At a recent stop at a brewery in Des Moines, Rob Sand, a Democrat running for governor, didn\u2019t hold back about what the matter with Iowa is.<\/p>\n
The state has among the worst<\/a> economies of all 50 states in the country, he said. College-educated Iowans are leaving<\/a> the state in droves. The state is in the grip of a health crisis, he said, with a rapidly growing<\/a> rate of cancer.<\/p>\n Iowa also has sky-high rates of alcohol consumption, Mr. Sand added, prompting a few nervous chuckles from the bar.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should talk about the fact that consumption of alcohol is linked<\/a> to cancer,\u201d he said, facing a crowd holding pints of lagers and I.P.A.s. \u201cSo finish your beer, but think twice about having another one.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Sand, the state auditor, is campaigning for governor by asking Iowans to take a hard look at their own state and how it has fared in recent years, when Republican legislators and governors have been in charge.<\/p>\n It is a counterintuitive pitch in a place that was once a swing state, electing both Democrats and Republicans in the statehouse and helping send Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. But in recent election cycles, Iowa has turned solid red, with Republicans occupying the governor\u2019s mansion for the last 15 years, dominating<\/a> both chambers of the State Legislature and filling all six of the state\u2019s seats in Congress, and with President Trump winning<\/a> re-election there in 2024 by more than 13 percentage points.<\/p>\n To win in Iowa, Mr. Sand, 43, would have to persuade a significant number of Republicans or independents to vote for a Democrat. (More<\/a> voters in Iowa are registered with no party affiliation than with the Democratic Party, election data shows, and still more are registered as Republicans than either as Democrats or independents.) Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who became governor in 2017, announced last year that she would not seek a third term.<\/p>\n Yet the governor\u2019s race in November is shaping up to be an unusually competitive one. So far, Mr. Sand has accumulated a formidable war chest: In 2025, his campaign amassed $9.5 million, out-raising all of his Republican opponents combined.<\/p>\n And in a midterm election year when polls suggest that President Trump is sinking in popularity, national Democrats see Mr. Sand as a candidate with a real chance to win. They also see his practical-sounding pitch that spurns strict partisanship as a test of how to broaden the party\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n Mr. Sand portrays himself as someone who eschews party identity in favor of common sense: Since first declaring his candidacy last year, Mr. Sand has advertised himself as a \u201cgovernor for all\u201d and repeated the slogan \u201cNot redder or bluer, but better and truer.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 1,500 registered Republicans have donated to his campaign, said Emma O\u2019Brien, a spokeswoman for his campaign, along with more than 4,000 registered voters in Iowa who do not have a party affiliation.<\/p>\n Mr. Sand\u2019s campaign signs don\u2019t look particularly Democratic, designed in shades of forest green and blaze orange, a reminder of his oft-mentioned fondness for hunting, a tradition that is still strong in rural Iowa.<\/p>\n Though Mr. Sand is popular with nationally known Democratic leaders, he is not publicly leaning on them for help. Asked in an interview at the State Capitol which national Democrat he would like to campaign with him in Iowa, he paused and said, \u201cGreat question.\u201d Then, he changed the subject.<\/p>\n Mr. Sand would rather talk about how Iowans have been mistreated by what he calls a series of poor decisions by state leaders and a broken \u201ctwo-choice political system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is, I think we\u2019re in a place here where a lot of the stuff that the folks running the state have done, they know in their hearts is actually a bad thing to do,\u201d he said, citing the ballooning budget deficit<\/a> and a school voucher program that he says gives preferential treatment to private schools.<\/p>\n At town halls across the state, Mr. Sand makes a point of asking audience members which party they belong to, applauding each political party and then asking the crowd to sing \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d together. Then he talks about the woes of the state and how his experience as state auditor and as an assistant attorney general who worked on white-collar-crime cases can help solve them.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s certainly trying to make the race a referendum on how the state is going at the moment,\u201d said Megan Goldberg, a political science professor at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.<\/p>\n Mr. Sand still has an uphill battle ahead of him. The challenge, Ms. Goldberg said, is to lay out the problems the state is facing without coming across as overly critical of elected officials that Republican voters support.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not even talking about Republicans,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if he starts saying, \u2018Hey, this is Gov. Reynolds\u2019 fault \u2014 this is President Trump\u2019s fault,\u2019 and you identify as a Republican, you feel attacked.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Sand strikes as an unusual political figure in Iowa. Born in a small town in the northeast part of the state, he is the son of a doctor and a physical therapist for children with disabilities, and has been an avid hunter and fisherman since he was young. He attended Brown University to study political science, and then returned home to Iowa for law school, rejecting an offer from Harvard.<\/p>\n In his office in the State Capitol, he has hung rows of taxidermied deer heads and a dark bison hide, and he drives in a large Ford pickup around the state, where he has held town halls with voters for years.<\/p>\n To political observers in Iowa, it can feel as if Mr. Sand has been running for governor for a long time. He was the only non-incumbent Democrat to win statewide in Iowa in 2018, and won re-election by less than a percentage point in 2022.<\/p>\n Mr. Sand\u2019s opponents have begun to warn<\/a> that if elected, he would move Iowa further to the left, as some Democratic governors have done in other states. \u201cWe cannot have this state look like Minnesota or Illinois or California,\u201d Representative Randy Feenstra, a Republican from northwest Iowa, told a group of voters in February. \u201cThat scares me.\u201d<\/p>\n Polls<\/a> suggest a tight race in the Republican primary on June 2, when five candidates, including Mr. Feenstra, will compete for their party\u2019s nomination. Mr. Sand is running unopposed<\/a> on the Democratic side.<\/p>\n That has led even some Republicans to see Mr. Sand as a real threat to their hold on the governor\u2019s office. In the Legislature, lawmakers<\/a> have moved to limit the governor\u2019s emergency powers in a bill that is seen as an acknowledgment that Mr. Sand could be Governor Reynolds\u2019s successor. In March, Mr. Sand was sitting on the steps of the State Capitol for an interview when a woman in a suit, a Republican lobbyist, half-jokingly greeted him as \u201cGovernor\u201d as she hurried past.<\/p>\n Mr. Sand would be the first Democrat to win the governor\u2019s office in two decades, after Chet Culver, who served one term from 2007 to 2011 before losing to a Republican, Terry Branstad.<\/p>\n