This is The Long Run, a new newsletter premised on a simple idea: The fight for the future of the Democratic Party is the most important and interesting story in politics right now — and the nation’s Democratic governors are central to that story.
The Long Run will aggressively cover every facet of that story, from state policy decisions to 2026 campaigns to 2028 moves.
Iowa occupies a unique place in Democrats’ story of the Trump era.
In 2014, just two years after Barack Obama comfortably carried the state in his re-election bid, now-Senator Joni Ernst flipped its open Senate seat by nearly ten points, defying polls that mostly showed a close race. The unexpectedly large margin of victory proved an early alarm bell: Two years later, Trump won the state in a romp, swinging the state 15 points to the right and flipping 32 counties, the most of any state in the country. Any hopes that Trump’s 2016 victory was an aberration were dashed in 2018, 2020, and 2022, when Republicans overperformed polling averages and notched consistent wins in races for Senate, president, governor, and state offices. The 2024 cycle firmly established the Hawkeye State as archetypal Obama-to-Trump country: It ultimately shifted 19 points to the right between 2012 and 2024, the second-largest swing of any state in that period.
Only one Democrat now remains in statewide elected office: State Auditor Rob Sand. Sand is now running for governor in the 2026 election, all but assured his party’s nomination, and is betting his campaign on an iconoclastic image and unconventional approach. I recently spoke to Sand about his campaign, his thoughts on both parties, and why he believes he can defy recent history.
What’s happening in Washington is obviously hugely impactful, and no doubt many national Democrats wanted you to run for Senate. Why governor?
I think that Washington is completely broken. If you are out there in the minority, you are not listened to. I mean, imagine a private company that took 48% of their employees and just told them, we want you to show up for work but we don’t want your ideas, we don’t want your input. That’s not what I want to do with my life.
Polls pretty consistently find Kim Reynolds, the incumbent governor of Iowa, to be the most unpopular governor in America. Why do you think that is?
Forty-ninth in economic growth, and number one for cancer growth. A school vouchers program that has no accountability and does nothing to improve our education system, which, after ten years of total one-party control, is now mired in the middle of the pack, whereas when I was growing up in Decorah, we were always at the top. I think people are fed up. They have noticed that, while we Iowans are dealing with all of those things, in Des Moines they are busy with literally making it easier to hide misspent money from the state auditor's office and making people who are different feel unwelcome in the state of Iowa, despite the fact that we need more people here due to our workforce crisis. The bottom line is pretty simple, they’re serving insiders and special interest groups, they’re not actually solving problems for Iowans.
And yet, Gov. Reynolds won by a larger margin in 2022 than in 2018. What do you think it is that Democrats have been missing in Iowa?
Well, all the things that I'm noting for you here happened after 2022. The other piece that I would add is my approach isn't exactly one that is fitting into the Democratic box. When I was running in 2018, I talked about having prosecuted Democrats and Republicans. I criticized my own party more than just about anybody else in the state. I defend the other party when it's the right thing to do more than just about anybody else in the state. My approach is much more focused on public service and what is truer and better, rather than red or bluer.
You’re obviously different from the stereotypical Democrat. You own guns, you hunt, you fish, you go to church. Why is it that you are a Democrat?
I’m a Democrat for the same reasons that I do those things. Those are all things that I did growing up, and it's the same set of values that makes me a Democrat. I think that at its best, the Democratic Party is the party for the little guy. We can certainly have very good conversations about whether or not that's been the case lately, but I still think that that is what it should be, and that's what I want it to be. I remember when I was a teenager watching Bill Clinton in the State of the Union brag about balancing the budget and using some of the surplus to pay down the debt. And I remember thinking, thanks, I appreciate that because I don't want to have to pay for all that someday. This also goes back to conservation. You want to hunt, you want to fish? You got to have something out there to do that in.
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This year, a lot of folks in your party have seemed to have taken the lesson that they need to embrace a more pugilistic politics, to be more like, say, a Kim Reynolds or a Donald Trump. Do you think they’re wrong to take that lesson?
All I can say is, I'm doing what I think is right in the situations that are in front of me, and I think that the most effective Democratic Party is going to be the one that is trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number. It shouldn't be about just beating up on the other side. Politics at its best, I think, should be about actually serving people and welcoming people in and rather than shouting at them for who they may have voted for in the past. Saying to them, I'm glad you're here. Let's work together to solve the problem.
You're a dad to two young boys. Is the current conversation around young men something that you think about?
Yes, but a lot of that just goes into my general approach to parenting, which is it's a giant ship with an 18-year long trip. And so a lot of those sorts of decisions are day to day, a light touch day to day on the steering wheel, or a tap on their shoulder, knowing that the formation of their character is something that happens over the course of those entire 18 years, not at any one particular moment. Yeah, I do think that that leadership in that way, and trying to be a role model for them, as well as for others, is important.
Iowa has been kind of ground zero for a lot of national political movement. It swung 19 points to the right between 2012 and 2024, the second biggest to the right of any state in the country. Do you have a view of why so many folks in Iowa have seemed to lose faith in political leaders?
I think that one of the things that Iowa is not appreciated for is its leadership in political reform. We were the first state to do an anti-gerrymandering independent redistricting commission. That is our idea. And we did it, frankly, not just first, but we also did it best. We were also then the first state to do merit-based judicial selections — so that the way you get on the bench is by actually being a good lawyer, not just by being the biggest donor to the governor that happens to have a law degree. If you go around the country to any kind of lawyer conventions or judges conventions, and you tell people you're from Iowa, invariably, at some point, somebody says, oh, man, I wish we picked judges the way you do. And so Iowa actually has this really proud tradition of being a better check on people in positions of trust and power than many other states. So we looked around and we said, gerrymandering is a scourge. We should not allow it. And we fixed that. We looked around and we said, judges need to be impartial and qualified, and so we made a system that prioritized that.
And I would tell you that we actually voted for Barack Obama and Donald Trump because those two guys are the same. We didn't change overnight. The bottom line is that we actually have more Obama-Trump swing counties than any other state in the country by 50%. Those guys have one very important thing in common. They were both people who said, politics is broken. I'll do it differently. So I think that Iowa at its best is this place that is searching for purity. It's searching for goodness. It wants the ideals of our system of self-governance to be pursued. And so when we see a broken system, we are going to look at somebody who says they will shake it up.
You touched on redistricting there. Redistricting is obviously a big topic right now. Could you ever envision a scenario in which you sign legislation changing Iowa's process or acquiescing to gerrymandering calls?
No way. The whole country should be doing what Iowa’s doing. The centerpiece of this campaign is the idea of rejecting the monopoly that the Democratic and Republican parties have on our ballot, our choices at the ballot box. I think that is the natural next step in Iowa's tradition, saying enough is enough to the lesser of two evils, and actually having the public be in charge of our elections, rather than political parties force feeding us two options when neither is particularly palatable.
On that subject, you’ve emphasized what you see as the need to find common ground with people you disagree with. Can you give an example of something you think Governor Reynolds has gotten right during her governorship?
The phone ban in schools. She signed legislation saying we got to get phones and electronics out of kids’ hands at school. I think that's important, and that's well done. They did a texting while driving ban. I think that's important. I think that's well done. Her state government reorganization, they really pushed it through without much input, but big picture, we did not need 36 cabinet-level agencies. I don't know that 16, which we're at now, is exactly the right number, and so I would have done it differently, but I am glad that they did it.
Real quick on two pieces of legislation that Governor Reynolds has signed in recent years. This year, she signed a piece of legislation removing gender identity from the list of protected classes in Iowa. Would you have signed that legislation?
Oh, no, no. I mean, why would we legalize firing someone just because of who they are? Why would we legalize evicting someone from their apartment just because of who they are? That's what that legislation did. That's wrong. To me, that is un-Christian. Jesus is here, again, for the little guy, for the outcast. Now I'm not saying that anybody should get special privileges, but they should be treated fairly. And I don't think that's treating them fairly.
And on a related topic, she signed legislation restricting transgender girls’ and women’s participation in sports. Is that legislation you would have signed?
Again, same value there. Fairness. And I think that fairness is the answer in both places. I’ve said prior that protecting fairness in girls’ sports is important. I am against the civil rights ban that happened this year, but I also think that competition in girls’ sports isn't fair if you've got people participating in it who have had a different biological set of advantages.
My takeaway
Sand undoubtedly faces an uphill battle. Republicans hold two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of Iowa’s state legislature, and the last time a Democrat won a gubernatorial election there was in 2006. Major elections prognosticators are bearish so far: Inside Elections currently rates the race as Likely Republican, while the Cook Political Report and Sabato Crystal Ball both peg it as Lean Republican.
But I came away from our conversation intrigued. At a time when Democrats can sometimes seem too eager to find (or fashion) candidates who cut against the party’s stereotype, Sand’s personal brand is not some consultant invention. He also brings unique strengths: He’s already won statewide — twice — and is an established entity for most Iowans. Early Democratic polling shows he’s competitive and Republicans’ frontrunner, Rep. Randy Feenstra, faces an unpredictable primary battle. Sand’s frequent condemnations of the entire two-party system — as well as the deep unpopularity of Iowa’s Republican incumbent — make the race particularly interesting.
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