The state teachers’ union is backing Democrat Rob Sand’s bid to be Iowa’s next governor and three of the Republicans running for governor continue to press for immediate limits on the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline.
A bill that would ban Summit from using eminent domain to seize property along the pipeline route passed the House in January. The Des Moines Register reports Eddie Andrews, who’s a member of the Iowa House, joked it may take “prayer and holy oil” to get the Senate to act on it. Andrews made his comments at a Cerro Gordo County GOP fundraiser in Clear Lake on Saturday morning, where candidates Adam Steen and Brad Sherman also called on the senate to pass the bill.
At the same time, in West Des Moines, the Iowa State Education Association announced it is endorsing Democrat Rob Sand for governor. Sand said the union’s teachers can be the “secret weapon” in his campaign by reaching out to Democrats as well as independents and Republican voters willing to split their ticket in November. “Because you know almost everyone where you live, right? And so I’m hoping you’ll be among our best volunteers,” Sand said.
According to the ISEA’s president, about half the union’s members are Democrats and the other half are Republicans or independents. “We are going to have a massive face-to-face campaigning effort, a massive ground game and I want educators across the state of Iowa to be a part of it, please,” Sand said.
Sand drew cheers from the ISEA delegate assembly when he repeated his call for more oversight of the state-funded Education Savings Accounts for private school expenses. He said state government worked better during divided government, when neither Republicans nor Democrats controlled both the legislature and the governor’s office. Republicans have held a majority of seats in the legislature since 2017, as Republicans Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds have served as governor. “State government hasn’t been listening for a long time. They’ve got preconceived notions, like ‘sinister teachers,” Sand said. That’s a reference to a remark from then-Senator Jack Chapman four years ago, who accused some teachers of using obscene material in their classrooms.
Governor Terry Branstad was the last Republican candidate to receive the Iowa State Education Association’s endorsement, for his 1994 campaign. The ISEA invited all five Republicans running for governor this year to meet for an interview with union members. The one Republican who initially said they would do so wound up cancelling.
Sand’s mother also addressed the ISEA delegates Saturday morning. Leslie Sand, a retired physical therapist, worked for the Keystone Area Education Agency for 27 years and was an ISEA member. “As one of (her son’s) former teachers told me, ‘We know that he will be a supporter of public education and teachers and we need that right now,'” Leslie Sand said.
ISEA officials say the union has led negotiations covering contracts for about 50,000 Iowa educators in preschools, public school districts, AEAs and community colleges in Iowa.