Vice President JD Vance made personal attacks on Iowa Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand during a Friday campaign appearance in Council Bluffs, calling him a former “underwear model” and describing his supporters as “out and out lunatics.”
Vance was in town campaigning for Republicans ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm election, in which Sand faces Republican businessman Zach Lahn. Sand, 44, currently leads Lahn by an average of 5.2 percentage points in polling.
“Rob’s dream, ever since he was a kid, was to serve the Democrat Party. And aside from a brief stint as an underwear model in Europe — did not expect to be saying those words in Council Bluffs — that’s exactly how he spent his entire career, as a partisan servant to the far left,” Vance told the crowd.
Sand, Iowa’s state auditor, worked as a fashion model in Paris and Milan while in college, according to a New York Times profile. Images purported to show him modeling underwear during that period depict a young man resembling the candidate.
Vance also criticized Sand’s wealth, referencing his wife’s family, which controls the health and nutrition company Lauridsen Group, calling him a “billionaire.” He further attacked Sand’s record opposing school book bans.
“For years, this guy has been saying it is discrimination to follow your deeply held beliefs on what it means to be a man or woman,” Vance said. “That’s what’s led Rob to passionately defend a children’s book about, and I quote, ‘non-binary parents and poly families’. That’s the guy who wants to be your governor. It’s why he’s gone to great lengths to keep those perverted books in your kids’ grade-school libraries.”
Sand’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the New York Post, which first reported on the remarks.
Vance broadened his remarks beyond Iowa, framing the coming election as a choice between “common sense versus crazy” and pointing to New York Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Brooklyn congressional candidate Claire Valdez.
He mocked Valdez for comments made around the Fourth of July, in which she referenced “liberation from Palestine to Puerto Rico” on the nation’s 250th anniversary. “You can imagine Thomas Jefferson sitting there with his quilt pin, thinking about this is about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico,” Vance said.
Ocasio-Cortez, who is seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender and possible future opponent to Vance, was also mentioned in his remarks, with Vance saying she is “very good” at “learning how to say nothing.”
