Episode description:

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

When Eric interviewed Rob Sand last summer, his run for Iowa governor had more than a whiff of tilting at windmills. He remains the only Democrat to hold statewide elected office in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the governorship in more than 20 years and that Trump carried in 2024 by 13 points.

Sand’s prospects have drastically improved. Nothing quixotic about it now. He has run a campaign that may be one of the most bi-partisan in the country, by accusing both parties as out of touch with Iowans. His Republican opponent, Zach Lahn, has vulnerabilities, including that he voted in Kansas until recently, allowing Sand’s campaign to label him a carpetbagger.

Which is why we decided to encore last summer’s interview. We’ll hear how Sand plans to persuade Republicans to cross party lines and vote for him. We’ll hear what personal qualities he thinks can bridge political divides and how, in his own life, he manages to avoid being trapped in the filter bubbles that make America’s media ecosystem so toxic to civil discourse.

Imagine an election in which the deciding principle isn’t ‘let’s choose the lesser of two evils’, but rather, ‘may the best man win’. What a concept.

 

Transcript

Eric Schurenberg (00:01.282)
Rob Sand, welcome to In Reality.

Rob Sand (00:03.847)
Thanks for having me, Eric. I appreciate it.

Eric Schurenberg (00:05.666)
That’s great to have you here. Now, Rob, you’re the Iowa State Auditor, the only Democrat holding statewide elected office in a state that has swung sharply Republican in the Trump era. I think that most people would agree that you’re taking on an uphill battle. Why are you doing this?

Rob Sand (00:25.383)
I mean, number one, the state of things in the state of Iowa is that we need change. Everyone’s heard the phrase power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. I think that we can say in Iowa, it also takes 10 years of one party control. Then that’s what you get to because the bottom line here is my first term in office, we uncovered a record amount of misspent money.

The response to that was that I got re-elected, but the response to me getting re-elected from the folks who run the show in Des Moines was literally changing the law so that state government could hide waste and abuse from the auditor’s office. It’s just one of those things that, a little too far there. So I feel really good about.

some accountability for people in those positions of trust and power who have looked at that situation and said, okay, the answer to this problem is stopping that guy from doing his job rather than doing our job better.

Eric Schurenberg (01:28.034)
Yeah, I know in your campaign you use a farm metaphor of rotating the crops. Seems applicable here. So just to our little background, what does the state auditor do exactly and how does that prepare you for this role?

Rob Sand (01:34.779)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Rob Sand (01:43.621)
It’s a good question. It sort of varies state to state. So in Iowa, the easiest way to understand it is taxpayers watchdog. So we do Iowa’s audit for the state. We audit local entities as well. We do public corruption investigations, which is how I got to know the office well. I had before running been the chief public corruption prosecutor for the state of Iowa.

And then we also, since my first term, we do a lot of efficiency promotion to save tax dollars. We started a government efficiency program in my first term that’s been copied in a couple of other states. So very effective way to save tax dollars.

Eric Schurenberg (02:25.738)
One of the tests that you’re taking on has to be the ability to hold civil conversations with people whose worldview you don’t agree with. It’s a skill that a lot of Americans have let go to waste in recent years. Talk about your philosophy about how to hold those conversations.

Rob Sand (02:47.569)
You know, Eric, I think a lot of us have just sort of slipped into these bubbles. I think these bubbles are oftentimes reinforced by social media, where we oftentimes see the most dismissive, the most self-righteous posts or tweets get the most support. And I just…

It doesn’t work in real life. That’s not the way that we get along when we’re talking face to face. And I think one of our primary problems right now is that we are so divided. And then of course we have a political system that reinforces that because you have only two choices. So my approach to that is different because the ordinary political approach to that system is sort of like, well, if I feel like I can reliably carve 51 %

or 53 % out in the general election and the only thing I have to do is worry about my primary and I’m going to model frankly frustrating the other side and bullying the other side. I don’t want to do that. I don’t think that works. I don’t think it’s good for us. It might work for a political candidate politically.

But I think we need public servants, not politicians. And what’s going to work for us public, for all of us together, is to actually figure out how to get along. so that’s always been important to me. My senior leadership team in the auditor’s office has always been Democrat, independent, Republican. It’s always included people who have made campaign contributions to my opponent from 2018.

And when we start my town halls that I’m doing this year, number one, we tell people in advance that we’re coming and that everyone is welcome. And then we actually, you know, I’m a Democrat. We have people raise their hand if they’re Republicans. We applaud for them. We have them raise their hand if they’re independents. We applaud for them. We have the Democrats raise their hand. We applaud for them. And then we sing the first verse of America, the Beautiful together. And this it’s just an experience that

Rob Sand (05:01.733)
reminds us that we are supposed to be on the same team, all of us together, where, you know, maybe there’s some tension there, there’s some disagreements on how we feel about things, but at the end of the day, we’re still supposed to be coming together to actually figure out a way forward rather than just beating up on each other.

Eric Schurenberg (05:17.429)
Yeah, yeah, that is admirable and maybe all too rare. Now you were talking a few minutes ago about the filter bubbles and how social media and the incentives that are built into social media algorithms and political system kind of reinforce division. The conservative media repeat a number of narratives about Democrats that were pretty successful, I have to say, in the 20…

Rob Sand (05:34.397)
Yeah.

Eric Schurenberg (05:46.862)
24 elections. So they’re likely to be leveled against you as you get closer to the general election. So I’m curious, I’d like to run them past you and get your response. So one of those Republican or conservative narratives is that the Democrats are the party of chaos. The democratic cities are filled with crime and crippled by a wave of illegal immigrants.

Rob Sand (05:58.878)
Sure.

Eric Schurenberg (06:16.065)
You need a Republican governor in Iowa to avoid the fate of Washington and San Francisco or Chicago. How do you respond to

Rob Sand (06:25.923)
I spent seven years as a prosecutor. I wasn’t just prosecuting public corruption. I prosecuted violent crime too. There’s not going to be anyone in this race who has worked harder and done more to actually improve public safety in this state than I have.

Eric Schurenberg (06:43.103)
All right. All right. Here’s another one. The Democrats are the party of unbridled illegal immigration. That’s going to put untenable burdens on states like Iowa to support those illegal immigrants with healthcare and schools and extra police. What’s your view on immigration?

Rob Sand (07:05.587)
I certainly would say that the Biden administration messed this one up. They should have done a better job with border security. They should have done it from the start. I’m a big supporter of legal immigration, but I do think that we want to make sure that when people are here that

everything’s squared away and they’ve been admitted and they’re here legally. That’s not only how we make sure we know that the folks who are coming in are folks that we where we don’t have concerns about violent criminal records, but it also means that if they’re here they also have those legal protections that they need so that they’re not exploited by their employers or their landlords or anyone else.

Eric Schurenberg (07:55.106)
Another one. Democrats are the party of arrogance and elitism and condescension. They look down on us, Iowans from Hollywood and Silicon Valley and Wall Street, prefer to lecture us rather than listen to us. What’s your response?

Rob Sand (08:14.223)
So there are definitely people in my party that fit that description. The title of the book, What’s the Matter with Kansas has always really annoyed me because what they’re doing in the book is they’re judging people who are relatively lower income for voting based on reasons that have to do not with their economic status, right?

And yet we would never see that book written about wealthy people in New York or California who were voting for Democrats who thought that more taxes for rich people were a good idea. I think there is a lot of condescension in the Democratic Party. Me? I actually go to a hundred, I do a hundred public town halls every single year. I invite the public. I take questions from everybody.

I take all those questions seriously. You’re not going to find any Republicans in the state of Iowa who are as happy to meet every Iowan exactly where they are as I am. so, you know, bottom line to me on a lot of this stuff is I’m not going to disagree with you that there’s people in my party that fit that description. I’m just being me. And, and the other piece of this is again,

All these questions really at end of the day, and you’re right that these are sort of the stereotypes of the Democratic Party. These are things, and there’s stereotypes of the Republican Party that Democrats use too. These are things that just try to say there’s only two ways to think in America.

that you have to either be on red team or blue team. And that if you’re on one of those teams that you must be exactly like all the other people on that team. That is the most dangerous and destructive fiction in American politics today. Because it totally gives us, it tries to push us away from thinking, it tries to push us away from listening, and it tries to push us towards a world where people we love that we want to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner with,

Rob Sand (10:23.781)
it would have us judge them instead based on the worst act of somebody that they ever voted for. This is, it’s a terrible way of thinking. And you’re right that Republicans do this, but Democrats do it too. And the bottom line is we should really try to be, be trying to judge people based on who they are and what they believe. But until we end the system that is the lesser of two evils, until we actually have a,

Eric Schurenberg (10:34.765)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Sand (10:47.941)
electoral system where the public is in charge instead of two political parties, it’s going to be hard for us to get there. And I think that’s one of the most important reforms that we can have going forward because it would actually give us a system that’s a little more based in honesty and a little bit more based in civility and collaboration rather than this just sort of race to the bottom lesser of two evil stuff that we’ve had going for too long now.

Eric Schurenberg (11:11.819)
When you talk about the system of the lesser of two evils, you’re talking about the two-party system where it’s sufficient to vote for the lesser of two evils because they’re part of your tribe or they’re…

Rob Sand (11:21.959)
Yeah, and we’ve all felt this feeling, right? Like, well, this person’s never done anything for me, but that person is scary. Right? And the bottom line is folks in both parties, powerful people in both parties know you don’t really have to do the hard work of listening and figuring out what it is that’s wrong with Iowa’s mental health care system and trying to put a solution in place that’s complicated, but that people can support and it’s going to be effective. All of that is really hard work, but you could just get reelected if you demonize your opponent instead.

And it doesn’t mean I like the idea of additional parties. do. But mostly we just need to have more choices. I mean, if you had a general election where it was two Democrats and two Republicans, but instead of just having one vote that you felt like you sort of had to give to the one that you thought was more likely to win, you could do something like approval voting where you can vote for as many of them as you like. We would get candidates.

Eric Schurenberg (11:51.725)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Sand (12:20.531)
and elected officials who really have more of a reason to actually solve problems for people rather than just demonizing their only one opponent.

Eric Schurenberg (12:27.831)
Hmm. But let’s shift to the media landscape in Iowa and across the country. So one of the supposed lessons of the 2024 election was that the most powerful force in political media is not the journalistic institutions like the Wall Street Journal or the Des Moines Register, but rather the influencer ecosystem, the podcasters, the Joe Rogans, the Ben Shapiro’s.

What influence do you think that non-traditional media will play in your election and does traditional local media still play a role?

Rob Sand (13:05.028)
I think traditional local media certainly still plays a role.

particularly in local elections. As we go around the state, again, I’m a believer in accountability, and that means accountability for me. As we go around the state and we do 100 town halls, everywhere we go, the media is not only invited into that room, but we offer them 15 minutes before the event to ask other questions, where if they have a question about this, that, or the other thing that maybe isn’t something that we’re gonna get addressed, they have an opportunity to ask it. I think that’s really meaningful

because I think there’s more trust still in society at these local levels with local paper, local reporters, a little bit less so but still true for local news. And so I want people to have a chance to, the way I like to say it, poke me with a stick and see what comes out, you know?

I think that’s important for people. gives you, lets you get a measure of a person in the same way that a national podcast audience would, because you got to sit there and talk for a long time. You can’t just dodge, dodge, dodge for hours on end. and yet at the same time, you know, the national stuff, it’s

they’re focused on national stuff. They’re not necessarily focused on a state auditor’s race or a governor’s race. And so by giving people locally, whether they’re a local newspaper reporter or an Iowa focused podcaster, the opportunity to have me sit down, I think that’s just a good way to reach people. But again, you’re not gonna have candidates do that when they think that they don’t have to. You’re not gonna have candidates do that who are…

Rob Sand (14:41.379)
more focused on serving insiders or special interest groups than serving regular people. You’re not going to have candidates do that who know they can’t really defend their own record. And so part of the reason that we, that I’m very comfortable doing that is I, I work hard to make sure that I’m doing the right thing with every decision that I make. And if I sit down to talk through something, I can tell you exactly why did it.

Eric Schurenberg (15:06.727)
One of the things that people worry about with their representatives in government is that they’re not getting good information. Though you mentioned that there are filter bubbles, both sides of the political aisle have their own favorite narratives. And the problem with those narratives is that the more often you hear them, the more you believe them. That’s just human nature. And then when you hear news, you tend to fit it into the funnels of those narratives. What do you do?

to figure out what is true, what news to believe, and what is kind of trustworthy out there in the media ecosystem.

Rob Sand (15:39.911)
Yeah.

Rob Sand (15:45.618)
I actually think that’s such a good question because I feel like oftentimes, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the campaign trail, there’s a lot of complicated issues out there and it’s easy for a candidate to sort of grandstand by picking up someone else’s plan off of a shelf and waving it around to say, this is my plan. And then maybe they’ve got two or three talking points that they can use.

to describe that plan, but then they have to run away and talk about something else because they don’t understand it in depth and they don’t know why it didn’t include this thing or that thing. I, so my method is rather than doing that, I talk to everybody. I take the same approach that I took as a prosecutor. I took the same approach that I took as auditor. You want to talk to lots of different people. When you interview witnesses, you certainly weigh whether they might have any bias for any particular reason at all.

and you, and you incorporate that into your perspective on what they have to say and you read a lot about it. And at the end of all of that, for me, I think I can get myself to a place where not only do I have a good plan on, for example, water quality, where we’ve got some very serious water quality issues in the state of Iowa. But my plan is going to be something that I believe is going to be number one, effective.

It’s not just a bunch of stuff that we’re going to do to say, now we’ve helped on water quality, when in reality, these would be some of the less effective things we could do. So it’d be effective. Number two, it’d be achievable. Right? It’s not something that, you know, well, sure, that would have a huge impact on water quality, but it will never happen. It is totally unworkable. Right? I want it to be effective. I want it to be achievable. But the other piece of this is Eric, I want to be persuasive for people.

I want people to understand if I sit down and talk about this plan that I can bring them along to the point where I am with it with my plan because I can answer questions about it in great depth to the point where folks say, wow, okay, Sand has done his homework on this. That’s a pretty realistic plan and it’s a really good opportunity to make a positive difference. Because I think we’ve forgotten about the idea of persuasion. I think we’ve relied too much in our politics on just beating each other over the head.

Rob Sand (18:07.828)
But what I have found repeatedly in my life is when we actually bother to treat other people like intelligent human beings who actually are willing to put thought into things and try to persuade them that something we believe is correct, that they might also believe it’s correct, it’s actually pretty effective because these days it feels like we’re all just accustomed to being treated like we are idiots and being yelled at about something instead.

Eric Schurenberg (18:34.637)
For the final question, I’d like to pivot from persuasion to an adjacent quality trust and ask you kind of a philosophical question about it. So much of what people believe in their newsfeed and in their politicians derives around their personal identity, their tribal identity as a Republican or a Democrat. And these identities come with a kind of prescribed set of beliefs that you’re expected to hold.

Rob Sand (19:03.678)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Schurenberg (19:04.545)
But what you’re talking about in terms of persuasion and being judged on your own merits and not as a member of a particular tribe, you’re alluding, I think, to a higher level of trust, one that is higher than just saying, hey, I’m one of you. Look at the signals that I’m sending off. Stepping back philosophically, what are the elements of trust?

Rob Sand (19:31.465)
Boy, that’s a good question. mean, number one, transparency, right? You should be willing to answer any question. And just by opening yourself up, whether or not a question gets asked, people I think are inherently more willing to trust someone who sits down and says, you know, hit me with your best shot, right? I am here talking to you.

I don’t know what you’re going to ask me about. You might be someone that I inherently disagree with most of the time. Right. I went and did a public town hall with a very conservative group in Northwest Iowa. why did I do that? Again, because I’ve worked really hard to try to do the right thing. And I think that my values are the values that most Iowans share. And so when they have an opportunity to talk to me about it, I think that they’ll come around to say, okay, you know,

Sam’s doing what he thinks he should be doing and I appreciate that. I go on conservative radio a lot because I’m, you know, for the same reason. And I think that openness is an important element of trust because if someone hides and doesn’t, isn’t willing to answer questions, it only breeds suspicion. So transparency, would say is one piece of it. And this is, this might sound like transparency, but it’s a little bit different. Just openness, you know, about, about who you are.

Talking to people and letting them see a little bit more of your life I think is important too because people get to know you a little bit and that helps them understand, you know where you fit in So I’d say transparency about being questioned Openness about who you are. I think those are the two biggest ones and I think another piece of it too is

It’s a lot easier to trust people. I end up saying this in almost every town hall when I’m willing to tell you when I disagree with you. Right? So an openness to saying, I’m not going to make you happy on that issue. Because if you don’t, I think most of us in our heart of hearts, we understand that we are not going to have candidates that we agree with on 100 % of the issues. And so when candidates acknowledge that and they’re willing to say, well, this is one place where we disagree,

Eric Schurenberg (21:34.305)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rob Sand (21:50.212)
Then I think that people tend to understand, you’re not just saying what I want to hear. You’re not just going around to different audiences saying different things. You’re actually willing to stand up in front of me and say, well, look, this isn’t a place where we agree. I hope we’ll find other places that we do agree, but I’m not going to lie to you. I think that’s a great way to imbue trust for people because it again, just provides a level of comfort with, okay, I found the thing that I was afraid of finding, which was a disagreement, but actually.

We’re just having a disagreement and it’s totally fine, which makes me trust you more.

Eric Schurenberg (22:22.483)
Right, right. The thing that I knew was there and this candidate was frank about describing what it was. Rob Sand, thank you for joining us on In Reality and good luck with this campaign. We will be watching with a lot of interest.

Rob Sand (22:25.854)
That’s right.

Rob Sand (22:29.746)
Yeah.

Rob Sand (22:35.231)
Thanks, I appreciate that. All right, thanks again.

 

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Created & produced by: Podcast Partners / Published: Jun 23 2026

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