Going to Hear Rob Sand’s Townhall

My yard. Signs promoting Iowa Democrats.

The last time I went to a political event at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Cedar Rapids, it was 2008 and an underdog candidate for president, a junior senator from Illinois named Barrack Obama, was speaking.

I don’t recall a lot about that speech, other than I enjoyed it. I was going to vote for Obama that year anyway, but I was more enthusiastic after hearing him speak.

Fast forward 18 years and a lot of water has rolled by under the nearby Cedar River bridges—the presidencies of Obama, Biden and the contrasting years under President Trump.

Rob Sand at local event.

And this year, I returned to a political event at the auditorium. This time it wasn’t so much a political stump speech as an interactive format being used by a candidate for governor. Rob Sand, our state auditor and the only Democrat to hold statewide office in Iowa, is running for governor. He held a “town hall” last week in Cedar Rapids.

It began with the crowd singing “America the Beautiful.” Sand gave opening remarks and then opened the even for questions from the crowd.

It was an interesting event. Sand is a confident, comfortable speaker, and easily forms a rapport with the crowd. His answers were thoughtful and interesting. His message is that he’s running to be a problem solver, and not a partisan leader, and he did attack the two “private clubs” that run our politics

Fair point. The parties are not enshrined in our governing structure; they are an evolutionary accident of American politics.

Anyway, just as I was likely to vote for Obama in 2008, the call this year in the governor’s race is made easier for me by the troubling devolution of the Republican Party. Up and down the ballot, as I look at each race, I have little doubt where my vote will fall. The Democrats running this year include a former U of I scientist attempting to be secretary of agriculture, a minister who is a state lawmaker running for Congress—they seem an A team. And the Republicans seem part of the MAGA madness crowd. They don’t represent me nor even speak to my concerns.

Sand speaks.

So my yard is sprinkled with political signs, all for Democrats. I’ve even volunteered to help the county party canvass door-to-door. I’m motivated this year.

Sand, and his effective way of speaking, helps. A bigger factor for me is the need to swing our politics away from the cult of Trump. We need more than one viable party, and Republicans have been in control nationally and in my state.

Time for a change. I hope my feeble efforts will helps. We need to recenter, rebalance, wake up from the nightmare and return to some sense and sanity. A blue wave in this off-year election would be timely.