DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa voters chose Democrat Rob Sand to be their next governor, flipping the seat Republicans have held for more than two decades and likely ushering in a new era of divided state government.
Sand defeated Zach Lahn, a first-time candidate who surprised even members of his own party when he won the Republican primary. Sand, who is currently state auditor, has been the only Democrat serving in statewide elected office.
His victory
will almost certainly make him a leading face of a Democratic Party that he’s kept at arm’s length, focusing instead on his middle-of-the-road approach to politics and his small-town upbringing. But Democrats have been eager to claw back territory in Midwestern and rural states where they’ve struggled in recent years.
The two candidates campaigned on criticisms of the state’s status quo following a decade of Republican control under retiring Gov. Kim Reynolds. Both highlighted the state’s stagnant economy, declines in public education and uniquely high and rising rates of cancer diagnoses.
But they offered voters starkly different visions for the office and solving those problems.
The open race — in a midterm when Republicans faced national headwinds — shook up Iowa’s recent political conventional wisdom and revived the state as battleground territory, despite Republicans outnumbering Democrats among party-affiliated registered voters.
Reynolds’ unexpected retirement opened up the first governor’s race in the state without an incumbent since 2010. While Sand was ultimately unopposed on the Democratic primary ballot, Republicans had to first get through a five-way primary.
Sand, 44, often laments the way the country’s political system forces people to pick sides, even as he has only run for office as a Democrat and has donated substantially to the party. He acknowledged he’d likely have to work with Republican majorities in the state House and Senate, saying divided government would be good for solving problems.
He criticized Republicans for ignoring a worsening budget deficit that’s emerged from their tax cuts and investment in education savings accounts, which provide students with public dollars to pay for private school tuition.
But he acknowledged he’d likely have to work with Republican majorities in the state House and Senate, saying divided government would be good for solving problems. He said he’d also be a check on Republican efforts to push culture war bills.
In a sign of the race’s competitiveness, many of Iowa’s prominent industry groups in agriculture and business declined to weigh in on the contest, endorsing in other contests but not the governor’s race.
Lahn’s general election campaign was scaled up quickly after his surprise win in the June primary. He had five months to introduce himself to voters, including many Republicans, and to dramatically increase his fundraising and campaign staff.
Lahn won the primary by less than a percentage point over U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump. In the five-way race, he prevailed with only about a third of Republican voters supporting him.
Lahn was not shy about pushing back on traditional Iowa GOP positions. He boasted that he had already been successful in changing the narrative within the Republican Party and emphasized that Iowa couldn’t be succeeding — even under GOP leadership — if it’s losing its family farms, its young people to other states, its residents to cancer and its achievements in public education.
Still, toe-to-toe with Sand in debates, Lahn leaned on traditional party positions, saying Sand would be a liberal governor who would raise taxes, increase regulations and push a political agenda in public education.
As was the case in his previous two elections to be auditor, Sand prevailed in a statewide race just two years after Iowa voters backed Trump.
Much of the party’s hopes for restoring Democratic leadership to the state rested on Sand despite his efforts to keep his distance from party politics. Sand won his last election by a razor-thin margin — fewer than 3,000 votes — but he has outperformed other Democrats in both of his races, especially in rural areas.
Sand worked for years to build a likable public profile by holding annual county town halls, publicizing his findings both as a former state prosecutor and as auditor, and being active on social media. That included posting about what he was eating around the state, nodding at his small-town northeast Iowa upbringing and sharing his bowhunting escapades.
Sand contrasted his personal life with Lahn’s, hitting Lahn for his ties outside of the state and for only registering to vote in Iowa two years ago, just before the deadline to run as a candidate in this election. Lahn has explained frequent flights to Kansas as a result of his blended family, which he says won’t affect his ability to govern. Lahn and his wife, Annie, both have children from previous marriages who do not currently live full-time in Iowa.
By contrast, Lahn criticized Sand for the millions of dollars that his wife and in-laws have contributed to his campaign and called him a career politician. Sand was a prosecutor under a Democratic state attorney general before running for auditor in 2018. That ultimately did not drive away voters at the polls.
