\n<\/p>\n
R<\/span>ob Sand, the best-known Democrat<\/a> in Iowa<\/a>, appears on podcasts to discuss his love of hunting, begins rallies by having the audience sing America the Beautiful and has a tendency to criticize the country\u2019s two-party political system.<\/p>\n Now, Sand is running to lead a state that Republicans<\/a> have come to dominate under Donald Trump, and Democrats believe his candidacy for governor could be the breakthrough needed to win key Iowa offices in the November midterm elections.<\/p>\n With Trump\u2019s approval ratings deep underwater<\/a>, gas prices high<\/a> and historical political trends favoring<\/a> the party out of power, Democrats this year are considering a comeback in Iowa, putting the state at the center of their campaigns to win back control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate. On Tuesday, voters will cast ballots in primary elections that set the stage for months of what is likely to be fevered campaigning by candidates of both parties.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us to be able to win here in Iowa. I mean, this is a state that has completely hit the bottom,\u201d said Josh Turek, a state representative who is one of two Democrats<\/a> vying to represent Iowa in the US Senate.<\/p>\n Democrats in Iowa have little to lose, and much to gain. The state played a pivotal role<\/a> in elevating Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, but since then, Republicans have become the dominant party, controlling the governor\u2019s mansion since 2011, both US Senate seats since 2015 and all of its US House seats since 2023.<\/p>\n This year, Democrats believe they have a shot at winning three of the state\u2019s US House seats, gains that could prove pivotal in putting them back into the majority in the Congress\u2019s lower chamber. They are also expected to be competitive in the race to succeed Joni Ernst, the Republican who is retiring<\/a> as Iowa\u2019s junior senator.<\/p>\n Sand, the auditor who is the last Democrat holding statewide-elected office in Iowa<\/a>, is considered a strong contender to replace the state\u2019s retiring Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.<\/p>\n On the campaign trail, he has shied away from embracing Democratic shibboleths while criticizing Republicans for leading Iowa astray, noting that the state\u2019s economy is struggling<\/a> while cancer rates are surging<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m going to emphasize is that our democracy is run by two private clubs who have a lot of people in them who are happier to have you hate your uncle if they can wring another $10 donation out of you,\u201d he told MS NOW in an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re more focused on that than solving the problems that we face.\u201d<\/p>\n While Sand is unopposed for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, five Republicans<\/a> are running in their party\u2019s primary, with Randy Feenstra, a congressman representing Iowa\u2019s conservative northwestern corner, and Zach Lahn, a farmer and businessman, as the top fundraisers.<\/p>\n In April, the Cook Political Report shifted their rating of Iowa\u2019s gubernatorial election from \u201cleans Republican\u201d to \u201ctoss up\u201d, a change Iowa\u2019s Republican party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, blasted on social media as \u201clazy, na\u00efve\u201d and reliant on internal polling from the Sand campaign. For Democrats, the rating underscored Sand\u2019s position not only as a force in his own right, but also the sort of name that can lead the party\u2019s ticket and boost other candidates further down the ballot.<\/p>\n S<\/span>igns are mounting that national Republicans are taking the Democratic offensive seriously. Last month, the main Super Pac for Republican senators, the Senate Leadership Fund, announced it would spend $29m in Iowa \u2013 just two years after Trump won it by 13 points, his largest margin ever.<\/p>\n \u201cHere in Iowa, we see Iowa as a purple state. So we don\u2019t see Iowa as a ruby red state,\u201d said the Republican congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, adding that the infusion of money to defend the Senate seat was \u201cnot unusual at all, and I don\u2019t think it necessarily has any impact on whether or not policies are liked or appreciated, or who the president is\u201d.<\/p>\n First elected to her south-eastern Iowa district by six votes in 2020, she beat her Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by about 800 votes in 2024, and is viewed as the most vulnerable member of Iowa\u2019s House delegation.<\/p>\n By \u201cjust historical precedent alone, [it] is going to be a challenging year\u201d, Miller-Meeks said.<\/p>\n A former state house representative who teaches law at the University of Iowa, Bohannan believes the name recognition she has generated from her two previous runs against Miller-Meeks, coupled with Trump\u2019s unpopularity, will boost her campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cThousands and thousands of Trump voters voted for me last cycle because I went out and met them where they are,\u201d Bohannan said, noting she outperformed Harris in the district in 2024. \u201cI\u2019ve established trust and relationships with them across party, and those relationships now [are] something that we\u2019re building on.\u201d<\/p>\n She is being challenged in the primary by Travis Terrell, whose campaign has raised about $21,000 to Bohannan\u2019s $5.6m, according to the Federal Election Commission.<\/p>\n One of the state\u2019s most contentious primaries is for the Democratic Senate nomination, where Turek has clashed with state senator Zach Wahls over which candidate is better suited to appeal to the state\u2019s right-leaning voters.<\/p>\n Wahls, whose 2011 speech<\/a> to the Iowa legislature about being raised by two mothers became a social media sensation, has accused Turek of being backed by \u201cmillions of anonymous dark money dollars\u201d and being supported by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic US Senate minority leader whose strategic choices have drawn the ire<\/a> of some in the party. VoteVets, a Pac dedicated to electing military veterans that had previously received money from Senate Democrats\u2019 campaign fund, has spent about $5m on advertisements and other expenditures in Turek\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to have a hope and a prayer, a shot at winning this race in November, if you think it is going to be easier to do that with the candidate who refuses to distance himself from Democrats in DC, than [with] somebody who is willing to be honest with voters about the failures of Democratic party leaders, you know, I think you made a fundamental error in your calculation,\u201d Wahls said.<\/p>\n Turek, who was born with spina bifida from his father\u2019s exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam and uses a wheelchair, has countered by arguing that he is more electable, noting he represents a right-leaning district in western Iowa, while Wahls\u2019s eastern Iowa district is heavily Democratic.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is about electability, and on that, I don\u2019t think there is much of a comparison,\u201d Turek said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something specific about my story and background and r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that has this unique ability to win over independents and moderate Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n Schumer has not made an endorsement in the race, but other high-profile Democrats have. Senator Elizabeth Warren and the former eastern Iowa congressman Dave Loebsack are backing Wahls, while the former Iowa senator Tom Harkin and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg are backing Turek, in addition to four sitting US senators.<\/p>\n The Democratic nominee will face off against congresswoman Ashley Hinson in the Senate race, who is running unopposed and with Trump\u2019s endorsement in the Republican primary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rob Sand, the best-known Democrat in Iowa, appears on podcasts to discuss his love of hunting, begins rallies by having<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/93a2ce611b961da94fd10cc97d3a97eac053429d\/730_0_7181_5744\/master\/7181.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=95a0eee8f9c544a2068fc316c051e376","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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