Rob Sand

Rob Sand’s early civic project was helping get a skatepark built while he was a high school student in Decorah.¹ He grew up hunting and fishing with his father and still enjoys bowhunting, cycling and fishing.¹ He and his wife, Christine, have two sons and a dog named Pow.¹

His path from Brown University to law school included a few modeling jobs in Europe before he became a prosecutor.² As an assistant Iowa attorney general, he handled public corruption cases and prosecuted the multistate lottery rigging scheme involving Eddie Tipton.¹ Tipton and two associates pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges arising from manipulated lottery drawings, and Sand later wrote about the case in The Winning Ticket.³¹

Iowans elected him state auditor in 2018 and again in 2022.¹ He established the Public Innovations and Efficiencies program, which recognizes efforts by local governments and schools to use public money more efficiently.¹ He also opposed the 2023 law limiting the auditor’s access to certain information and ability to enforce subpoenas against state entities in court.⁴

Against Republican Zach Lahn, Sand proposes ending privatized Medicaid administration and imposing income limits on private school tuition assistance.⁵ Their education disagreement would determine whether the governor supports preserving universal voucher eligibility, as Lahn does, or restricting the program by family income.⁶