Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Tue. Oct. 27, 2026

Another record setting race.

I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

There's beating a record and then there's smashing it to bits.

Going into this year's election cycle, the most expensive race for governor in Iowa history, as measured by the amount of money the Democrat and Republican candidates raised, was in 2018.

That year, incumbent Republican Kim Reynolds and Democrat Fred Hubbell raised a combined $36 million.

That pales in comparison with this year's race and it's not just due to inflation.

Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lane have pulled in a combined 81 million dollars for the election one week from today.

That's well more than double the record from just eight years ago.

Sand's latest campaign finance report shows a haul of more than 54 million while Lane has tallied nearly 27 million.

Meaning, Sand has raised twice as much as Lane as part of that overall record-smashing amount.

However, Sand did not have a primary, and since Lane won an upset victory in his primary in June, their fundraising has been almost dead even.

over the summer.

In the latest three-month reporting period, Lane actually raised more money than sand, 16.87 million to 16.31 million.

Again, for comparison, the two candidates in this year's race raised almost as much in just the last three months than the total raised in the entire 2018 campaign, the old record.

As of the most recent report on October 15th, sand had about 5.35 million of it left in the bank, while lane had only 403,000.

For what it's worth, the job of Iowa Governor,

pays $130,000 per year.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Tuesday, October 27th on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.