A Democrat in Name Only

Photographs by KC McGinnis S omewhere along the county road between Independence and Manchester, I lost Rob Sand.

This had been a distinct possibility when I agreed to join the 44-year-old Democratic candidate for governor on a segment of a weeklong bike ride across Iowa.

Unlike Sand, I am not a biker—merely a leisurely walker and, like any good Millennial woman, an occasional Pilates-doer.

Which is why, on a long, low-grade hill dotted with Queen Anne’s lace, my quads began to burn, my pace slowed, and the subject of my story disappeared into a rainbow river of helmets.

A minute later, the sag wagon overtook me.

Soon so did a 9-year-old boy.

Thankfully, my humiliation was short-lived.

These days in Iowa, one can never truly be without Rob Sand.

Even as I panted alone at the back of the peloton, I could hear people chattering about the man who would be governor.

“Was that who I think it was?” they said.

And, “Oh, I just love him!” At one point, a fit-looking cyclist who turned out to be the former NFL wide receiver Tim Dwight pulled up beside me to lament Iowa’s unfulfilled economic potential.

“This is why,” he said, “we need Rob.” Sand, the state auditor, is ubiquitous in Iowa.

On any given day, one might encounter him in a TV ad, promising jail time for corrupt politicians; on Instagram, talking through a mouthful of Casey’s breakfast pizza; and at a town hall singing “America the Beautiful” with a bipartisan crowd of gray hairs.

Sand is something rarely found in nature: a successful Iowa Democrat.