Democratic Candidate for Governor, Rob Sand

[Henderson] He's held town halls in all 99 counties. Now, with one year until the election, we'll talk with Democratic candidate for governor Rob Sand on this edition of Iowa Press.

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

Banking in Iowa goes beyond transactions. Banks work to help people and small businesses succeed, and Iowa banks are committed to building confident banking relationships. Iowa banks, your partner through it all.

[MUSIC]

[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 7 edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson. 

[MUSIC]

[Henderson] In recent weeks, we have welcomed candidates for the Democratic and Republican Party's nomination for governor in 2026 to this table. This week, we have a Democrat who is seeking to become Iowa's next governor. Rob Sand is a native of Decorah. He earned a law degree at the University of Iowa, then worked as an assistant attorney general for the state of Iowa, prosecuting a variety of criminal cases. In 2018, he was elected state auditor and reelected in 2022. He is currently the only Democrat serving in statewide office. Thanks for joining us again at the Iowa press table.

[Sand] Thanks for having me, Kay.

[Henderson] Brianne Pfannenstiel of the Des Moines Register is going to join our conversation.

[Pfannenstiel] One of the major focuses of the Republican primary for governor has been property taxes. You're seeking to entice some Republicans and independents to vote for you as a Democrat. So, what would you do to address this issue that many people say is their top concern for the state?

[Sand] I think one of the one things that we can all agree on that needs to get fixed is property taxes. Here's a really easy example. There are literally cities right now are limited in how much new housing they can invest in, because it's within their cap. The legislature knows this is a problem. This is a problem they created by making that I think three years ago. They haven't fixed it yet. But when it's harder to build new housing, housing prices go up even more. That means that everyone's assessed value is going up even more. And so that's putting upward pressure on property taxes. That's a no brainer for something to fix. I think the other thing to keep in mind is this is a really complicated system. If you want to hear me go into it for 25 minutes anyone who's watching can Google Rob Sand Dickinson County Taxpayers Association, and I'll put them to sleep tonight. I would say this -- it's been -- it's a little bit like a house that has had a lot of remodels and renovations. It's not really a consistent system. It does need an overhaul. The question that I want to have everybody answer who puts together a plan is finish the equation right. Politicians like to talk about tax cuts, and everybody loves a good tax cut. But responsible people also understand that a budget is something that balances. And so, if you're going to talk about tax cuts you should also talk about okay, are you then spending less money or are you if you're spending less, where are you not spending as much anymore? Or are you just moving this to a different place? Because I think Iowans deserve to have a full and responsible conversation about what that's going to look like.

[Pfannenstiel] So, do you think it's possible to limit property taxes, given the realities of the state budget right now? And some of those things you just talked about?

[Sand] I guess I would say I'm generally fairly open minded when it comes to where or what might be taxed at what level. As long as you're balancing it out. If you want to do a property tax cut, that's your priority. Well, where do you want to either cut spending -- I mean, are you going to invest less in Iowa's public schools because we've already seen a decade of them having a lower growth than inflation? Or is it that you're going to have less invested in public safety, or what? I'm open minded. I just think if you're going to say we're going to cut here, tell me how you're making the budget balance.

[Pfannenstiel] Well, you were at a roundtable conversation with farmers earlier this week to talk about agricultural issues. And one thing that came up was the possibility of taxing out of state landowners more heavily than in-state landowners, particularly for this farmland. Is that something that you'd be interested in pursuing?

[Sand] Yeah, I've said that repeatedly on the campaign trail. I think Iowa should be for Iowans. And I think people this comes down to the culture of our state who are our neighbors, and how do you know who to go talk to if their fence is out and their cattle are wandering? Or who do you know who to go talk to if you shoot a deer and they go across the property line, technically speaking, you can go get it and take the shortest route, but you might want to let your neighbor know first. The culture of this state has a lot to do with neighborliness and knowing who you're next to, and I think having people here who we know who they are, we know that it's not a foreign company country and that we're making it a little bit easier for Iowans to be able to afford a piece of Iowa is a good idea.

[Henderson] You have said on the campaign trail that Republicans have lit a fiscal time bomb.

[Sand] Yes.

[Henderson] As governor, if you are in office in 2027, what will you do to respond?

[Sand] So, it's a great question, and I think it's really important to be level with people. If I get elected governor, I'll be working with a Republican legislature. Okay. Anyone who doubts that, time to wake up. It's October 2025. November 2025. Caught myself there. And they've got a supermajority in Iowa House by a seat. And they don't have a supermajority in the Iowa Senate by one seat. So, it's going to be a conversation. But I think a piece of this is, again, finding balance. If every budget in the state of Iowa, if every law that passes has to get both my approval and the approval of Republican legislature, we're going to see stuff hue towards common sense and towards places of agreement. The fiscal time bomb is a pretty accurate description. We have this surplus largely provided by Uncle Sam. The last two presidential administrations, that is, the fuse that's burning, because right now we have structural deficits for as far as the eye can see. Myself and all of my predecessors of state auditor have always warned, warned, do not use one time money for ongoing expenses. But that's what we're doing. This surplus is one time money from the federal government, and we're going to slowly burn it off.

[Henderson] And that's pandemic relief.

[Sand] A lot of it was pandemic relief money or it is state money that was allowed to sit there because they were able to use pandemic relief money for the expenses for the prior year. It's fungible to a degree, yes. But that's that was the cause, the source of all those funds coming in. I think there's a lot of things that we can do. It's going to be teamwork. I think a no brainer is that we should be treating cannabis in Iowa the same way that we treat alcohol right now. I don't think we want to be giving people three hots and a cot just because they smoke pot. Everyone in the state of Iowa is leaving. They're taking their money to one of our neighboring states. They're spending it there. That money doesn't come back. They're fueling that state's tax coffers, not ours. And I think it's time for us to just recognize that, you know, it's a drug. It's like alcohol. It can be dangerous. We should regulate and tax its use rather than pretending that we want to throw everyone in prison when we've already got a workforce crisis. Anyway, that would go -- that would be one of the biggest single steps that we could take towards fixing that deficit.

[Henderson] Once something is established, Affordable Care Act, exhibit number one, it's hard for the opposing party to repeal it. Iowa has education savings accounts at the state level. If your governor, would you recommend changes in the education savings account program or its repeal?

[Sand] I think that, again, I want to go back to anyone who wins this race, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, will be working with the Republican legislature. I think it's irresponsible to suggest that a governor can just unilaterally repeal. And so, if a candidate says they're going to do that, or they're going to pass a program, well, it depends on what the legislature has to say about it. Either way, what I want to do is say this money should have oversight. I want public oversight of public money. Right now, we are not allowed to audit private schools, spending public money. We are. There's only one rule, one thing that they can't do. They can't pay a rebate to parents. But anything else, any other way that they want to use tax dollars under this law is allowed, which to me is just inconceivable. It's wild. The other thing I want to do is call the bluff of the people who say they like school choice. Then let's make this program really be school choice. If a school takes public money, they have to take the public. No more picking and choosing for private schools which students they want to take. If we're giving them $7,500, then that is going to get that student in the door. No more just hiking tuition by $7,500, leaving the school equally as unaffordable. Right. And I think we should means test it. We're not helping school choice. And we're certainly not helping our state's budget deficit by offering this program to the wealthiest Iowans in the state who are already going to send their kids to private school anyway.

[Henderson] Budget deficit next governor may face one. You know that Republicans are already saying, if you elect Rob Sand, he'll raise your taxes. What's your response?

[Sand] Laughter. These are the same jokers that literally gutted the auditor's office, because we found so much misspent money in my first term. They will say anything.

[Pfannenstiel] One of the issues that keeps coming up pretty repeatedly on the campaign trail among voters is water quality. This is something that you said back in August. You were going to start listening on, having some conversations to come up with a plan. It's now November. The leaves are changing. What do you what are the basic structures of that plan? What's going to be in it?

[Sand] Well, we will get to the whole plan when we get to the whole plan, and we're ready to release it. I guess I'd look at it this way. There's a general election in November. There's a primary in June. What I have said is I will have a plan out before people are casting their ballots. I can learn a lot more in a class that's one year long than a class that's one semester. And as we all know and can acknowledge, if a politician or someone running for office says, here's my plan, but then maybe two months later, they learn something new that makes them think, oh, this would be a better plan. Well, then all of a sudden, if they announce changes, are they flip flopping? You know, they get attacked for that. So, I know people have decisions to make by the time they're making decisions, we'll have a plan and we'll have it out. And because I'm taking as much time as I can to study it beforehand, it's going to be as achievable and as impactful as I can possibly get to.

[Pfannenstiel] Well, you've heard from a number of people with different viewpoints of this about whether the agriculture industry should play a part in helping to pay for it, and to what extent. What's your belief on that so far from what you're hearing on the trail?

[Sand] You know, I think one of the important things for us to remember is that this is largely a problem of politicians, right? Farmers are signing up for programs, to a degree to which the politicians aren't willing to fund them for conservation. Right. And so that means they're saying, hey, I'll do the cost share, I'll put my own money in. But, you know, here's my plan. I've put together put this together over the course of hours. But the politicians are not funding the program at the pace at which the farmers would like to implement these conservation practices. So, I think there's a willingness and an acknowledgment, right? Yes. There's an impact. Yes. We want to do better. But politicians, instead of actually moving the ball down the road, a lot of them just want to say, oh, you know, they want people fighting against each other instead.

[Pfannenstiel] And a potentially related issue, Iowans are very concerned about the rise in cancer rates. So, what's your vision for how to address that or how to proceed as governor? What could you do if elected?

[Sand] You know, so we just finished doing 100 public town halls. Every single county. We announced them all the same day. So, people knew up to months in advance that we were coming to town. We had Democrats and independents and Republicans all a part of the same conversation. And it really was wonderful. We acknowledge our party differences, applaud each other, and then actually sing the first verse of America the Beautiful together, which is a really wonderful moment in a time where things are so divided. One of the moments that sticks out the most to me was a young couple who told me about their daughter, Devin. This was up in Allamakee County, right next to Decorah. We were in Lansing and she had to spend a lot of time at the University of Iowa Children's Hospital because she's got cancer and the husband is talking to us while his wife was sitting there trying to not cry. And they talked about talking to some of the legislators about putting money towards children's cancers and research. And they talked about getting to the point where they were getting people to say, yeah, okay, we could do a million, maybe a little bit more. And then they shared the fact that Nebraska has already been investing in children's cancer research for years, but they have put over 23 million in. And you're just not going to convince me that people in the state of Iowa care less about their kids than people in Nebraska do. We should be doing at least as much as what Nebraska did, and we should be taking this problem seriously. I've been in Kinnick and done the wave right to the kids over there at the Children's Hospital. It'd be wonderful if in 15 years there were fewer kids who were looking at us, waving at them. That would be, to me, the best thing to do.

[Henderson] So, beyond spending money on research, what's required of the state government?

[Sand] So, we know that there's a number of things in Iowa that have a big impact. And I think we need to be talking more about them. Right. And I mean, a big impact on cancer rates, alcohol consumption, cigarettes, radon, we have, I think, more radon than any other state in the country by a significant margin. We should be doing more to talk about these problems, but also to address them. Radon mitigation is not particularly complicated. It's not particularly expensive. And that could go a long way towards reducing our lung cancer rates, where we just saw this week in the news that we are among the worst in the country for lung cancer. The state should be making these investments and you can want to do this because you want fewer kids and fewer of your neighbors to get cancer because you care about them. You can also want to do it if you're the most selfish person in the state of Iowa, because you know that curing cancer or preventing it, excuse me, is a lot cheaper than treating it later on. And so, if you want to make a smart investment as a taxpayer and have to pay for less, then you want to prevent cancer from happening in the first place, rather than having to pay for a lot of it 20 or 30 years down the road.

[Henderson] Governors have to make decisions sometimes controversial. And this past June, the current Governor Kim Reynolds vetoed a bill that had passed the legislature that would have put restrictions on carbon capture pipelines as well as some other utility projects. If you were sitting in that chair, would you have signed the bill?

[Sand] So, I don't support eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines. When that bill came through, I'm not a candidate for governor. I'm sure they're going to be putting through bills this coming spring when I am a candidate for governor. Happy to share my opinion on those ones. But that one I haven't studied in detail.

[Henderson] So why should the ethanol industry face this pushback? They say they need this carbon capture pipeline and that actually Nebraska is now the king of ethanol because they have a functioning carbon capture pipeline.

[Sand] So, I think there's a number of things that we can do to support agriculture and ethanol in Iowa. I don't think that that is the end all, be all. Here's part of my concern. That pipeline is entirely dependent on federal tax credits to make anybody any money. And there are people in both parties out in Washington that don't like those tax credits. So, if those tax credits go away, what have we done? There are much more long term, truly market driven solutions for buying that CO2 and improving the carbon intensity score for ethanol. There's a company that wants to buy that CO2 and make bricks for buildings. There's a company that wants to buy that CO2 and make green methanol. They're already taking all the CO2 from the Louvre, an ethanol plant in Minnesota. There's other options out there that I think are long term, more sustainable for ethanol and for farmers in the state of Iowa.

[Pfannenstiel] You've mentioned a few times that if you are elected, you'll be working with a Republican legislature beyond coming to some compromise on key issues. In what ways are you willing to wield the powers of the governor, the veto pen executive orders to get through a proactive agenda rather than potentially responding to what they put through?

[Sand] Well, I think I think the proactive agenda is having input right on the things that they are sending my direction. But a piece of this is absolutely vetoing bad ideas, right? Why on earth did they -- I mean, politics is the answer -- but why on earth did they gut the auditor's office? I want oversight of tax dollars. Our office found a record amount of misspent money, and every single government watchdog in America. Democrats and independents and Republicans that weighed in and said, this is a bad idea. You shouldn't pass this law. They passed it anyway, so I'll be happy to veto that. I hear from so many Iowans about rising costs all around the state. Right. So, let's make it so that cities can invest in new housing and the utilities and the streets that they have to build to support them. I would have vetoed that provision of that law. Right. There was a there was a law that passed a couple of years ago saying utilities can only spend a particular amount of their budget on improving efficiency. And Iowans are seeing increasing utility costs day in and day out. Why would you limit efficiency when it comes to something that taxpayers are going to be paying for? That makes no sense out of vetoed that bill. So, the veto pen is an important piece of this. I think that extends to culture war stuff. Our economy is 49th in the country according to the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia. Our personal income growth is 48th in America. We're number one for cancer. Our education system, which was is on our quarter today, is in the middle of the pack. Those are the kinds of issues that we need to be addressing. Stuff like that, higher costs, the things that impact everybody in the state of Iowa. And that's proactive. And it's something that I want to support, like public education. Right? Like oversight for tax dollars. And if they send me stuff that's just over here on left field, then the veto pen will be there. And hopefully knowing that that veto pen is there, the legislature, instead of putting the time into passing those bills, will put their time into doing things that are going to make a difference for Iowans in a positive way.

[Pfannenstiel] You've talked on the campaign trail pretty extensively about the perils of the two-party political system. You've talked about wanting to have an open primary. Is that legislation that you would put forward if you're elected to create an open primary?

[Sand] Absolutely. And I think about this in terms of, you know, where do we want Iowa to be in 20 years? I want to have us have a government that is better focused on solving whatever problems we have down the road. Politics right now is so much just two private clubs beating up on each other. They're not focused on solving our problems. And if we make it so that Iowans are in charge of our elections so we don't have two different private clubs having primaries with our tax dollars, but one public primary where every eligible voter can participate, then we're able to put the people back in charge. And I think that means that we, no matter what our party affiliation is, we will have more accountability for the people who are supposed to be solving our problems, and they'll actually spend more time solving them, rather than just beating up on each other. There's a lot of problems we're facing now that we've talked about, right? Cancer rates, property taxes, rising costs. We need to address those, but we want to have a system that in 15 and in 20 and in 30 years is just better at solving problems to begin with. That's the way to do that. Telling the Democratic and the Republican parties, you do not deserve special privileges over our choices. We deserve to have more than two realistic options on the ballot.

[Henderson] Democrats who are in the minority in the legislature have proposed a constitutional amendment that would guarantee abortion rights. Iowa has a six-week abortion ban. If your governor and you're facing a Republican legislature, what sort of abortion policy will you pursue? Maybe through executive orders.

[Sand] So, I'm pretty clear that I'm, in general a supporter of reproductive freedom. I think that the six-week abortion ban goes too far. Despite that, the vast majority of elected Republicans in the state of Iowa, when the when that six-week ban was upheld, said we have more work to do, that we're just getting started. This is going to be about a veto pen maintaining accessibility for contraception, for IVF, right? For surrogacy, making sure that those are options for people in Iowa who want to have families and want to plan when they're going to have their families. A governor is limited in what a governor can do if they're not going to do it with the legislature. I can't unilaterally repeal a six-week ban, but I can stop us from making it worse.

[Henderson] You had a discussion in Newton this past week with a group of health care professionals, and one of them suggested that the state of Iowa needs to have more rural physicians. How would you accomplish that?

[Sand] I think we're moving in the right direction to expand residencies, but that's not the only thing that we need to be doing. We need to be paying competitive wages. A lot of people in the state of Iowa who have the ability to be here and be doctors also look at other states and they say, well, I can make more money over there, and they go over there. The other thing that came out of this conversation that we were having is I was listening to people was right now there's two doctors. They are a married couple living in Grinnell, and Grinnell is the only place between, they said, Pella and Waterloo and Iowa City and Des Moines, where you can deliver babies right now. But out of that couple, one of them, they're still paying off their loans. They didn't qualify for loan forgiveness because when she started medical school at Iowa, she wasn't planning to stay here. So, she didn't sign up for Iowa loan forgiveness at the start. I'm a pretty big believer that if we bring people here, they will fall in love with our state. My favorite story is my friend Matt, who was a year ahead of me in law school at Iowa. He came here from Hawaii, and now he lives in Cedar Rapids, and he loves it. And we want to make sure that people, when they come here, we're not going to tell them, oh, you got to sign up now. We're just going to sit back and say, hey, when you fall in love in Iowa and you realize that you want to live here, that's when you can sign up for loan forgiveness, because we want you to be here.

[Henderson] A couple minutes left.

[Pfannenstiel] That we're in the middle of a federal government shutdown. So really briefly, Governor Reynolds has said that she'll match donations to area food banks. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has said that he'll tap state emergency funds to help people access benefits, food, food assistance, benefits. If you were governor right now, what would you do to address this problem.

[Henderson] Real quickly?

[Sand] Well, I would do more than $1 million because this is $48 million per month in the state of Iowa. And it's not just impacting hungry people like the ones sitting next to my kids in public schools. It's also money that's coming in that goes to farmers and to grocery stores as well. So, we should be using the $5 billion surplus to fuel Iowa's economy and to feed hungry people.

[Henderson] I'm not hungry right now. People who follow politics know that Republicans have been criticizing you from forgetting contributions from your in-laws. If you're governor, would you propose campaign finance limits? We've had a candidate on this program who says there should be limits on contributions.

[Sand] Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. But, you know, the Republicans have had ten years of one-party control in Iowa, and I haven't seen that bill introduced. So, I'm curious why they're introducing it now. But yeah, I would support it.

[Henderson] Finally, what's the one thing as you've had these 100 town halls -- what is the one expectation that Iowans have of the next governor in a sentence?

[Sand] Supporting public education in a real way.

[Henderson] Well, I am supporting this network by ending the show on time. So, thank you for being at Iowa Press again.

[Sand] Thank you both for having me.

[Henderson] You can watch other episodes of our conversations with candidates for governor at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for joining us today.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

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

Banking in Iowa goes beyond transactions. Banks work to help people and small businesses succeed, and Iowa banks are committed to building confident banking relationships. Iowa banks, your partner through it all.