Cook Political Report: Iowa Gubernatorial Race Moves to “Toss–Up”

Cook Political Report: Iowa Gubernatorial Race Moves to “Toss–Up”

Rob Sand’s “enormous cash stockpile” has turned the race into a “barnburner”

Cook Political Report is shifting its rating for Iowa’s gubernatorial race to “toss-up” with “internal polls from sources in both parties now show [ing] Democratic state Auditor Rob Sand with a lead over his expected Republican opponent, Rep. Randy Feenstra.” Sand has amassed an “enormous cash stockpile” that has Republicans acknowledging “they’ll have to spend heavily in Iowa to stay in the hunt.”

Calling Sand an “aggressive campaigner” with “bipartisan credibility” running in a state “primed for Democratic inroads” after a decade of GOP control has driven Iowa’s economy into the ground, the analysis notes that Republicans are trapped in a crowded, nasty, wide-open primary. Every Republican running supports the failed status quo policies that have made outgoing Gov. Kim Reynolds the most unpopular governor in the country.

Cook Political Report: Iowa Governor Moves To Toss Up

• The battle for Iowa’s governorship is officially a barnburner. Internal polls from sources in both parties now show Democratic state Auditor Rob Sand with a lead over his expected Republican opponent, Rep. Randy Feenstra. 

• Sand’s enormous cash stockpile — he sits on $13.2 million to Feenstra’s $3.2 million on hand — ensures that he’ll be able to plaster his populist message on the airwaves all the way to Election Day, and national GOP operatives acknowledge they’ll have to spend heavily in Iowa to stay in the hunt. 

• His perch as state auditor has burnished his reputation as a foe of fraud in government, giving him bipartisan credibility and a broadly palatable anti- corruption platform. His 2022 reelection — which came even as Democrats got trounced atop the ticket and swept out of other statewide offices — showed that he has a popular brand distinct from more liberal elements in his party. 

• Sand is also an aggressive campaigner who has gone out of his way to appear on  conservative media platforms and visit all 99 counties in the state. The political environment in Iowa appears primed for Democratic inroads. 

• All indications are that Feenstra, 57, is still comfortably ahead of the pack as the June 2 primary approaches…  Feenstra has not received an endorsement from the president, but he’s working hard to frame himself as the race’s top Trump loyalist by highlighting his votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and plastering photos of the two men together.

• Assuming Feenstra wins on June 2, Democrats plan to make him answer for his support of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The legislation threatens to push 110,000 Iowans off of Medicaid and jeopardize rural hospitals across the state, with Democrats noting that one clinic in Ottumwa has already been shuttered since the bill passed. 

• But everything that could go right for Democrats here has so far, giving the party a very real shot at winning the governorship for the first time since 2006.

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