Rob Sand // Wikimedia Commons

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Rob Sand is the Democratic nominee for governor of Iowa and the only Democrat holding statewide office there. He has also become a favorite of the Third Way and Searchlight Institute wing of Democratic consultants, who have spent the past year encouraging Democrats to abandon transgender people and adopt at least a few anti-trans positions; Searchlight’s founder, Adam Jentleson, told The Atlantic this month that Sand has “taken some of the cultural issues that dog Democrats in red states off the table.” Now Sand is at the head of a wave of prominent Democratic candidates choosing to throw transgender people under the bus in their pursuit of power. In an interview with Politico’s Jonathan Martin, Sand gave his clearest endorsement yet of anti-trans sports bans, stating, “I just think girls’ sports are for girls and boys’ sports are for boys,” while decrying members of his own party who are “much more focused on other cultural stuff.”

“Where do you differ from your party?” Martin asked Sand in the interview. Sand responded with a list of conservative positions, a trans sports ban among them. “Well, I have said consistently I think that fairness rules the day in girls’ sports,” he said. “I think that if we are helping you afford food, you shouldn’t be buying sugary drinks with it. We don’t want you to build bad nutrition habits that then lead to additional healthcare costs later on. The border was obviously a mess under the Biden administration. That is a national security issue. We need to have a common-sense system that works there. Is that a long enough list?”

“You don’t want biological boys playing in high school girls’ sports,” Martin followed up, to which Sand confirmed, “Whatever it was you said, if you said what I said, then that’s what I said,” he answered, laughing. “Everybody gets hard on the language. They get mad if you use this word or that word. I just think girls’ sports are for girls and boys’ sports are for boys. And I think that that’s fair and reasonable.” He closed by noting he still supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage: “But at the same time, look, I respect women’s right to choose and reproductive freedom. If you want to get a gay marriage, help yourself.”

You can watch the full exchange here:

This is not a new position for Sand, though it is the most explicit he has been about it. The candidate has carved out an anti-trans path in his quest for the governorship of Iowa. In May 2025, the day after he launched his campaign, conservative radio host Simon Conway asked whether “biological boys or men” should play women’s sports, and Sand answered with one word: “No.” He followed up with a statement: “I’ve been clear that I support common-sense policies like the law protecting fairness in women’s sports,” adopting conservative policies that target transgender kids, often in middle school, who just want to play soccer or volleyball with their friends. That has led to confrontations at his town halls. At one in North Liberty last September, attendees pressed him for the evidence behind the ban; he offered none, saying he was “open-minded about it,” and someone in the crowd yelled “Coward!”

Sand is not the only Democrat staking out an anti-transgender stance this election cycle. In June, Ohio’s Democratic nominee for governor, Amy Acton, did the same, calling transgender girls “boys” and defending Ohio’s trans sports ban as a matter of “safety.” Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Iowa, issued a campaign statement that he “does not believe males should be playing female sports.” Sarah Trone Garriott, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, is running an ad declaring, “I oppose letting men in women’s locker rooms,” because “politicians have become too extreme on these issues.” And in the current Congress, more than a dozen House Democrats have cast anti-trans votes. The danger is real: a cancer is growing in the Democratic Party that could threaten Democrats’ ability to reverse Republican anti-trans policies for the foreseeable future, even if they regain power.

Iowa has been the site of several anti-trans laws in recent years. The state passed a gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth and has a sweeping “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law for its schools. Likewise, the state passed a ban on transgender students using bathrooms that match their gender in public schools. The state also no longer allows transgender residents to change the sex marker on their birth certificates after SF 418 passed in 2025. Lastly, the state made national news as the first in the country to strip a protected class from its civil rights code, removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Now, with multiple anti-trans Democrats staking out this stance, transgender Iowans are left to wonder whether there is any hope the tide will turn when no one is left to stand for them.

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