Election Results
Meet the State Auditor candidates
According to the Auditor of State website, the state auditor is responsible for audits of counties, cities, school districts and other governmental subdivisions. They are also responsible for examinations of cities that are not required to be audited. Democratic incumbent Rob Sand faces Republican challenger Todd Halbur.
Rob Sand
Sand is a lawyer and has served as the 33rd Iowa State Auditor since 2019. He was assistant attorney general of Iowa from 2010 to 2017.
At the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair, Sand said he wants an office that is able to help the state run more efficiently and hold people accountable when they try to steal taxpayers' money. He wants all Iowans to feel that his office is looking out for them, he said.
Sand has led several investigations into Gov. Kim Reynolds' office, including its use of COVID-19 relief funds to pay staff salaries and purchase a software system. Reynolds' office returned that money in late 2020 after the U.S. Treasury Office of the Inspector General affirmed it was not an allowable use of CARES Act money.
But Sand says his office has also led investigations that cast the Reynolds administration in a favorable light, like one earlier this year showing Iowa health officials had accurately reported COVID-19 data in the first year of the pandemic.
Todd Halbur
Halbur has worked in banking, the finance industry and as a real estate agent.
He was also the former CFO of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, which dismissed him in 2018. He was recently awarded $1 million as the result of a whistleblower lawsuit against the division and its administrator for wrongful termination.
Halbur became the Republican nominee for auditor by narrowly defeating former state Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa in the June primary. At the Political Soapbox, he said he wants to be a watchdog and the voice of the Iowa taxpayer.
Halbur said he’d like to see smaller cities — those with fewer than 2,000 people and budgets under $1 million – audited more often than once every eight years. He would also like to see Iowa’s Alcoholic Beverages Division no longer have direct control over wholesale liquor in the state, which he says would lower prices for Iowans.
