Rob Sand
Appearances
Criminal
Hot Lotto
The day we started presenting evidence, CBS This Morning did a nationwide broadcast calling into question whether we had enough evidence to prove the case.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
I wasn't sure if the jury would understand our case, that he had rigged it. The defense counsel kept saying, you know, this is just, he wants you to imagine this stuff. He can't explain to you how it works. He just wants you to say that it happened.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
We got him on the first count because the evidence was pretty clear and inescapable.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And we got him on the second count because at the end of the day, when you look around at all this mountain of circumstantial evidence, that this man's job is to write the program that picks the winning numbers, that he was in the draw room, that he had access to these machines in his office constantly and could have at any point installed different software.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And I pick up the phone. Some guy says, this Rob Sand? I said, yeah. Do you all know Eddie Tipton's brother won the lottery about 10 years ago out west somewhere, maybe Colorado?
Criminal
Hot Lotto
Tommy Tipton, this justice of peace in Texas, has like half a million dollars of consecutively marked bills. And, of course, this makes the fireworks dealer suspicious.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
They closed their case because they say, well, that's weird. I don't fully understand why you're doing what you're doing, but... for someone to be laundering money, that money has to be dirty, and if you won this in the lottery, then it's not dirty money. And they closed their case.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And say to them, hey, we have a very real reason to believe that this wasn't isolated in Iowa, and we need a lot of your data about your lottery winners all over the country.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
Kahn is the last name, C-O-N-N, which is just too rich. So let's ask Oklahoma for that claim file. So we go back to Oklahoma. We say, hey, we want this file related to this Kyle Kahn who claimed this ticket here. And they say, all right, here you go.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And I remember I'm sitting in my home, this is around the holidays, sitting in my parents' living room, just pulling up the phone number that is in the Kyle Kahn claim form and running that phone number through Eddie and Tommy's years upon years of phone records. And boom, there's a hit. So at some point we know Tommy Tipton had a phone call with Kyle Kahn.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
One of them, in fact, she and Eddie had met on a dating website. And they had gone on a date or two, and, you know, it didn't work out, but they stayed friends. And then she got engaged, and he presented this as an engagement gift.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
I was sitting at my desk, and David Moss from Wisconsin AG's office calls me. He says, hey, Rob. Are you at your computer? I said, yeah. He says, check your email. I check my email, open up an email from him, open up a PDF attached to it. And I had done a very small amount of HTML coding when I was in high school. And I was instantly able to recognize what I was looking at.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
What I was looking at was the code that Eddie had written to make these allegedly random numbers be actually predictable to him. I remember I said to David, do you guys hear that? It's the hallelujah chorus. It's playing in my head right now.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
The Iowa Lottery was out there saying on a regular basis, Hey folks, check your ticket. Somebody's got 16 million bucks. And it was sort of this mystery. Why hasn't anyone come forward?
Criminal
Hot Lotto
and the story that he tells in that interview is that you know he didn't necessarily set out to start the largest lottery rigging scheme in american history but that he sort of saw that he could do it and once he saw he could do it he decided to see if he would get caught and from having done that once he you know decided to do it again and Saw that it was a way to help friends.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
His friend Robert Rhodes was struggling. And did, frankly, what a lot of white-collar criminals do. Rationalize. Give you reasons why the stuff that they were doing wasn't really that big of a deal after all.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
I look at financial crime and I see people who are in a position of some privilege in life, right? Typically, they're able to commit financial crime because they have access to money. So that removes desperation from one of their motivators. Financial crimes are people who are in a good position in life who are abusing, choosing to abuse that position over and over and over again, typically.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
So when you talk to me about financial crime, what I hear is someone who is greedy, whose crimes are crimes of selfishness, whose crimes are the people, and frankly, who thinks they're smart enough to get away with it.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
So every few months, Terry Rich, the head of the Iowa Lottery, would have a press conference and remind people, hey, we owe somebody $16 million. Check your tickets, you know. We want to pay this money out. And no one came and no one came and no one came.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
Philip Johnston... entered a cooperation agreement with the state of Iowa. There isn't really any reason to think that he actually knows the bigger truth or knew the bigger truth of what was going on at the time that he made the claim. And the same goes for Crawford Shaw. I think they certainly could have asked more questions of their clients if they wanted to.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
But they were asserting claims on behalf of a client, and there wouldn't be a good basis to charge them in the whole scheme of things.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
A lot of it was cash, a lot of it was spent, a lot of it Eddie put into his house here in Iowa. A lot of it they ended up paying back to their attorneys here in Iowa. But they also agreed to pay restitution. So every penny stolen from a lottery ticket is agreed upon between the two Tipton brothers and Robert Rhodes. to get repaid.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And they've also agreed not to fight legal proceedings in order to seize land in Texas that they own to get those debts paid.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
They would try to say, hey, that was my ticket. I lost it. Okay. Can you do any better than that? No. That was my friend's ticket. That was my brother's ticket. So-and-so bought that and they died, but I'm just sure it was theirs. Those are their lucky numbers. They played those numbers all the time. All kinds of stuff like that.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
Privately, one thing that the Iowa Lottery had that the public didn't know the lottery had was a video of the purchaser. So the Iowa Lottery is looking at this video and we know, okay, here's a very heavyset man in a big leather jacket with a very low voice who's walking up to claim these tickets.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
So Phoebe, if you had called in and said, hey, it's me, Phoebe, I bought that ticket, we would have said, no, you didn't. And you might've been confused as to how we knew you didn't, but we could use that to screen people who were trying to get that $16 million, but who we knew hadn't purchased the ticket. Now, of course, if we made that video public,
Criminal
Hot Lotto
It gets a lot harder to use it as a screen because then everybody nudges their heavyset middle-aged friend and says, hey, that could be you on that video. You should call them and tell them it's you. And so we had held that back.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
So finally, about a month to go before the deadline runs, somebody calls in who knows the serial number. Now, Mary checks the other piece. She's talking to the man and very wisely asks him, Whoa, that must have been a memorable day. You won $16 million. What were you wearing when you bought that ticket?
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And this man from Canada, Philip Johnston, says, well, probably what I normally wear, a sports coat and flannel pants. Of course, Mary has seen the video of the actual purchaser. The actual purchaser, again, is a very heavyset man, middle-aged, wearing a leather jacket. And Philip Johnson is describing himself to be not that man. So immediately there's some suspicion there about what's going on.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
So the Iowa lottery says, this has just gone from weird to double weird. We know this Philip Johnston guy isn't the actual purchaser. And we have our due diligence to do. So, hey, you need to tell us who bought this ticket and everyone who possessed it along the way, or we're not going to pay. they did not get a favorable response. The response was, pay us or we'll sue you.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And then the Iowa Lottery, to their credit, said, go right ahead, sue us. Of course, the Iowa Lottery knew if this plaintiff files a lawsuit, they get to conduct discovery, which means they get to kind of find out who actually had possessed this ticket, or at least find out as much as the people trying to claim it knew.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
Rather than disclosing the actual purchaser, decided it was worth $16 million to maintain that person's privacy. That is interesting.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
It was this curious little essentially dead end of a investigation with a $16 million lottery ticket.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
The big thing that we had left to do was releasing the video of the purchaser and asking the public for assistance. To make that video public and to say to people, hey, if you think you know who this is, we want to talk to them.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
In fact, Noel, one of his coworkers, walked into the office one day, walked into the muscle office. This is right after we released the video. And one of her coworkers says, hey, Noelle, come over here. And hands Noelle headphones and says, put these on. And then clicks a button. Noelle is just standing there, can't see the computer screen that she's looking at.
Criminal
Hot Lotto
And this person starts playing the video of the purchase. And Noelle says to this coworker without seeing the screen, why am I listening to a tape of Eddie talking?
Criminal
Hot Lotto
He also writes the program that actually picks the supposedly random numbers that people want to hit when they're trying to hit the jackpot.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And that was it. There's nothing in here. There's nothing in here. And then I walk around as jingle jingles in my pocket. No, this is just, it's wild. It's shocking.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
This is the problem. Air-to-air refueling. What are you, a Democrat in Congress?
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Bottom line, I think, is people get to know me. They like what they hear. They like what they see. They like what they say. So for folks who want to learn more, it's robsand.com. But look, I think most people in the United States right now, if you're like, okay, there's a candidate for office who was born and raised in a small town and where you had to go a long way to get anywhere bigger.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
They like to hunt and fish. They own guns, including handguns, and they're in church every Sunday, and it really means something to them. I mean, what percent of people would say, oh, that's a Republican? That's me. Like, I just described myself. And so I think that that matters to a lot of people in the state of Iowa. We have a good chunk of our population that's in
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Rural areas in small towns, they want to know that their lives are understood by the person they're voting for. But it's bigger than that, too, because a lot of people slice and dice. They're like, oh, you know, they're too judgmental of those voters. We are not going to get them back as though, you know, we're all different.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
But a lot of the people in bigger cities in the suburbs in Iowa came from those small towns. And some of them were not excited to leave. They left because of economic opportunities that were better somewhere else. But they too want to know that somebody understands that part of small town Iowa. Tom Vilsack was the last candidate for governor in Iowa who was a Democrat.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
who had real small town roots. He had been a mayor in Mount Pleasant. And so I think that that is an indicator that that does make a difference for people.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Good question. So it's actually a really good question because most states have a auditor, but it's not necessarily the same job in every state. In the state of Iowa, we are the taxpayer's watchdog. We audit state government every year, financial statement audit.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
We also do public corruption investigations, which is how I got interested in the office because I had been doing most of Iowa's public corruption prosecution work. And then we also, as of 2019 in my first term, we do government efficiency promotion. So we have a government efficiency program that is so good at actually saving money that it has been copied in two other states. Pretty good.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Pretty good. Yeah. And it's really about, at the end of the day, actually helping the people who are there in cities, counties, and school districts find new and better ways to save money, which I think is an effective way to save it. You need a little planning.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
You need a little thoughtfulness, a little bit of working ahead to try to get people into the place where they can have an impact by giving them some ideas and trusting them to do the right thing to some degree.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
So I want to challenge the premise of your question, if I may, a little bit. Challenge away. And let's answer this question instead, because let's acknowledge Iowa is one of the slowest changing states in the entire country, right? So we have just a population base that is incredibly steady. It's getting a little bit older. We are not doing a good job of bringing new people in.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And at the same time, we're losing some younger folks, but it's all very slow. And so it's like, I wouldn't change overnight. It's the same people. And so the question that is better asked to describe what happened in Iowa is how were Barack Obama and Donald Trump the same? And the answer to that question is pretty straightforward.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
They were both outsiders who challenged their party's establishment and said, I'm going to do politics differently. And keep in mind that the Democratic Party,
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
in 16 and 20 and in 24 nominated the opposite of that, whether or not you think that was a good thing or a bad thing, the nominees of the democratic party for the last three presidential elections have been people who are insiders for lack of a better word. There's a good chunk of Iowans. And this is actually, this is the rural area that I come from in Northeast Iowa.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
It's the driftless area of Northeast Iowa, Southeast Minnesota, Southwest Wisconsin. It is the biggest hub of Obama Trump swim counties in the United States of America by far. And Iowa had twice as many of those counties as any other state. Second place was Wisconsin. We had like 30. They had, I think about 20, 15 or 20. So I just think that
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And this is the bottom line on so much of this and so much of why I do this. There are a lot of people out there, and I cut myself in them, who don't want to be forced to be a Democrat or a Republican. They look at this country, they look at what we learned about
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
in public school growing up, and they look at the contrast with our politics right now, and they're like, wait a minute, I thought this was supposed to be about grand compromises and moving the people forward and solving problems, not just tug of war. And what it feels like so often to so many people right now is it's just tug of war. That's the heart of the idea in my announcement video.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
I say, I don't want Iowa to be bluer or redder. I want it to be truer and better. Like, what are we doing here? Why does this have to be a fight about what color hat you wear? It should be about what's the right thing to do and can we do the right thing?
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Yeah, they were literally like, oh, all of you hate him? Thanks, that's all I need to know, you know? Why would I spend more time paying attention to politics? It's awful. I'd like to go hang out with my kids. All of you who have never done anything for me hate this guy. Perfect, I'm all set.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Brutal. I'm with Chuck Grassley. He is the only member of Congress that has had the guts to say it from Iowa out of the two senators and the four that we have. He said, hey, if this works, I'll be saying amen, hallelujah. I don't think it's going to work. The United States exports agriculture. That is a huge piece of it.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
You really can't answer in a trade war without putting tariffs on agriculture. And China understands this. We've had a special relationship. Iowa Agriculture, we, has had a special relationship with them for a long time. But in the first Trump administration, they realized the volatility here and they built what is now the single largest new port in the world in Peru.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
to ship Brazilian agriculture products as a substitute for American agriculture products. They literally built it from scratch. And so in the first administration, they basically built this spigot. Now all they got to do is turn it on.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And so the threat to Iowa agriculture here is a much larger threat, I think, than it was in the first Trump administration, where it was kind of like, well, what are you really going to do? Take the Brazilian exports all the way down around Tierra del Fuego and then up? Like, no. Like, we feel good about where we are. It's a different question now.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And that has an impact, too, in Aberdeen, Washington has hundreds of jobs in their port. That's where most of American agriculture, corn and soybeans from Iowa flows through or pork as it's on its way to China right now. And so that ramification isn't just going to be confined to Iowa. It's going to be nationwide.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
There's a couple things there. Number one, you know, Iowans are pretty welcoming people. They don't really care much about At the end of the day, they're not particularly concerned with who you are as long as you treat people, I think, decently and you're trying to be productive, try to give something to society. But our state laws lately have not been welcoming to people.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
It's been the opposite of that. It's hard to grow a state when you tell a good chunk of people, like, you aren't welcome here. Because it's not just those people that you're making feel unwelcome. It's also people who – like if you're concerned about how the gay community is treated in the state of Iowa.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Well, if you're someone who wants to have kids someday and you don't care about who they love as long as they treat people decently and they're trying to be a productive member of society – You might think twice about being here. I think that's crazy. We need people in the state of Iowa. And I think most Iowans agree. We need people in the state of Iowa.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And I don't think that they like the way state government sort of picks and chooses there. So I think that's a tremendous piece of it. I think the other piece is that we aren't doing a good job of of really building the state. State government is not doing a good job of making the state attractive. We are 49th for public land. We are 49th for the economy.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
It's hard to get excited about a place where the economy is not doing great. And hey, to boot, if you're not doing great economically, it's also hard to go out there and enjoy the outdoors. Yeah, absolutely.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
You know, I don't know. I am not well connected to the DNC. I've never been to a convention before. I would sure hope that they would do that. I think that would be smart. I think by removing Iowa, they said to a great number of people outside of the state of Iowa that we're less interested in your opinions.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
It was so weird because they were like, oh, well, we want states that are more competitive and more diverse, but South Carolina is less competitive and New Hampshire is less diverse. So what is it really? I don't know the answer to that question, but I know that in Iowa, we're going to follow state law and I think it would be smart for the DNC to put Iowa back in charge on that.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Sorry. Sorry for – you know, honestly, I should have told you that this was it because then you would have known like I'm just not going to open Twitter today, right? Yeah.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Let me give that some thought and get back to you on that. I can't make any promises today. I'd want to think through the legal ramifications. I also wouldn't want to promise you something that for some reason the Iowa Constitution says we can't do. I think you'd have to be lieutenant governor first.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Then we can have like two candidates at the same time out there and just say all of them are me. Like, hey, this is Rob Sand. Where's Tommy Veeder today? No, he's the other guy in the other place.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Look, robsand.com is the place to go. You can donate. Here's my plan to win. We're going to need volunteers later, but right now we certainly want people pitching in who care about the state of Iowa, who want to see us break the trifecta here. Plan to win? Letting people know who I am. My plan has always been do what I was told to do when I was growing up. Be yourself.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
I do 100 town halls every single year. They are advanced notice to the public so that everyone can come. Everyone can ask me questions and get answers from me. We're going to do those again. I like to do 100 because for those who really know your Iowa geography, I do every county seat and Lee County has two county seats.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
So while most elected officials in Iowa do the 99-county tour because I'm competitive and I like bad jokes, I like to say, well, I do 100 town halls and that way I'm the hardest working elected official in the state of Iowa, which is kind of fun. But I'm going to be out there. I'm going to talk to people because I thought that's what democracy was about. Sorry if I misunderstood.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
I thought you're supposed to literally go meet people and say, hey, how are you, and listen to them and answer their questions. I think that that works because I've been doing it so far and it's been working for me.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
Thanks, Tommy. That's really nice of you. I appreciate that. Of course. I'll tell one little story about that. Because I think that everybody, all of us, whether we're running for office or not, we tell ourselves stories about ourselves. And sometimes they're accurate and sometimes they're not. But in 2022, I had a physical reaction to something that helped me understand actually why I do this.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
And it's not for me on election night. My reelection was super close. So we had an hour and a half where we were like, Ooh, on pins and needles. And then we had a half an hour where we were like, it's over, we lost. And for that half an hour, I felt great. I felt fantastic. I was like, I'm free. I'm free. And it made me realize like I had a physical, I felt three inches taller.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
I felt like lighter. All the weight was off of my shoulders. And that reaction literally helped me realize like, no, I think I should be glad that I won because half an hour later when the weight came back, I wasn't honestly happy about it.
Pod Save America
Mile High Bribe Club
But it did make me realize I should be happy that I won and I should keep trying because that reaction to me told me like, no, I know I'm not doing this for me. I know I'm doing it to try to make a difference. And you can't fake it. that kind of feeling. So I appreciate you feeling that way too.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Yeah. And I think there's going to be a great piece for this, which is a great answer for that here. We uncovered a record amount of misspent money in my first term. And the answer to that from politicians in Des Moines was to go, hey, we got to stop this guy. He's actually doing his job. Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Right. Right. Yeah. You'd think that that would be the answer, but that's the difference. And that to me is the like I think of the heart of this campaign. It's really the question of public service and government trying to serve all Iowans versus. Politics and having it serve insiders and special interests.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And I don't think that you could have a clearer example of that than literally them looking at us doing our job really well and going, we got to slow him down.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Look, I guess I'd say this. People who know me, I'm glad that you asked that question because people who know me know that I'm not satisfied with a two-choice system. And I think it's important that we talk about that. The bottom line is...
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Most of us have experienced this in the ballot booth where we look at our options and we see Democrat, independent, Republican, and we see the independent and we like the independent. But we're also like, man, if I vote for the independent, I know I'm just throwing my vote away. And there's that frustration of just sort of the being trapped, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Being a prisoner of this system while we are also participants in it. That's the bottom line. It's the same question for a candidate. So I would love to have a system in Iowa where independent candidates can actually get elected very easily. But we're going to have to change how the system works before we get there. How would you change that in Iowa to do that?
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Sure. But if you do that, then you get back to the same thing, which is if I run as independent, the Republicans go out and they collect petitions to have somebody run as a Democrat and they have someone register as a Democrat or they find some.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
absolutely furious democrat who's so mad at me for running as an independent and then you've got a three-way race and we all know what happens i am i am the spoiler or maybe it's the democrat that's a spoiler but right either way it's over before it begins because of the way we structure elections right so the answer to how you do that in iowa um is again like and well actually i want to go to a different piece of your point here about the tories and sort of being a favored party
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
This is supposed to be about solving problems. This is government is supposed to be about people coming together and deciding, OK, what do we need to address this issue? How do we address that issue? So many of our founders warned us. Watch out for factionalism. Watch out for partisanship.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
But we were having people with a different letter behind their name, whether it's Republican or independent or anything else, do it. I'm here for solving problems. And I think as long as we have a system that allows elected officials and candidates to sort of say, well, I don't have to solve your problems as long as I can convince you that so-and-so over here is worse than me.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I don't think we're solving a lot of problems because there's no incentive to do it. So I think the answer, to be more specific, if you want the more specific answer, right now in the state of Iowa, independent voters are not allowed to participate in primaries that their tax dollars pay for. I think that's wrong. So I think we should have a single open primary.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And then I'd love to see approval voting on the second side of that for three or four or five candidates. So here's the three to five that make it through to the general vote for all of them that you approve of. There is no rank choice. The tabulation is available automatically. It's easy. And then the general is...
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
uh a 50 whoever gets 50 wins or just top vote getter in your in your just top vote getter so this is what fargo north dakota does they uh you have four or five candidates in the general election and you as the voter you can vote for all of them or one of them just however many you approve of and so whoever has the most votes still wins the election plain and simple yeah
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
So I was registered as an independent when I first registered to vote. I did register as a Democrat soon after that because I realized in order to vote in the primary, I had to pick my poison. The difference is I still talk about the fact that it was poison that I picked.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I'm a public servant. I live in a system where in order to be effective, just like when I was a voter in my early 20s, I have to choose one or the other. And so that's what I've done. If I win, is it a victory for the Democratic Party? That would be for other Democrats to decide. I've never been to the DNC. I'm clear about what I believe.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I'm clear about the fact that I'm a Democrat because I have to pick one or the other. I think I think. uh that if i win then maybe that helps other people figure out what's effective out there but i'm not doing it i want to be a public servant to the whole state of iowa i don't want to be a leader for a political party in in in my time at the state auditor's office we had
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Democrats, independents and Republicans always in senior leadership. I actually appointed people to the most senior positions in the office who had made campaign contributions to my opponent from 2018. I think it's important to do that because. Do you plan on doing that if you win this time? I would absolutely do that if I win.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Yeah, I would want to have a bipartisan cabinet 100 percent or a tripartite. I'd like to have some independents.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
It's a lot easier to find. You know, you've got a bigger circle to cast from if you just say a voter or a supporter or a registered Republican. But if I found someone who was a donor who also was well qualified to do the work, that wouldn't stop me. It hasn't stopped me in the past.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
You know, Jim Pillen in Nebraska, Republican governor, said, what, maybe three years ago, hey, we are going to really increase our investment in Nebraska public schools. And what do you know? According to U.S.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
News and World Report, Nebraska is now ranked higher than Iowa for public schools, which as an Iowan and someone that has a rivalry with Nebraska the way much of my state does really annoys me. And you grew up there.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
We put it on our quarter, our quarter, our U.S. quarter for Iowa says foundation and education, and now we're in the middle of the pack. It is embarrassing.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Right.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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...
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Sure. So we started a government efficiency program in 2019 that is so good at saving tax dollars, it's actually been copied into other states. It's called PIE, Public Innovations and Efficiencies. And it covers cities and counties too, but it also covers school districts. We have an incredible checklist of ways that they can save money.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And the more of them that they implement, the more money they're going to save. And so what I would like the state to do, we have right now a really meaningful surplus that's presently just sort of sitting there. I would like us to actually start a revolving fund. to help schools with the upfront cost for those efficiency investments.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Because most folks know, you know, if you're going to make some efficiency investments, you pay a little bit upfront and it pays off down the road. So we could use those state dollars to help dig in and make efficiency improvements. Those would help us do the things that we know make schools more effective. Parental involvement, smaller class sizes, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
But you can do those if you're saving that money in a way where it doesn't necessarily cost more money. I think that's a no brainer. And I don't know why we're sitting here in 2025 and it's only being proposed right now as opposed to already being done.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Part of my belief in public schools is because of my patriotism. I love this country. This country is about democracy. It's about all Americans working together. The one place in our lives where we can meet everyone. is when we are students in public schools, whatever you do after that, whether it's you're going to college, well, you're going to college with people who go to college.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Are you gonna go be an electrician? Well, you're gonna be an apprentice electrician with other folks learning to be an electrician, right? Whatever path you choose after that point is a narrowing experience. One of the best experiences you can have to understand just how good the people are who surround us is being a part of and supporting public schools where
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
The kids you are next to are the kids who are from wealthy families and from poor families. The kids you're there are from well-educated families or not well-educated families. The kids you're next to are from families with both parents working or zero parents working. But you know and you understand society, I think, so much better.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
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.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
But you need to get that experience before you can understand that.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
That's more than the federal government. Yeah. So now we're down to 16. I don't know that 16 is the magic number, but certainly we did not need 36. So that was a good move. Wow, 36.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
So there's kind of two pieces of my answer to that question. One is there are still a huge number of Iowans that are focused on the candidate, not on the party or, you know, public service rather than politics. In 2022, Tom Miller and Mike Fitzgerald both ended up about 1% shy of winning their races for state treasurer and attorney general.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
If those guys had won, we would be the only state in the country with an evenly split delegation for the state offices. That would be a measure where you could say literally we are the most purple state, right? And we were 1% off of that. So Republicans have won a lot of elections in Iowa lately, but Iowans are still just sort of looking for the person, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And this is why this state, I think, went – For Obama twice and then Trump three times, not because the state changed overnight, but because both of those guys were outsiders who promised to change politics.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I do. And we're going to follow Iowa law. I'm not particularly concerned with what the DNC says.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Sure. Pretty straightforward. Iowans have been doing this for a very long time. Folks like yourself, I don't know if you ever said it specifically, but there were other reporters who when they were here for the caucuses would say, man, I've been in every state and I've done this for years. Nobody asks better questions than Iowa voters. Nobody's more... into it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
No one is more, you know, I appreciate that you made a personal phone call to me, Mrs. Candidate, but I'm going to still, yeah, I'm going to, I'm still going to make sure that I have a chance to. Look, I love my friends in New Hampshire too.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Well, but then, you know, then the DNC comes in here and says, okay, well, Iowa, oh, they complain about diversity issues. And they complain – I can't remember what the other thing was, but then they added a state that was less diverse. Oh, and competitiveness. And then they added another state that was also less competitive. Less competitive, right. Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Look, it's always a little bit of six on one half dozen on the other. Right. I mean, two things could be true at once. Again, keep in mind that. During those presidential races, Democrats also nominated consummate insiders, right? I don't think that that helped.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Not in a place where people look at politics and they see a bunch of BS when what they want is people working together to just solve problems.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Well, and I think that goes to the idea of listening and how much that can matter to voters. Let me tell you a story from a month ago, Chuck, that still blows my mind. There's a conservative group in northwest Iowa in what you would probably pronounce Gaza. It's Gaza here in Iowa, G-A-Z-A. They're the Gaza Patriots in their conservative group.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And they have a hard time getting some of the Republican elected officials in the state of Iowa to come there to do a town hall. I'm an open book. They reached out, said, will you come to a town hall? I said, absolutely. I went up there. We had a great event. I don't know if we had 70, 80, 90 people. We had Q&A, which they ended up pre-screening. It wasn't my request.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
When I do my 100 town halls, I don't pre-screen questions. Say it fast three times. I can't. I can't. I can't even say it once slowly. But when they announced, Chuck, that I was going to come talk to them, the Iowa GOP headquarters read them the Riot Act. They treated these Iowans like they owned them. And that to me is the kind of stuff that man, it just makes me want to fight.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
The idea that a political party would call people and sort of tell them, don't you go listening to your statewide elected official? Don't you go and asking questions of the statewide elected official? There's something deeply wrong in the establishment of that party right now. And that to me is a great, great example of it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Sure. Bottom line is there was a guy who... had the job of writing the code that was going to pick random numbers through a computer program. And he put a little bit extra into that code so that on two dates a year,
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
If that date fell on a Wednesday or a Sunday, I think it was, if the draw was happening after 8 p.m., if all three of those things would meet, then instead of using a random number generator, it would use a six variable formula to sort of pick the seed. And so, of course, because he was an insider, he knew. He knew what day this could happen. Right.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And he would know what those variables were so he could go out and buy a small number of tickets and guarantee a win. He, his best friend, his brother, and then some guys who are Bigfoot hunters because his brother is one and they're believers. Meaning like Bigfoot, like Bigfoot, Sasquatch. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Somewhere. Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
He might be somewhere out there in nature, but he is definitely in my book, which is called The Winning Ticket. They... We're able to have a good story that only helps your true crime narrative. Yeah, it's well done. They were able to get away with this for effectively for a decade.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, the Iowa one was a very big one. They had a couple of tiny jackpots in there for 20K, but they were winning jackpots of over a million dollars. And one of my favorite stories in the book actually is about how The first one, they actually had the FBI come and question the brother about how the money had gotten won.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
He was questioned while he was in a hospital bed because he broke both of his legs while falling out of a tree Bigfoot hunting. So there's that. But When Eddie, the mastermind, was trying to convince his best friend, hey, it's okay. Don't worry about it. We can do this a second time.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
One of the things he shared with him only at that point, after the best friend had already won one jackpot, was, hey, look, this is how easy this is. This is how sure I am. The FBI actually questioned my brother when I did this with him before I did it with you the first time. Yeah. And the guy blew his top because that was the first time he learned about this other jackpot.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Not only was there another jackpot, but also the FBI had questioned some of the people involved. So he got a lot less happy with his best friend after that. It's always nice when the people you're investigating aren't that bright. You know what? This is human nature. And Chuck, you wanted to we wanted to wrap it up. This is why we have checks and balances.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
This is why we want people to be led not into temptation. This is why the Constitution is a genius document, because when you give one person all the power, eventually they're going to misuse it. And they also they're going to make mistakes.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
Good question. Most of the folks that I'm talking to right now are pretty focused on tariffs. I mean, it's just... you want to be able to grow what you're going to grow and fight for the price that you think is the right price. But when you don't know where the price is going, because you have no idea what's going to happen next, it is so hard to make that decision.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And you, most people, they want to sink or swim according to their own decision-making. But when there's all this uncertainty out there, they, they, they are sort of trapped in this system that they have no control over, which then means they have very little control over their own success. Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I don't think so.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I think I like I like Chuck Grassley's answer. I would agree with him. If this if these tariffs work, I'm going to say amen. Hallelujah. But I don't think they're going to work.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
And do you expect a primary? There's someone who's said that she'll run. We'll see if she really does. I got no problem with the primary.
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I would imagine so. But, you know, we'll find out. I'll tell you this. Whoever comes out of it is going to be an advocate for lockstep. The agenda that Kim Reynolds has run that I think is unpopular in the state of Iowa right now. You think it's a change in a new direction?
The Chuck ToddCast
Have Democrats Found Their Red State SAVIOR To Beat Republicans? w/ Rob Sand
I'm a guy that looks at politics and is mostly disappointed with what it is. So I'm a changed guy regardless.