental factors that may be contributing to that. Do you have other ideas that you would hope that the University of Iowa would tackle in its research to try to get to the bottom of why Iowa's cancer rate is so much higher compared to the nation's?

[SAND] Well, look, they did part one, right? And what they said was, okay, your ordinary state's cancer rate is here. Ours is here. Out of the difference they said 75% of those extra cases are because of they said behavioral things. So primarily we smoke more than the average state and we drink more than the average state, and we exercise less than the average state. All three of those things give us higher cancer rates. So, we know that's a piece of it. We do need to talk about that because addressing that requires knowing it, requires reminding ourselves of it, requires doing something about it. The water quality piece is obviously important. Nitrates do cause cancer. So that's my wetlands program. There is nothing that filters water better. We also should be expanding the Working Lands program for grazing land, because that also in the right places in highly erodible land is also very effective at reducing runoff. And then again, radon. What I've put together there is cost free to taxpayers. I want every time a home gets inspected or a home is sold, the realtor or the home inspector to have a sheet that they have to have their client initial. I know that radon is high in Iowa. I know it causes lung cancer. And yes, I want to get a radon test. And yes, I know that a mitigation system is going to cost an average $2,000. And yes or no, I don't or do want a mitigation system. Making sure that we're thinking through those things, I think the vast majority of Iowans are going to choose to do that, and that's going to help us with radon mitigation in a much quicker timeline than just having limited to new construction, which is what they did from the legislature this last year. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] Well, going back to this conversation about working with the legislature and specific legislators, over the next, you know, month and a half, ten weeks, whatever you've got before you are sworn in officially, do you plan to sit down with those legislative leaders, with individuals and have conversations about what you plan to propose and how you can work together? 

[SAND] Yeah, that's my hope. I've reached out. We've had some conversations already. And I, look, there are going to be 55 Republican legislators in the Iowa House next year. 21 of them will be in districts that also picked me as governor. Iowans want us to work together. This is one of those things that is just like an abundantly clear message. You want to talk about messages from the campaign, that level of ticket crossing for different parties is a pretty clear message to me. They want balance. They want us to work together. And I'm hopeful that those folks will look at that message and say, okay, we're going to do that. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] And are you going to communicate to them your vision for your veto power as well? What will you be communicating to them on that front? 

[SAND] I don't -- they're smart people. They know I have a veto pen. I want to talk to them about the things that we can do together. I don't need to remind them that I can veto things. They know that already. I don't want to put my time into having conversations about where we disagree. I want to put my time into having conversations about the things that we can get done together. 

[HENDERSON] Votes across the country regarding data centers indicate that this is something that's very important to voters across the country. There's been a lot of debate within Iowa, especially in some counties, about whether data centers should be built and how they should, you know, pay their freight, if you will. You have some data center ideas. You have said that you think that should be a priority, like one of maybe the first things that the legislature should do. Have you thought about when you want them to take action, like in the first few weeks of your governorship? 

[SAND] Well, I'd love that. You know, there's a there's a process. You've got your first funnel and your second funnel, and they've got their things that they want to do. I want to get it done this legislative session. I'd love to see it get done early. But that also requires agreement. You can't do the thing until you've got an agreement on it. But I was consistent in the campaign. You know, I want data centers to pay all their taxes maybe and then some. Maybe they should pay a little more. I want to have it be illegal for local elected officials to sign an NDA agreement, whether that's with a data center or something else. They just shouldn't be able to do that. We should have setback requirements. No one should be getting one built in a place where they're gonna have to listen to it. If they need to have the grid built out, because they're using so much electricity, they should pay for that. And basically, the bottom line should be that the law in the state of Iowa means they're going to be contributing to this state if they build here and if they're not going to do that, they can go build somewhere else. That bill in general, that gets us to that bottom line, I'd love to have on my desk as soon as the legislature can get it there. I'd love to have it be there early, because there's a lot of people who have concerns about this and questions and once we get that legislation passed, they will know that there's an answer and they will know what the rules are. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] DC officials are reportedly planning to lobby incoming Democratic governors to ask them to recall National Guard troops that are in DC right now. Is that something that you would entertain first? 

[SAND] First I've heard of it. Would sure need to think about it a lot. I guess I'll say this. I said a lot on the campaign trail. My way of making decisions is as a prosecutor and as an auditor, if I was going to indict someone and ask a jury in Iowa to potentially take their freedom away, I wanted to make sure I knew absolutely everything. And I have framed in my office, probably from a case that was at this point 14 years ago, one of the Iowa Film Office tax credit scandal cases, a contract worth a million bucks, where we only realize that this was another million dollars of fraud because I got up at 4:00 in the morning that morning, while we were in trial, to make sure that I could go have one more conversation with this witness about what's going on, because he knew the answer to it. I talk to people. I base my decisions on reality. And what's going on out there I need to talk to guard leadership about. I'd want to talk to the Iowans who are out there and ask them, what are they doing? What's this experience been like? What's your advice? I want to make decisions that I know are based in reality, and whether or not it's somebody in one party or another party asking me to do it I don't really care about. 

[HENDERSON] It's going to be caucus season maybe, you know, in a few minutes. There was someone who campaigned with you on Sunday who said at the conclusion of his remarks, are you ready to elect a Democratic president in 2028? So, what's your message to national Democrats after Iowa Democrats have been arguing, don't make the decision about where the Iowa caucuses should be until we have our election, until you see if Iowa is competitive? 

[SAND] Yeah, well, same as I've always said, we're going to follow Iowa law, number one. I'm not here to serve a party. I don't really care what a private club thinks. We're going to follow Iowa law. If we can follow Iowa law and also do what the DNC has set for their calendar, fine, but we're going to follow Iowa law. I do think that they would be smart to have us do historically what we've done. Through this process of being in the auditor's office and, you know, talking to the press about that caucus process, I've repeatedly had national reporters say, you know, the questions that these candidates get from Iowans are head and shoulders above what they get from any other state. Many folks have told me that. We do a good job with this. We'll see where we go from here. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] There's been some chatter about whether the legislature will convene a special session to potentially limit your powers, now that you've been elected. What's your message to those folks who might be considering that option right now? 

[SAND] Don't do that. Again, are we here to serve the public, or are we here to serve a private club? People in the state of Iowa, this margin, by the way, and the number of people who voted for me I should say, since World War Two there has only been one candidate for governor that had more Iowans vote for them than I just received right now. It was 1964. So, since World War Two, second highest number of Iowans voted for a single candidate. They knew what the laws were. We had conversations and I answered questions about everything a governor can and can't do. To come in now after the fact and change the meaning of what those voters said, that's not public service, that's politics. I don't think that they'll do that, because I would hope and trust that they’re public servants. We'll find out. 

[PFANNENSTIEL] Well, you've had a few days to sit with this news. How are you feeling about being Iowa's next governor? How is the weight of that moment sitting with you right now? 

[SAND] I'm so excited. I said something that I really think is important, and this is only one piece of it, but we'll be entering in January, a period where no Iowan has to fear their government anymore. And what I mean by that is people on both sides who have suspicions about the other party, again, we're going to have me as governor and a Republican led legislature. We're going to check and balance each other. That means everybody can settle down a little bit and breathe easy. I think that's really important in a time with high division. The other piece of this is, you know, again, auditor, numbers guy, I was having a lot of fun talking with some of our transition folks about working on the budget, going through some of the numbers. And I think there's a lot of things that we can do in the state of Iowa to really get a return on investment for people's tax dollars. I had a lot of fun ideas that that we've talked about a little bit on the campaign trail that we'll talk about more, but it really is a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, on Wednesday, I had been saying, and I meant it when I said it, I thought on Wednesday I was going to go hunting first thing. But I was able to sleep in until 7:00, which almost never happens. And I had an opportunity to fill a different tag, which was spending a little bit of time with my family. So, I did that instead, and I'm hoping I'm going to get out there this afternoon because cold front just came in, high pressure, bucks are going to be moving. But I haven't put that much time in, in the in the woods because I'm really excited about what comes ahead and the responsibility, the opportunity is, is a pretty incredible thing. And I want to, I want to do my best. I want to put everything into it. 

[HENDERSON] Well, the pressure on me right now is to say that our time for this conversation has concluded. Thanks for being here on this edition of Iowa Press. 

[SAND] Always so fast. 

[HENDERSON] You may watch every edition of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today. 

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[ANNOUNCER] Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation. 

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[ANNOUNCER] The Bob and Doreen Sheppard Family, proud supporters of educational programming seen only on Iowa PBS.

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