Zach Lahn, a businessman, and Rob Sand, a former Iowa assistant attorney general and two-term state auditor, are competing to succeed retiring Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has served as governor for nearly a decade.
The opponents faced off Tuesday night for a 90-minute debate where they discussed fraud, culture wars and data centers, and even found agreement on some issues.
The race in Iowa is the state’s first open gubernatorial showdown in 20 years, with Reynolds last year announcing she wouldn’t seek re-election.
Sand, the only Democrat to currently hold statewide office in Iowa, quickly became his party’s frontrunner and faced no opposition in this year’s primary.
Lahn, a self-described entrepreneur and farmer, had to navigate a crowded and contentious primary battle. He won a five-candidate Republican nomination race that included Rep. Randy Feenstra, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Sand is aiming to become the first Democrat in two decades elected governor in Iowa, a one-time swing state that’s shifted to the right over the past decade. The final Fox News Power Rankings ahead of Election Day rated the race between Lahn and Sand as Lean Democrat.
Here are the top five moments.
DRAG QUEENS, TRANS PASTOR, ABORTION RALLIES: INSIDE DEM GOVERNOR HOPEFUL’S PROGRESSIVE CHURCH
The candidates differed on several culture war issues, such as abortion, parental rights and childhood transgender concerns. Sand affirmed that he would refuse to sign any new bill that he deemed culturally “divisive.”
“The divisive stuff that people don’t agree on, let’s end that,” Sand said. “So vetoing culture war bills to me is just a different way to say I want us to put 100% of our legislating time into issues that impact 100% of Iowans.”
Sand also said that there is pressure from Republicans and the right to implement greater restrictions on abortion, even though the state has already implemented a six-week ban.
“It’s incredibly restrictive,” Sand said. “I do not think we have to go further but a lot of the folks in the legislature said when that ban became law that they want to go further. I would veto going further.”
Meanwhile, Lahn said he is “100%” behind culture battles being fought by conservatives.
“There is an issue with these ideologies infiltrating into our culture and I think parents, especially when we talk about some of these issues coming up in schools, they’re just looking for something they should be able to count on. And I think it is absolutely important that we put every single protection in place to make that our daughters are protected, that girls are protected, that women’s sports are protected,” Lahn said.
Lahn also said that he was motivated to run for office to protect the most vulnerable.
“That’s the lives of the unborn. That’s our daughters. That’s the young kids in school,” Lahn said.
Fraud and improper spending of taxpayer dollars was top of mind for both Lahn and Sand, but the candidates differed in their approaches to tackling corruption.
Sand, who used to be the state’s auditor, pushed for mandated audits on the state’s Education Savings Account program, calling it “common sense.”
“They’re not required to have audits, and they need to have rules for how that money gets spent,” Sand said. “Same things that would get you in trouble as a public school should get you in trouble as a private school if you’re taking public money. If you don’t want to abide by those rules, then you can continue to not take public money.”
Lahn said during his time as auditor he saw payments being made to dead people and accused Gov. Reynolds of signing a law known as Senate File 478, claiming it made it harder for auditors to do their job.
“They changed the law to make it harder for us to find misspent tax money,” Sand said. “This is something that every single government watchdog in America that weighed in on said would be a terrible law that would lead to an increase in waste, fraud and abuse.”
Meanwhile, Lahn maintained that schools should be audited by third parties instead of being under government oversight.
“I think third-party auditing is where it should go,” Lahn said. “I think we could do something very similar, which allows these schools to still have their privacy, but make sure that the funds are being spent properly.”
Lahn also raised concerns of improper Medicaid payments, pointing to the fraud allegations from Minnesota’s state program.
He argued for implementing advanced technologies like blockchain to ensure that money is being properly spent.
“This would create thousands of citizen auditors trying to find every single dollar that the government is wasting. And we start at the state level. Then we go down to the county level as well, where we can have radical transparency in spending,” Lahn said. “We all want to have more efficient government. One of the best ways to do it is through radical transparency.”
DEMOCRATS AIM TO KILL SCHOOL CHOICE FROM WISCONSIN TO THE REST OF THE US
Iowa’s Education Savings Account program, which provides taxpayer dollars to families to cover tuition for private schools, faced scrutiny by Sand, who called for income restrictions on the program, pointing to the state facing a $1.1 billion deficit.
“We are putting hundreds of millions of dollars every single year into the pockets of people who have plenty of money, good for them, and are already going to send their kids to private school, fine by me, but your tax dollars don’t need to go pay for that,” Sand said.
Lahn argued that the program was a “foundational freedom” and that when a school program isn’t meeting a child’s needs, parents should be able to go elsewhere regardless of their income.
“I think that there’s no such thing as government money,” Lahn said. “There’s the people’s money, this is their money.”
The candidates also disagreed over whether private schools that receive public funding should be allowed to turn away students — an issue the Supreme Court will consider this term in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a case from Colorado.
“Private schools that are taking public money should have to take whichever students say they want to attend there,” Sand said. “The fact that they don’t have to right now exposes the gulf between the rhetoric around this program and what it actually does, because right now, private schools can pick and choose which students can come in the front door.”
Lahn said the “best model” is for parents to have different options for what fits their child’s needs best.
“If you put these restrictions on schools, many of them, especially the smallest ones, will be burdened to a great degree,” Lahn said.
Sand and Lahn both agreed that data centers need to pay their “fair share” if they want to build in Iowa.
The topic of data centers — which has become a flashpoint issue this election cycle — was first raised by Sand when discussing his plan for balancing the state’s budget was to cease giving data companies tax breaks.
“Data centers should be paying all their taxes and then some,” Sand said. “If they need to build the grid out to do what they need to do, they can pay for that.”
“Financially speaking, they should be contributing to the state of Iowa, and if they don’t want to contribute, they can build somewhere else,” Sand continued.
Lahn said that he agreed with his opponent, noting it may be “the one thing” that they both agreed on.
“A hundred billion dollar multinational company does not need welfare from the people of Iowa,” Lahn said.
He said that there was a data center receiving $529 million in property tax abatements and was only required to create 30 jobs to receive the tax break.
“Not only is this happening too quickly with data centers, but it’s also happening in a way that we feel like we’re being take advantage of,” Lahn said.
“What they need to do is pay their fair share, and we need to actually create a new class of property tax, which would be above industrial, because these are employing far fewer people per square foot, and we need to have a higher rate of property, a property tax there,” Lahn said.
To end the debate, the moderators asked Lahn and Sand, who both have pledged support for protecting Second Amendment rights, if there was any legislation that they would sign to restrict or regulate firearms.
Lahn shared that he’s not in favor of signing any new restrictions, saying the state is in a “good place.” Sand said that it’s important for law-abiding citizens to be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but that he supported background checks.
The question comes weeks after three children were gunned down in an elementary school in Oregon. Lahn pointed out that the school shooter was killed by a parent, who had a concealed carry permit.
“I think that the last thing we want to do is restrict the ability for lawful citizens that are carrying firearms to protect the people they love in their communities. That’s something that we need to make sure we’re protecting,” Lahn said.
Sand shared a story about how he, while prosecuting a man who was out on bail, learned the man had received a concealed carry permit.
“If I convicted him, and I knew that he could be following me to my hotel, or following me to dinner at night, or following me to court in the morning, this suit was one of the suits that I was carrying that weapon in,” Sand said.
