‘Our democracy is run by two private clubs’: can a pro-hunting Democrat lead a blue wave in Iowa?

Rob Sand, the best-known Democrat in Iowa, 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’s two-party political system.

Now, Sand is running to lead a state that Republicans 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.

With Trump’s approval ratings deep underwater, gas prices high and historical political trends favoring 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.

“I 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,” said Josh Turek, a state representative who is one of two Democrats vying to represent Iowa in the US Senate.

Democrats in Iowa have little to lose, and much to gain. The state played a pivotal role in elevating Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, but since then, Republicans have become the dominant party, controlling the governor’s mansion since 2011, both US Senate seats since 2015 and all of its US House seats since 2023.

This year, Democrats believe they have a shot at winning three of the state’s US House seats, gains that could prove pivotal in putting them back into the majority in the Congress’s lower chamber. They are also expected to be competitive in the race to succeed Joni Ernst, the Republican who is retiring as Iowa’s junior senator.

Sand, the auditor who is the last Democrat holding statewide-elected office in Iowa, is considered a strong contender to replace the state’s retiring Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.

On the campaign trail, he has shied away from embracing Democratic shibboleths while criticizing Republicans for leading Iowa astray, noting that the state’s economy is struggling while cancer rates are surging.

“What I’m 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 ring another $10 donation out of you,” he told MS NOW in an interview.

“They’re more focused on that than solving the problems that we face.”

While Sand is unopposed for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, five Republicans are running in their party’s primary, with Randy Feenstra, a congressman representing Iowa’s conservative northwestern corner, and Zach Lahn, a farmer and businessman, as the top fundraisers.

In April, the Cook Political Report shifted their rating of Iowa’s gubernatorial election from “leans Republican” to “toss up”, a change Iowa’s Republican party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, blasted on social media as “lazy, naïve” and reliant on internal polling from the Sand campaign. For Democrats, the rating underscored Sand’s position not only as a force in his own right, but also the sort of name that can lead the party’s ticket and boost other candidates further down the ballot.

Signs 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 – just two years after Trump won it by 13 points, his largest margin ever.

“Here in Iowa, we see Iowa as a purple state. So we don’t see Iowa as a ruby red state,” said the Republican congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, adding that the infusion of money to defend the Senate seat was “not unusual at all, and I don’t think it necessarily has any impact on whether or not policies are liked or appreciated, or who the president is”.

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’s House delegation.

By “just historical precedent alone, [it] is going to be a challenging year”, Miller-Meeks said.

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’s unpopularity, will boost her campaign.

“Thousands and thousands of Trump voters voted for me last cycle because I went out and met them where they are,” Bohannan said, noting she outperformed Harris in the district in 2024. “I’ve established trust and relationships with them across party, and those relationships now [are] something that we’re building on.”

She is being challenged in the primary by Travis Terrell, whose campaign has raised about $21,000 to Bohannan’s $5.6m, according to the Federal Election Commission.

One of the state’s 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’s right-leaning voters.

Wahls, whose 2011 speech to the Iowa legislature about being raised by two mothers became a social media sensation, has accused Turek of being backed by “millions of anonymous dark money dollars” and being supported by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic US Senate minority leader whose strategic choices have drawn the ire of some in the party. VoteVets, a Pac dedicated to electing military veterans that had previously received money from Senate Democrats’ campaign fund, has spent about $5m on advertisements and other expenditures in Turek’s favor.

“If 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,” Wahls said.

Turek, who was born with spina bifida from his father’s 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’s eastern Iowa district is heavily Democratic.

“This is about electability, and on that, I don’t think there is much of a comparison,” Turek said.

“There’s something specific about my story and background and résumé that has this unique ability to win over independents and moderate Republicans.”

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.

The Democratic nominee will face off against congresswoman Ashley Hinson in the Senate race, who is running unopposed and with Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary.