Sand stops in Charles City, promises to ‘wake the watch dog’

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Historically, the election campaign for Iowa’s state auditor doesn’t get all that much attention.

This time around, the race between incumbent Republican Mary Mosiman and Democratic challenger Rob Sand is making front-page headlines throughout the state, and might be the second-most talked-about statewide race, after the race for governor.

Sand stopped at Aroma’s in Charles City on Tuesday, one of seven stops in six counties, where he met and talked with about a dozen people. Sand, 35, spoke for about 15 minutes and took questions. He has been telling voters he wants to “wake up the watchdog” as state auditor.

Both auditor candidates ran unopposed in the June 5 primary election. The two will meet Nov. 6 on the general election ballot.

Sand said state auditor responsibilities are pretty narrow. The state auditor is concerned with the state of the budget, public integrity, investigating public corruptions and making efficiency recommendations, he said. He doesn’t believe Mosiman is doing those things.

“This office is supposed to be a taxpayer’s watch dog,” he said Tuesday. “And yet, it seems to be asleep on efficiency, and asleep on the ocean of red ink that’s flooding our state right now. Iowa deserves to have someone in that office who is going to hold people accountable on their behalf.”

Mosiman, 56, was appointed Iowa state auditor by former Gov. Terry Branstad in 2013. Sand was named an assistant attorney general in September 2010 by Attorney General Tom J. Miller.

“In that office, I’ve prosecuted more public corruption than anyone else in the state in the past decade,” he said.

Sand has prosecuted tax credit fraud related to Iowa’s filmmaking tax credit program and led the nationwide lottery-fixing investigation that uncovered seven fixed lottery tickets across five states with total face values of nearly $25 million.

He said he has also successfully prosecuted attorneys, investment advisors, embezzlers, those who exploit the elderly and violent sexual predators. He prosecuted elected and appointed public officials and employees, and is quick to point out that he prosecuted members of both parties.

“When I was in the attorney general’s office for seven years, I prosecuted Democrats just the same as I prosecuted Republicans,” he said. “We used to have a state auditor who treated people the same no matter what party you were in,” he added, referring to Dick Johnson, who was state auditor for about 20 years.

Johnson, a Republican, called out then-incumbent Republican Gov. Terry Branstad during the 1994 campaign, when he alleged that Branstad’s administration was keeping two different sets of state budget records. Johnson famously called Branstad “Two-books Terry,” and the episode nearly cost Branstad the primary election.

“If you have a state auditor like Dick Johnson, who holds both parties accountable, what do you need to challenge him for?” Sand said. “Well, we’re in a different situation now.”

Sand said that working in the attorney general’s office, he needed to work closely with the state auditor’s office, and realized that the auditor’s office needed some improvements.

Sand said that Mosiman has failed to aggressively investigate corruption cases and has not saved the state money. He said last year there were cuts to budgets in each quarter, in every state agency and institution in every region of the state, and that the state still needed to borrow more than $100 million at the end of the fiscal year.

“Our current state auditor looked back at that budget and said that it was stable, balanced and responsible,” he said. “What worries me about that is I think that is someone who is coloring their commentary, because they’re putting their party ahead of the public.”

Sand was born and raised in Decorah, where he said his first job was “catching chickens.” He said he got his start in politics when he spent two years in high school getting a skate park built in his home town.

“My friends and I would get kicked out of all the places we liked to skate,” he said. “We got frustrated, and said that there ought to be a place where we can do this. We worked with property owners and with the city to get it built. That experience really changed my perspective with what I thought I could accomplish in my life and what I thought I could do.”

He said the accomplishment made him want to go into public service, at some level.

“It made me feel good about my community, because we worked together to solve a problem,” he said. “It made me think that I wanted to do something public-service oriented.”

After high school, Sand attended and graduated from Brown University, then returned to Iowa to attend Iowa Law School on a full merit scholarship. He and his wife have two young sons.