Republican Todd Halbur concedes to Democrat Rob Sand in Iowa state auditor’s race

Iowa will still have one statewide Democrat in office after Republican state auditor candidate Todd Halbur conceded the race Friday to Democratic incumbent Auditor Rob Sand.

Halbur said he was dropping his request for a recount because he did not have sufficient resources to file the requests in all 99 counties, and he claimed the Republican Party of Iowa would not help support a statewide recount.

Sand led the race by 2,893 votes out of nearly 1.2 million cast in the election — a margin of just 0.24 percent — according to the latest unofficial results reported by the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.

Because the victory margin is less than 1 percent, Halbur by state law could request a recount without being required to post a bond, with Iowa counties picking up the cost.

Halbur, though, would still have to physically file paperwork with each county auditor in the state within three days after the county canvass and recruit designees in all 99 counties to serve on recount boards.

“They have to have the flexibility to do a hand count for days and be flexible for 18 total days to get the recount done,” Halbur said in a statement provided to The Gazette. “My campaign does not have the staff or infrastructure to get that coordinated on a statewide basis in that short amount of time.

“Each county just oversees the ballots for the recount board that my campaign has to put together to do the recount.”

Sand is the only Iowa Democrat to win a statewide race in the Nov. 8 midterm election. Iowa Republicans won the campaigns for U.S. Senate, governor, secretary of state, attorney general, secretary of agriculture and state treasurer — ousting two 40-year Democratic incumbents.

Republicans defeated the longest-serving state attorney general (Democrat Tom Miller) and longest-serving state treasurer (Democrat Mike Fitzgerald) in U.S. history.

Sand, on Twitter, said he and Halbur had a “kind and cordial conversation” in which Halbur conceded the race.

“Back to work, Iowa. Let’s do this,” Sand tweeted.

Sand, a lawyer, served in the Iowa Attorney General’s Office from 2010 to 2017 as a prosecutor of public corruption cases before being elected state auditor in 2018.

The office is responsible for auditing the financial operations of Iowa’s state and local governments and provides guidance to CPA firms performing such audits.

In his first term, Sand said his office identified more than $25 million in misspent funds, and created an efficiency program to help public entities find new ways to save money.

Republicans have accused Sand of using the auditor’s office for partisan attacks, pointing to audits focused on Gov. Kim Reynolds. One audit led to Reynolds returning $21 million in federal COVID-19 aid that was improperly spent. Another audit alleged the Republican governor improperly promoted herself in a taxpayer-funded public awareness campaign during the pandemic — a claim the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board rejected.

Sand has said he manages his office in a nonpartisan manner — appointing a Republican, an independent and a Democrat to his senior leadership team — and also led investigations that cast the Reynolds’ administration in a favorable light, like one showing officials had accurately reported COVID-19 data in the first year of the pandemic.

Halbur owns a school supply distribution company and is a licensed real estate agent in Clive. He also served as chief financial officer at the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, which dismissed him in 2018. He was recently awarded $1 million by a Polk County jury as the result of a whistleblower lawsuit against the division and its administrator for wrongful termination. Halbur said he was fired after raising questions about excessive price markups and payments made under an improper no-bid contract.

Halbur became the Republican nominee for auditor by narrowly defeating former state Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa in the June primary. Hanusa was endorsed by Gov. Kim Reynolds and other Republican leaders.

But after defeating Hanusa, Halbur raised little money during the race — less than $50,000 — and state Republicans did not put resources behind his campaign, leaving him vastly outspent by Sand, who spent more than $1.8 million in the statewide race.

In a statement to The Gazette and a post on Facebook, Halbur said the Republican Party of Iowa “failed to provide any support and resources to my campaign” for a statewide recount.

“This leaves me with no other option than to abandon this recount effort just as the State GOP organization has abandoned my campaign,” Halbur wrote.

He thanked family, friends, volunteers and voters “whose support demonstrated that a hard working, non-career politician can be a viable candidate in a statewide race.”

Kollin Crompton, communications director for the Republican Party of Iowa, pointed to the party's efforts to help candidates up and down the ballot this year, providing “hundreds of thousands of dollars and coordinated hours of grassroots manpower.”

"At the same time, successful candidates knock doors, attend events, talk to voters and raise money,“ Crompton said in a statement. ”Hardworking candidates win elections. We are proud of the work our team put in this year and look forward to defeating Rob Sand in his next election."

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com

Erin Murphy of The Gazette Des Moines Bureau contributed to this article.