Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for Iowa governor, bluntly rejected any campaign assistance from Joe Biden or Kamala Harris during an interview with POLITICO.

“Would you want to have Joe Biden here, campaigning for you?” POLITICO senior political columnist Jonathan Martin asked the State Auditor of Iowa.

“No. Can he even do that right now? I’m sorry,” Sand responded.

“How about Kamala Harris?” Martin questioned.

“No thanks. Let’s move on. We need some new leadership,” Sand answered.

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“You don’t think Harris should run in 2028?” Martin asked.

“Nope,” Sand said.

In the interview, Sand said he’s not fond of either the Republican or Democratic party.

“You’re asking a guy who was a registered independent first. I don’t tend to like the party politics stuff,” Sand explained.

“I think we have a fundamentally broken two choice political system. I don’t think that either the Democratic or the Republican parties is solving enough problems to deserve special legal privileges in order to force us to pick between the lesser of two evils,” Sand continued.

“My inclination is I want it to be shaken up,” he added.

“First high-profile Dem to answer this question directly,” Martin wrote.

“You’d think that after saying one thing in public and another in private from ‘21-June ‘24 about Biden and Kamala, more Dems would live their truth,” he added.

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More from The Guardian:

Prominent national Democrats have often dodged the question when asked directly, saying it is Harris’s choice or that the 2028 presidential field is too far away for them to opine.

Harris, the former US vice-president who lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump, has not said whether she would seek another run for president – only saying she has “not made a decision”.

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Mary Peltola, a Democrat running in Alaska who similarly needs to win over non-Democrats to flip a US Senate seat, rejected support from Harris, who sent a fundraising email on Peltola’s behalf that appeared to be unsolicited by the candidate. Peltola’s campaign said she “isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48 – her focus is and always will be Alaska”.

Sand, expanding on his thoughts, noted to Politico that he is the state auditor of Iowa and running to be governor, so his focus is on his own state and the issues that affect its people and differentiate him from his opponent, Republican Zach Lahn.

He also gave a blunt “no” when asked if he would one day run for president, or be open to being tapped as a vice-presidential candidate.

“Rob Sand is an out of touch billionaire who wants to raise your taxes by $7,500 per year. I’ll always fight for Iowa families— because I know how hard you work,” Republican candidate Zach Lahn said in a recent ad.

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Lahn shared a State Fair Straw poll that showed him leading Sand 63 percent to 36 percent.

“Don’t forget: my opponent is a human being. We can have a debate without lying or demonizing,” Sand wrote on Tuesday.

“Politics is oftentimes pretty stupid. I think that we can acknowledge that me and my opponent are human beings, and that everyone who runs for office should be willing to do that because it’s important,” Sand said at a town hall.

“Now, I still think that I’m the better choice. And I’ll tell you why, but I’m not going to do it without asking you first to keep in mind that this is a debate between two human beings, and we don’t need to demonize people, and we don’t need to lie about them either,” he added.

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Other polls show a competitive race between Sand and Lahn, with the Democratic candidate holding a slight advantage.

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Iowa Capital Dispatch explained further:

Though Iowa has seen major Republican victories in the last several election cycles, a poll from Suffolk University Political Research Center published Wednesday found the races for U.S. Senate and governor are shaping up to be highly competitive.

In the Senate race between Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson and state Rep. Josh Turek, a Democrat, Hinson leads with 45% to 41% among likely voters, according to the poll. Libertarian candidate Thomas Laehn was the top choice for 4% of respondents.

Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand led in the poll for the gubernatorial race with 48% to Republican nominee Zach Lahn’s 44%. The poll of 500 likely midterm voters, conducted between Aug. 20 and 23, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points — meaning both races fall within the statistical margin of error.

These results were reflected in a 300-person “bellwether” poll also conducted by Suffolk University in Muscatine County with 300 likely voters conducted Aug. 17-19. That sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points. In the Muscatine County poll, Hinson led Turek 44% to 40%, and Sand led Lahn 48% to 44%.

In a news release, David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said these results are important to note because of how decisively President Donald Trump and other Republicans have won in previous election cycles.

“Keep in mind this is a state that Donald Trump won by more than 13 points in 2024,” Paleologos said. “The fact that both of these races are within the statistical margin of error in a survey where the same voters selected Trump by double digits speaks volumes about where these races stand right now.”

Trump won Iowa in the past three presidential election cycles. Iowa also currently has an all-Republican federal delegation, as well as a GOP trifecta at the Statehouse. Sand is the only Democrat to currently hold statewide elected office.

 

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