The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Wed, 14 May 2025
Chuck Todd opens with a blistering analysis of America's current political landscape, arguing that both major parties are fundamentally weak and surviving only through their duopoly of ballot access. He examines the potential for political realignment, questioning whether MAGA and establishment Republicans might fracture and if figures like Senator John Cornyn would fare better as independents. Chuck doesn't hold back on the Biden administration either, calling out what he sees as selfishness from the Bidens and criticizing aides who failed to report the President's decline sooner, suggesting cabinet secretaries will need to answer for what he terms a "cover up."Then he’s joined by Rob Sand, Democratic candidate for governor of Iowa, who discusses his record of uncovering government waste and his vision for the state. Sand outlines his bipartisan approach to governance and delivers a sharp critique of Iowa's school voucher program, arguing it lacks transparency and has allowed private schools to raise tuition while turning away disabled students. The conversation covers Iowa's political shift, education policy, and whether Democrats should restore Iowa's first-in-the-nation primary status. The episode concludes with "Ask Chuck," where Todd answers listener questions on topics ranging from the theoretical "Limbaugh effect" in Obama's election to the practicality of expanding the House of Representatives, and even touches on the NBA draft lottery's impact on Texas basketball teams.Timeline:00:00 Introduction01:30 Both the Republican and Democratic parties are very weak03:00 Without the duopoly of ballot access, one of the two parties would have disappeared04:30 Interparty splits and the potential for independents?06:00 Could MAGA vs establishment factions fracture in the GOP?07:30 Would John Cornyn be better served running as an independent in Texas?11:10 Republicans have too many crowded primaries in Senate races12:30 Both parties brands are broken14:30 The Bidens have been selfish16:30 Shame on the anonymous aides who didn’t report Biden’s decline sooner17:45 Biden’s aides pushed back publicly and privately before he stepped down18:20 Biden’s cabinet secretaries will have to answer for the cover up21:10 The DNC drama surrounding David Hogg23:55 The DNC looks ridiculous right now26:15 Rob Sand joins the Chuck ToddCast 26:45 Why run for governor of Iowa? 29:30 Rob found a record amount of waste and abuse in Iowa government 30:15 Did you think about running as an independent? 34:35 If you win, is it a victory for Democrats or for independents? 36:45 Rob would appoint a bipartisan cabinet 37:30 The school voucher program in Iowa isn't transparent 38:45 The public school vouchers can be audited, the private ones can't 41:15 Iowa's public schools are falling behind 43:00 Private schools can turn away disabled students 44:15 Private schools just raised tuition after voucher program rollout 45:30 What's the plan to improve public schools in Iowa? 49:10 What are some Kim Reynolds policies he would keep? 51:05 Has Iowa shifted right, or is it a Trump phenomenon? 53:15 Should Democrats make Iowa their first primary state again? 56:30 Pete Buttigieg broke through in Iowa 59:00 Lottery scam in Iowa 1:03:00 What hurts Iowa more; tariffs or the USAID contracts being terminated? 1:05:15 Does he expect a primary challenger?1:06:05 Chuck's thoughts on Rob Sand interview 1:06:30 Ask Chuck 1:06:35 Has there ever been a study on the "Limbaugh effect", encouraging Democrats to vote for Obama? 1:11:35 If you doubled the size of the House, would there be physical space constraints? 1:14:15 Would a third party like the forward party focused on a singular issue be effective? 1:17:05 The NBA draft lottery ensured that all three Texas teams will be great(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
Chapter 1: Why are both the Republican and Democratic parties considered weak today?
So that's you see what we did there. So I hope you go over there and subscribe to it. In fact, it's a it's something you've heard me dabble in before, but it's a more thorough analysis of how fragile the two major parties are in this moment. I think both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, you know, as as divided as America is between red and blue. Right.
We're polarized sort of between two sides. The two actual political parties that represent red and blue have never been weaker. Right. And essentially more. And they've been dominated by cults of personality over the last 20 years. When it just when it looks like they need refurbishing, a cult of personality rises up to sort of paper over their problems.
Think Barack Obama for the Democrats or Donald Trump for the Republicans. We are watching around the world a movement where there's, you know, we've seen this, there's clearly a massive political realignment taking place globally.
And what I saw take place in the UK that I brought up a while ago about what happened to the Tories there, the fact that they, at least in these last elections, were not treated like one of the two major parties. If you did not, if you wanted to vote against labor, you didn't vote for the Tories. You voted for the Reform Party UK, the Nigel Farage party, if you will.
And it's sort of, it's a simple premise to me. It's like, how weak are the two brands of the major parties right now? Think about it this way. If Donald Trump said today, we're going to disband the Republican Party and replace it with the MAGA, with a new political party, the MAGA party, who's with me? I'm going to guess 70% of the elected Republicans would sign up for the new party.
And suddenly you would have a complete exodus from the official club known as the Republican Party. Similarly, if Pete Buttigieg, Andy Beshear, Gretchen Whitmer, AOC banded together and said, you know what? The Democratic brand is broken. It is a mess. It doesn't you know, it's not what it used to be.
We need a new left of center party in this country that is focused on preserving the democracy and expanding and thriving and updating it. We need a modern a modern version of this. So we're going to start a new party. And, you know, it's sort of like taking the Donald Trump NAFTA approach. Right. Which is. Can't stand NAFTA. So here's the new NAFTA.
I got rid of NAFTA because we don't call it NAFTA anymore. But he kept NAFTA. He just renamed it. Right. That is that is arguably how badly the two brands are feeling these days and how easily they could be rebranded into a new party. And the fact is, when I when I give you those two potential options,
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Chapter 2: Could independents and party fractures reshape US politics?
outcomes of how fragile the two major parties really are, the only thing that keeps them afloat is the duopoly they have on ballot access in the 50 states. If they didn't have this duopoly of ballot access, one or both of these parties would have probably disappeared at least a couple of decades ago.
But because of the vehicle that they are for battle access, that actually is connected to my guest today, Rob Sand, the newest candidate for governor in the state of Iowa. He's basically the Democrats' great hope for winning statewide in an actual red state. And I'll get more into Rob Sand in a minute. He's currently a statewide elect, the only statewide elected Democrat in the state of Iowa.
He's been the state auditor for two years, and Democrats have been waiting for him, essentially, to finally take the next step, whether it was for a Senate seat or a gubernatorial seat. And you will hear why he's a Democrat, and it's simply because there is no other alternative. If being an independent were a viable alternative, it sounds like he would be there.
And it's, for me, a reminder of how fragile I think both parties are these days. It is it is more appealing to some Democrats to run as an independent, take the new the newest candidate for governor in the state of Florida, Jason Pizzo. do realize he was the Democratic leader in the state Senate, in fact, just a couple of weeks ago.
So here he is, technically a leader of the Florida Democratic Party, deciding to abandon the party. Now, some of that may be personal. Some of that may have to do with personality clashes with the current head of the Florida Democratic Party. There's a little bit of finger pointing because if he doesn't get his way, that's why he left the party. But the fact that he
that he did, he has some resources to do it. And I've told you, I think there's definitely Republican fatigue in the state of Florida, a lot of DeSantis fatigue in the state of Florida. I don't know if the Democratic Party brand is strong enough to take advantage of it, but I do know if there's a strong independent candidate, It could.
It's fascinating to me that the potential leading Democrat in Florida decided to run as an independent, this Jason Pizzo, and the leading independent candidate, a former Republican congressman and lobbyist named David Jolly, decided to become a Democrat and run for governor that way.
So it'll be really interesting to see if you're trying to fix the Democratic party brand, is being a former Republican turned Democrat the way to go? as a way to sort of moderate-ize it or central centrism, infuse a little centrism in it and sort of de-leftify the brand in Florida. Leftify, de-leftify, did I invent a word there? Or is it being a former Democrat running as an independent?
And in some ways we're getting, we're gonna see both experiments take place there on that front. In fact, I'm fascinated to watch what's going on in some of these Senate races in 2026. You've got John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican senator from Texas who's being primaried by the state attorney general, Ken Paxton. Paxton is very MAGA, just like Donald Trump, escaped an impeachment attempt.
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Chapter 3: What are the controversies surrounding the Biden administration and his aides?
uh are suddenly now uh speaking anonymously uh to folks it's it is or or early aids coming out where were you at the time when many of us were pointing out he seems to be too old to be running for president i know i did it quite a bit publicly yet people like david ignatius and you know what many of those same aides did who are now talking to these authors they would
They would push back privately and publicly with me and others and say, no, no, no, it's fine. No, no, no. My interactions with them are fine. This is just exaggeration. You're buying into a right wing narrative. So, you know, these people have talked about both sides of their mouth.
So I in many ways, I think this Biden book is only going to not just undermine Biden, but I think make it toxic for anybody that worked for Biden. Because then it becomes, where were you? How did you participate in the coverup? Pete Buttigieg, this may mean something for you. You were a cabinet secretary. Are you gonna now tell us, yeah, I didn't have much interaction with him?
Well, then why didn't you say something? I had a cabinet secretary tell me that. They had no interaction with him and wondered about that. I had that off the record. I've after Biden quit. I've since shared it with people. Still not going to share who the cabinet secretary was because that's not my I'm trying. You know, I believe in keeping your word as a journalist.
And it was an off the record as far as being told to me. And I think it's up to that person to decide whether to speak out or not. But I think it's a question anybody who worked directly for Biden. So Gina Raimondo, if she thinks about running for president, Pete Buttigieg, all of these cabinet secretaries are now going to have to answer for all of this.
And I do wonder if it's going to make anybody that touches Biden persona non grata, not just anybody directly in the Biden. world as far as, you know, it could be the way, you know, anybody touching Carter was sort of exiled for decades in the Democratic Party in the 80s and 90s.
It really wasn't until Obama that that sort of parts of Carter world were resurrected in a positive light inside the Democratic Party. That's some nearly, you know, nearly 30 years later. And that's probably the best Biden world can hope for, is that they need to – the generation that lived through this mess will have to go away before they maybe get a second chance at the historical record.
A lot of it, though, is going to depend on what the Trump presidency looks like three years from now and what kind of impact it has. Because – Everybody who worked for Biden and Joe Biden himself, to me, is directly responsible for everything Trump does in the second term. Right. They they their behavior and their actions led us to this place. They're contributors to the place we are at.
So they better hope it's a successful second term for Trump. because they will own a piece of that failure too.
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Chapter 4: Who is Rob Sand and why is his Iowa gubernatorial run significant?
And yet it's the Democrats shooting at each other, just making a mockery, frankly, of their own party here. And just, they're going hog wild in all the wrong ways. All right, so coming up, I got Rob Sand. And here's why you need to care about this race.
This is easily the best chance Democrats have of truly having a red state governor to stand next to Andy Beshear and Laura Kelly, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Laura Kelly of Kansas. This will easily be their best shot at it. And I'll tell you this, if he wins, Iowa is going to be the first in the nation caucuses. They will get their place back.
If Sand proves that they can win in this environment, and it will be a better environment for him to run in than he ran in 22. If he wins that race, it will put Iowa back in first in the nation, which will be really good news. If you're Pete Buttigieg, although, as I pointed out, I do think his Biden baggage is going to get heavier and heavier as he goes about.
But take a listen to Rob Sand because this is a guy who's sort of you'll hear it kind of reluctant Democrat. And, you know, previous episode, I had Jasmine Crockett, who who's she's not a reluctant Democrat, but she's got a point of view of how the party should be messaging now. I think you'll hear a different point of view from Rob Sand. So be curious what you think.
And.
Well, joining me now is somebody who is a new candidate for office, at least a top statewide office. It is Rob Sand. He's been the two-term democratically elected state auditor of Iowa, and he's now announced that he's running for governor. And to timestamp this, I'm interviewing him about four hours after he unveiled his public campaign for governor. So, Rob, you've been
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Chapter 5: What challenges has Rob Sand faced as Iowa State Auditor?
arguably looking to this moment for a few years now. How does it feel now that you jumped in the water?
I'm excited for this moment, Chuck. I think what really, one of the things that really crystallized it and made it clear that it was necessary was the gutting of the auditor's office bill that took effect, I think, about
not quite two years ago, where the Iowa legislature and the governor literally made it legal for state agencies and departments in Iowa to hide documents from the state auditor's office. It's the kind of thing that just makes you go, okay.
Do you believe it was a direct partisan attack on your office, meaning you had had a lot of success running, you know, doing public corruption. Yeah. And because you're a Democrat and the legislature is Republican, how much did that factor into the defunding of your of your office?
I would I would say this. It was really more of a question of being serious about trying to do the job and do public service as opposed to being one of the insiders that's like, oh, you don't want me to dig into that program. Well, don't worry about it. Then I won't because you told me not to. And hey, we're all friends, right? You know, That kind of stuff, because I wouldn't go along.
I wouldn't I wouldn't do the go along to get along kind of thing. And so I think that, yes, it was easier for them to do it because I was a Democrat. But if I had been a Republican who was really serious about public service, not politics, they would have tried.
I just don't know if they could have gotten enough majorities to go along with it because we had bipartisan opposition in the Iowa House to it as it was.
Right. Well, I would imagine. I mean, again, public corruption is always one of those things that there's usually pieces of both parties that are bipartisan in favor of strengthening public corruption, offices that target public corruption, and then those that believe –
for a variety of reasons, some may be nefarious and some may be intellectually honest, that, oh, it gets in the way of business, right? It gets in the way of regulation or it gets in the way of government service. So I buy that. But let me ask you this. I think your job being auditor to me would both be interesting and also though sometimes a negative place to come from.
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Chapter 6: Why does Rob Sand support election reforms like open primaries and approval voting in Iowa?
So let's talk about, you're running because you think the direction of Iowa has been going in the wrong direction. So let's talk about that. From the outside, the biggest change that I've noticed that Governor Reynolds did had to do with school funding. And it's certainly when you're on the ground in Iowa,
when you get past the sort of the red versus blue, the national conversation, and you ask what's going on in Iowa, that's usually the first issue I hear about. Is that still the first issue you hear about?
It's that and it's rising costs, which is obviously an issue that's driven mostly by national politics and international politics. But yeah, education is way up there. And the bottom line on that to me is just the complete lack of accountability for how those vouchers, how that money gets spent. The money is required.
So this was $100 million last year and the Reynolds administration didn't let us audit the controls of the program. Again, they use that new law just as we predicted they would to literally hide our ability to see what was going on with money. But even Chuck, if the program is working the way it's supposed to, All of that money, the whole $100 million, has to first go to tuition.
Once it's paid as tuition, there's only one thing on God's green earth that can't be done with the money with private schools. They can't pay a rebate to parents whose kids are going there. But that's it. Any other way they want to use the money... Totally legal. And we're not allowed to audit it. So I don't even know how we would find out. That to me is insane.
Are you allowed to audit the public school use of taxpayer money? Public schools are audited every year in the state of Iowa. Now we have $100 million.
Private schools using taxpayer dollars are not going to be scrutinized at all. What are we doing here?
What are we doing here? It blows my mind. But again, it's part of the reason that it's like, okay, we need a change in direction. This state truly is in a moment where their focus on the people they're taking care of is tiny. There are 3 million people in this state. And they're taking care of insiders. They're taking care of special interests.
Odyssey, the company that runs the program, we found out after months of stonewalling, They actually doubled the pay for Odyssey to administer the state's voucher program with no additional obligations on behalf of Odyssey in return. They just said, you know what? We told you we're going to give you this amount of money. We're going to double it. Happy birthday. Have fun.
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Chapter 7: What is Rob Sand's stance on bipartisan governance and his relationship with the Democratic Party?
Right. The public schools, you walk in the door, hey, we're going to educate you. The rule should be, hey, if we want real competition, well, competition means everybody follows the same rules and may the best fill in the blank win, whether it's a football team or a school. You want to have competition? All right, fine.
Private schools, in order to get this money, you too have to take every student that says they want to attend there. Oh, well, that's hard. It's hard to plan. Yeah, well, that's a difficulty that public schools face. You said you wanted to have competition. Same rules apply.
Rob, you know what's common around here? And it's common everywhere, but this, I could just tell you from experiences, you know, I have some parents who have a child that maybe needs some extra help, special needs, some, you know, in different variations. Private schools can say, no, we don't have the services to help your kid. You shouldn't try this place.
So then, of course, your choice is actually smaller.
than it was because maybe there's only one private school that has decided to invest in in helping kids with this same sort of you know who has a different learning plan than than kids over here and guess what happened it turned out he was better off staying in arlington public schools and his kid got some services because the public school had to provide the services and it was actually really good services
I know a family in our neighborhood that had the same experience. They switched. Our kids are in public schools in Iowa. They switched from a private school to the public school, and it's been going much better for them. But again, to me, this is just a question of...
okay, you want fairness, you want competition, you want choice, then actually implement policies that do that as opposed to just saying those words. Because the law in the state of Iowa right now doesn't do those things. Most of the private schools have had their tuition skyrocket.
So if the idea was, oh, we're going to help you get this money to get so you can cover tuition and then tuition skyrockets, it's still out of reach for those people. But I'm not sure that that's ever what this was about because we also have no income limits on the program.
So the wealthiest Iowans this year are using this program where people in rural areas where they don't have private schools are paying state taxes. And now a lot of that money is going to wealthy Iowans to send their kids to private schools.
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Chapter 8: How does Rob Sand critique Iowa's school voucher program and education policy?
And that gives you such a better sense of who we are as a state or as a country If you're participating in public schools.
Look, I went to a public high school in Miami, Florida. That was in 19 in the late 1980s. It was a third, a third, a third, third Latino, third African-American, third white. It was pretty segregated inside the school. I'm not going to sit here and say it wasn't. You'd have friend groups, but there were plenty of ways that it wasn't segregated.
And in fact, you ended up with relationships because of a student activity. Maybe it was in sports, maybe it was in music, whatever it is. And and it look, it does give you a better understanding of the world we live in rather than some fantasy, you know, isolated bubble. No, it that's a that's a that's a good argument. Let me ask you this on Governor Reynolds.
What are some policies that you're going to keep if you're elected governor? What has she done right?
I was delighted to see the state require that public schools have a cell phone policy to limit the usage of cell phones. And I actually want to go back to one thing you had just said there about, you know, the friends that you made. This weekend, I went home to Decorah, my hometown, and invited high school buddies to come over. And I was sitting there with two of my best friends from high school.
One does construction work, bridge construction. The other one does auto body work. Okay. Their wives came over, their kids came over. We had a great time. One of their wives is a public school teacher, although she's in Minnesota. The other one until very recently was a teller at a bank.
These are smart people and I know them and I know they have tons of common sense and that they have great work ethic and that they're smart because I spent 12 years in public schools growing up with them. And it doesn't matter what people's choices are after. I think that they're smarter than some of the people that I went to college with. And I think it's important to understand that.
But you need to get that experience before you can understand that.
Right. No, it's good. Go back to Governor Reynolds. What's she done? Oh, yeah, yeah. School phone, cell phone ban, anything else that policies you'd like to keep that she's been doing?
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