A Pork Tenderloin, A State Fair And Democrats’ Best Shot At Iowa In Decades

DES MOINES — Choosing America's best state fair is a bit like asking a parent to decide on their favorite child.

So I won't say that Iowa is tops because I don't want to alienate Minnesota, Ohio and, lord knows, Texas. And, no, I'm not ignoring you, New York — I know Syracuse is host to the granddaddy of them all.

What's easier to say, though, is that no state fair is as infused with politics as the midway here, a few miles from downtown Des Moines and still within eyeshot of Iowa's golden-domed Capitol.

The memories of presidential campaigns past come rushing back, of course: Barack Obama in bumper cars with his daughters, Rick Perry jumping into the presidential race with a fair visit and an ample-sized corn dog, plus the two very different versions of rich-guys-in-politics — Mitt Romney telling a heckler that "corporations are people, my friend" and Donald Trump flying kids over the fairgrounds in his personal helicopter.

But while the summer before the presidential caucuses is typically high season for the Iowa State Fair, drawing all those White House hopefuls, the politics is inescapable here every year. That's because typically over 80 percent of fairgoers on each day of the 11-day-long affair are Iowans. Which means the state's politicians have an unmatched captive audience of voters ambling around the turkey leg stands and livestock shows.

So I was only mildly surprised last Friday to find three of the state's top statewide candidates in a period of a couple of hours. There was Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee, spatula in hand at the pork producers' tent for one of the iconic fair photo ops: the pork burger flip. Over at the Lineman's Rodeo — power workers doing nifty stuff with cherry pickers — was Hinson's opponent, Democrat Josh Turek. He got hoisted up for a lift.

Also there was Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee and his party's best chance to win the governorship here in two decades. Sand is the state auditor, the last statewide Democrat left in once-competitive Iowa, and only 44. But for Iowans and Iowa-watchers, Sand's bid for Terrace Hill, the Iowa governor's mansion, has long felt inevitable.

And yet if there ever was going to be a year for Iowa Democrats to reclaim the governorship, it would be this one.

I sat down with Sand in the fair bleachers to talk about his well-timed candidacy — all while eating the pride of DeWitt, Iowa, and I think the best food offering at the fair: Chuckie's Famous Breaded Pork Tenderloin.

There's a favorable national environment, to put it mildly, and voters are unhappy at a moment when Republicans are in charge of the national and state government. Plus, Iowa's economic growth has been relatively stagnant, and cancer rates here are soaring, which is compounding problems for an agricultural community already beset with tariffs and higher fuel and fertilizer prices.

The Decorah native turned Truman Scholar at Brown University knows he's playing the political version of an away game and deftly practices defensive politics. He parried my efforts to ask him about his national party and didn't hesitate when I asked him if he wanted Joe Biden or Kamala Harris to stump for him in Iowa (Nope!). He also cited two Republican governors before finally spitting out a Democrat, at my prompting, when I asked him which governors he most admired.

And, no, he did not take a bite of his tenderloin sandwich to buy time when I ended the interview asking about his modeling days, when he posed for beefcake photos as a young man to make extra cash.

You can watch the full video on YouTube or listen to it as a podcast.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Now, I wouldn't come to the Iowa State Fair and not get my favorite, which is the pork tenderloin sandwich.

Absolutely.

To me, that's the Iowa signature. I think pork chop on a stick is cool. Bit of a novelty. To me, what's Iowa is the pork tenderloin sandwich. I know Indiana claims them too. But, come on, it's an Iowa thing, right? 

I had an amazing one on the trail last week. It was oval-shaped. Normally, you see them match the bun or they're three sizes beyond the bun.

Hellcap size, yeah.

But this one was specifically oval in DeWitt, Iowa and one of the best I've ever had.

Eastern Iowa, near Clinton, Iowa. So folks think Iowa State Fair; they obviously think pork chop on a stick, they think the photo op where you're flipping the pork burgers. But they also think about presidential campaigns because the summer before the Iowa caucuses, this was always where folks came through to meet and greet, to get the photo ops, maybe even do the dreaded corn dog picture. But Democrats aren't coming to Iowa anymore, Rob Sand. What happened? Why did Democrats bail on the Iowa caucuses? 

You’d have to ask the folks at the DNC.

Well, who's to blame? 

The DNC. That's their decision. I don't talk to them. I know our Iowa folks that are involved, but I'm the state auditor, running to be the governor. I've never been to a DNC convention. It's not really the thing that I'm focused on. I think that we're going to follow Iowa law.

What's that mean?

Well, we know what the law says. I don't have it memorized. We go before anybody else does their whatever else… balloting or something like that.

Did it bother you though — as somebody who's trying to win over rural voters, Iowa obviously is a heavy farm state — that the national party would decide not to begin in the middle of the country in a farm state? 

I think it would be smarter for them if they did it. I do 100 public town halls every year. I don't think that I have had one question about the DNC. People are focused on the costs in Iowa, corruption at the state level, cancer, water quality, 10 years of one-party control. They're frustrated, and they're not looking at what's happening in a little club in D.C. and deciding to make up their vote based on that.

If you do win, will you try to have some kind of caucus or a primary or at least something that will bring Democratic candidates for president here to Iowa? 

Yeah, we're gonna follow Iowa law, and if the DNC doesn't like that, then we're going to have a problem.

So you expect to see candidates for president here next summer at the Iowa State Fair and certainly leading up to the nomination in 2028?

I'm not going to predict what's going to happen or where it's going to go. Again, from my perspective, this is the law in Iowa, and that's what we're doing. If there's a way to do that that satisfies everybody, and we're following the law, that's fine.

Well, here's the tell: The first 24 hours after you win, you're gonna start getting a lot of phone calls from a lot of new friends in Democratic politics who may suddenly want to ask you, ‘How do you campaign in Iowa, Rob?’ Have you started getting some of that outreach? Have you heard from people like JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro? 

A little bit. But they were here in ’22. It's gonna be hard to reach me the day after. My plan is to be in a tree stand. So I can't talk. Gotta be quiet. Can't scare the deer away.

The Iowa that you and I recall from our younger days — and we're both on the business side of 40 now, me more than you — was much more of a battleground state. You had Democrats and Republicans competing here every four years in presidential races. Obama carried it twice, obviously. You had a Democrat and a Republican senator for years, Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin. What happened, and why did Iowa become so red in the last 10 years? 

I know that a lot of folks look at the outcome of the election and they see that a Republican won, but we've also had some of the country's closest elections over the last three cycles. Closest congressional race in American history, six votes — that was 2020.

2022, the closest loss-

Over Eastern Iowa, right?

Yeah, that's right. 2022, closest loss for a Democratic incumbent member of Congress, half a point. 2024, closest loss for a Democratic challenger, 700 votes again in southeast Iowa. I won statewide in 2022, and there were two other statewide Democrats that each lost by like one point. So you still got a lot of people in the state of Iowa that are voting for Democrats and comfortable voting for multiple Democrats; it's just not quite as many as they have in the past.

And now we're in a situation where we are 48th over the last three years for personal income growth on average. We're number one for cancer growth. Our education system, which used to be the best, is in the bottom half. And they think that the problem that they need to address is that the state auditor's office found too much misspent money, and they passed a lot to make it harder for us to find misspent money. So there are a lot of people in this state who are looking around, being like, ‘I've been voting for Republicans, but they seem to be acting a lot more like politicians than anything else right now.’

But it feels like, tell me if I'm wrong, your challenge is less about you or your opponent and more about ‘Can I convince enough people in this state who pulled the lever for Trump three times that yeah, it's safe to vote for a Democrat for governor.’ Polarization is your opponent, right? 

Polarization is a fact that exists in the world. It is something that I have constantly harped on being a way to exploit us so people can pick our pockets. And I talk about the fact that both parties do that. One-party control is not an effective way to govern. In this state, every time they have gone for President Trump, they have then turned around and also elected me. So a lot of that isn't convincing people. It's just continuing to do what I do. I go everywhere. I talk to everybody. I've prosecuted Democrats and Republicans; we audited Democrats and Republicans, and I think people appreciate that.

You're a Democrat, but you gave a talk here at the state fair, I think on the soapbox, where you basically said, ‘I sort of had to pick a party, but I'm not much of a Democrat.’ Why are you a Democrat? 

Well, I say at my town halls: I first registered as an independent, then I realized I had to register with one in order to vote in a primary, which I do think is un-American.

You want open primaries?

I want a single open primary. Alaska is the closest to what I think is a good way to do it. I don't think that either of the major parties should have special legal privileges where they can tell you that you're not allowed to vote when your tax dollars are paying for it, and you have a constitutional right to vote. You shouldn't have to join a private club to do it.

That said, in my 20s, I did it. I’ve talked about four basic reasons. I think that the Democratic party tends to be the party looking out for the little guy. I really like to have clean water to fish in and to drink. And I like to have public land because I think that everybody should be able to go hunting or fishing and it shouldn't be that you have to be rich enough to own land in order to do that. And then I remember Bill Clinton balancing the budget and using the surplus to pay down the debt. And so when I was in my early 20s and it was like, ‘Well, you got to register with a party to vote in the primary,’ I was like, ‘All right, I'll be a Democrat.’ But that didn't mean that I left my independent mind behind.

Have you ever voted for a Republican?

Yeah.

Statewide or for president?

Statewide.

Who was it? 

Let’s see, it would have been ’14, voted for Bill Northey for secretary of agriculture. I know I voted for Chuck Grassley. It's been a minute. The way that Grassley does things now is not the Grassley of old. I used to vote for Chuck Gipp, who was a Republican representative from my neck of the woods in Decorah.

You think it's good for Iowa to have Chuck Grassley in the Senate into his 90s? 

No. We should have age limits — I proposed it. 78, thank you for your service. Term limits: 20 years, thank you for your service.

Would Iowa be hurt by losing that seniority, though?

If we make a rule that no state can have somebody out there that long, then it affects all the states equally.

Let me ask you about your party. Where do Democrats go wrong in rural America? And why is the brand in such bad shape? I think about places like Howard County, Iowa. Obama carried that. And Trump just comes in and rolls in that kind of a place. North, central Iowa, rural parts of Iowa. Why is the Democratic brand in such bad shape in those kinds of places? 

I guess at the end of the day what I would say is there are a lot of folks out there that actually don't vote on party. Howard County, you picked it — single biggest swing county in America, 40-point swing. And I know this, this is my neck of the woods. I grew up in Winneshiek, one county over, so these are my people, and I actually think that many of them voted for Obama twice and for Trump for the same reason, not because these people changed, but because those two guys are the same in a way. They're true to themselves, and they don't feel or act like ordinary politicians. Look at who the Democrats nominated for three presidential cycles in a row: insiders.

When Democrats tend to nominate insiders, they lose presidentials. When they nominate people who can run as change agents, as outsiders, they tend to win, right? 

I think that's reasonable.

Obama, Clinton, Carter, JFK. Biden ’20 is the exception because of Covid-19 and Trump.

I think at the end of the day, most Iowans want to have somebody that's willing to be themselves and say what they think.

But Rob, isn't part of your party's challenge in rural Iowa, cultural issues? Every campaign season, Republicans go back to the well and they hold up a handful of cultural issues that just doom you guys.

Maybe.

How do you get around that? 

I don't know, I'm me, right? I grew up hunting and fishing. I go to church on Sundays. My first job was catching chickens. There's a lot of people in my party who are much more focused on other cultural stuff.

Where do you differ from your party? 

Well, I have said consistently, I think that fairness rules the day in girls' sports. I think that if we are helping you afford food, you shouldn't be buying sugary drinks with it. We don't want you to build bad nutrition habits that then lead to additional health care costs later on. The border was obviously a mess under the Biden administration. That is a national security issue. We need to have a common-sense system that works there.

You don't want biological boys playing in high school girls' sports?

Whatever it was you said — if you said what I said, then that's what I said. Everybody gets hard on the language; they get mad if you use this word or that word. I just think girls' sports are for girls and boys’ sports are for boys. And I think that that's fair and reasonable. But at the same time, look, I respect a woman's right to choose and reproductive freedom. If you want to get a gay marriage, help yourself.

2006, last time Democrats won the governor's race here. Had an unpopular Republican president, unpopular war in the Middle East, gas prices were high. It does feel like you picked the right cycle to run for governor, right? I mean, as they say in politics, better be lucky than good, right?  

Maybe, but I got elected in 2018 the first time.

Pretty good Democratic year. 

Pretty good Democratic year. We had Tom Miller and Mike Fitzgerald in statewide down-ballot office their whole lives, right? Tom had run for governor once a long time ago, but they both had literally held statewide down-ballot offices for 40 years. I was running with pretty young kids, and my attitude at the time was: I had worked with the state auditor's office, I loved the work they did. I thought, you know, that's a job I could do for a while as our kids get older. Then, after we uncovered a record amount of misspent money in my first term, after I got re-elected, they literally made it harder for us to find misspent money, which clarified two things to me.

Number one: I mean, I'm not here to have a title. I want to do good work. And if they can block the auditor from auditing, then what good work can I do in this job? And number two, it really clarified to me just how bad the corruption has gotten in the Capitol building in Des Moines. That they would literally vote for a law that every single government watchdog in America says is gonna lead to an increase in waste, fraud and abuse? And so at that point, it was kind of like, ‘Well, we're going. And I don't know if it's gonna be a good year or a bad year, but we're going.’

Do you think Governor Reynolds was a failure? 

I don't think you need to put a label on it. I have said many times, I'm glad they put limits on phones in schools. I wouldn't have done the state government reorganization at the way they did it, but we did not need to have 37 cabinet-level agencies. But look at where we are right now. Have they screwed every single thing up? There are some things that I'm happy to say have been done right. But we are 48th for personal income growth. We are number one for cancer growth. Our water quality is scaring people away from the state. Our economy is in the dumps. And they're running around making it harder for the state auditor's office to find misspent money.

Because you've gotten to know some of these folks, who are governors that you admire today?

I mean, doesn't everybody love Phil Scott?

Phil Scott is the Republican governor of Vermont.

Yeah, I know.

So why do you like Phil Scott?

When I meet somebody from Vermont, because everybody loves Phil Scott, I ask them why they love Phil Scott, and they're like, ‘Because he's a pretty regular guy who's willing to go anywhere and talk anywhere,’ which has always been kind of my approach too. Spencer Cox and I followed each other on Twitter from back in the day, and we have a very similar approach in terms of civility.

He's the Republican governor of Utah. More of a moderate. So, you've mentioned two Republicans so far. What about your party? 

I think Beshear is doing great. If you can win in a state that leans the other way, like Phil Scott does, like Andy Beshear does, I always go back to “blessed are the peacemakers.” We need to be elevating people right now who can sit people down, have a conversation and find a way to make an agreement with someone that you would assume that you disagree with.

Would you want to have Beshear come campaign for you here in Iowa?

He was here in June.

There are some candidates, obviously, who wouldn't be helpful necessarily to you here, right?

Probably. Yeah.

Would you wanna have Joe Biden here campaign for you?

No. Can he even do that right now?

How about Kamala Harris?

No thanks. Let's move on. We need some new leadership.

You don't think Harris should run in 2028?

No.

What is your view as to what the best option is for Democrats in 2028? You don't have to name names. Well, you can if you want. But should there be a governor, somebody not from D.C., as your nominee?

You got my gut reaction on a couple. I don't know what the answer to that is. I got an election in 75 days. We just had news this week about this cancer vaccine for skin cancer, and my opponent wants to ban vaccines like that. I'm pretty focused on what we've got going on right here in Iowa. Those are conversations for down the road. But even then, what I find so weird about the national politics stuff is like, I am the state auditor of Iowa running to be the governor of Iowa — no matter who you ask me my opinion on, it's kind of like well I know that people like Phil Scott in Vermont, I ask them why, but I don't think I've ever met the guy.

You made an important point, Rob, which is that Democrats tend to do better when they don't run the insiders, right? They tend to reward folks for being outsiders. 

You're asking a guy who was a registered independent first. I don't tend to like the party politics stuff. I think that we have a fundamentally broken two-choice political system. I don't think that either the Democratic or the Republican parties are solving enough problems or deserve special legal privileges in order to force us to pick between the lesser of two evils. My inclination is that I want it to be shaken up.

Do you want to run for president one day?

No.

Would you be open to being on a ticket as VP?

No.

Never going to happen?

No.

I don't believe you. Come on, really?

I told you my answer. You don't have to believe me.

You have no interest in national politics. 

If you could tell your party anything about how to win again in a place like Iowa — just one riff — it could be policy, it could be tone, it could be vibes, whatever. What would it be? 

I don't know. I've never thought about that before. I guess actions speak louder than words. So what do I do when I'm in Iowa? I go everywhere. I talk to everybody. I take questions. You might have seen this fun moment. I take questions from my loving internet trolls at my town hall.

I saw that. Why do you do that?

Why? Because we're supposed to respect each other and we're supposed to be together. And my faith teaches me to love my enemy. I don't think Gary Loeffler is my enemy, but in politics he certainly may behave like it. We're supposed to turn the other cheek, and I think at the end of the day, politics is supposed to be about bringing people together. And if you're willing to take the heat, then I think you're doing it the right way, win or lose.

And you start your town halls by having people sing “America the Beautiful,” right? How's your voice?

It's okay. I can sing. So I have the microphone down here, and I step to the side. I want people to see the flag and see each other.

Why do you do that?

Because it's about them. And before we sing, I have folks raise their hand for which party they're in and applaud their neighbors that are in the other political parties. Which is important to do before you sing. We're not singing this song pretending that we agree on everything. We're not singing this song pretending that we're in a room that has all one group of people in it. We're singing the song acknowledging that we all live here together, that we are members of the same community, that our lives impact each other, and that actually, even a broken clock is right twice a day. If we listen to each other and actually have real honest conversations, we can get somewhere that we haven't been getting to for a long time.

Call me a skeptic, but isn't some of that stagecraft to convince fairly conservative Iowans that you're not a liberal Democrat? 

Nope. Believe whatever you want. I love doing it. Even after having done it 160 times on this campaign, there are some times where I have to stop singing because I'm feeling it.

I want to end with this — a lot of folks have heard of Rob Sand by now. You're not exactly the sort of long shot that's gonna emerge on the national scene. My colleague Adam Wren did a really nice story about you a few months back in your campaign. 

But what some folks may not know is that Rob Sand grew up in Decorah, but went east to Brown University. Smart guy. You were a Truman Scholar at Brown. And you made some money in college when you were in your 20s on the side as a beefcake model. You were posing for pictures with this come-hither stare, man. Tell me about how you got into modeling.

I gotta say: Can we get a fact check on beefcake?

They weren't hiring me to be the model, bro! Tell me how you got into that.

Decorah is a town of like 8,000 people. There's a lady who ran a photo shop called Positive Images, and a friend of mine took my senior pictures. But every time I took them into Positive Images to get them blown up, she was like, ‘Have you ever thought about that?’ And I was like, ‘No,’ but then she said it like three times. And then when I got to college, things were expensive. Costs were up compared to Iowa, and I thought I could use some money.

Are any of those pictures currently framed and in your house?

Are you kidding me?

Do you have a favorite one where you were posing?

No.

How was the money? Was it pretty good?

The women get paid a lot better than the men. It helped me pay rent for a couple of years, so it was good.

Does your wife give you a hard time about that now?

No, she doesn't really care.

Rob Sand. Iowan deer hunter. Former model. Now running for governor of the Hawkeye State. As a Democrat who also likes a lot of Republicans, including the governors, and most importantly, got his tenderloin here.

Tenderloin eater.