Iowa Senate District 19 candidate Bob Eschliman has called on Auditor of Iowa Rob Sand to do the job Iowans have elected him to perform.
“The Des Moines Independent School District has lost hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars with the recruitment, hiring, and eventual dithering over how to address the employment of Ian Roberts, who we now know they always knew was a criminal illegal entrant in the United States. Auditor Sand has both the constitutional authority and responsibility to investigate this matter fully – regardless of any federal investigation. He answers to the taxpayers of Iowa, as well as the taxpayers of Des Moines Public Schools.”
Eschliman noted that Sand has been busily campaigning – nearly nine months before the Democratic Party primary – during which he’s been infringing upon freedom of the press. Tuesday, Sept. 30, credentialled citizen journalist John Bain of Southeast Iowa Today was ejected from a town hall event in Muscatine shortly after he was granted a one-on-one interview with Auditor Sand about his campaign.
“There is no indication Mr. Bain did anything to disrupt the event. He simply wanted to record and document the event for his audience,” he said. “Before the event began, however, two staffers of the Sand campaign told him he had to turn off his camera. When he calmly protested, identifying himself as a credentialled member of the press who was there to cover the event, he was asked to leave.
“The role of the press – which began with citizen-journalists like Benjamin Franklin – has been vital to a transparent and responsive government in America for more than three centuries. Auditor Sand – effectively the only Democrat running for his party’s 2026 gubernatorial nomination – has now been fully exposed as the mainstream liberal progressive socialist we all knew him to be.”
Eschliman, a former professional journalist, has covered hundreds of campaign events during a 22-year career. He said he’s never seen a credentialed member of the press removed from a public forum.
“Mr. Bain was just simply doing his job, professionally, and got kicked out for either asking the wrong question of Auditor Sand before the event, or because the Auditor’s campaign doesn’t want more people to know what he actually told a roomful of Democrat activists and supporters,” he added. “Auditor Sand has manufactured a facade in which he is portrayed as being above reproach. We’re told he’s really only a Democrat for expediency’s sake – in a state that becomes even more Republican with each election – but now we know the truth.
“The facade has cracked and now we see the real Rob Sand.”
