WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance derided Iowa Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand as a former “underwear model” and branded his backers “out and out lunatics” during a Friday campaign stop in the state.
Campaigning for Republicans in Council Bluffs, Vance also invoked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and mocked Brooklyn congressional candidate Claire Valdez over her Fourth of July call for “liberation from Palestine to Puerto Rico.”
“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 said.
Sand, 44, holds an average polling lead of 5.2 percentage points over Republican businessman Zach Lahn ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm election.
The Democratic candidate, who serves as Iowa state auditor, modeled in Paris and Milan during college, according to a New York Times profile. Purported Abercrombie-style photos from the period show a young man resembling Sand, wearing little if any clothing while embracing a young woman.
Vance also took aim at Sand over his family’s wealth — referring to him as a “billionaire” because of the fortune of his wife’s family, which controls the health and nutrition company Lauridsen Group — as well as Sand’s opposition to 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.
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“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 The Post’s request for comment.
Vance also focused on New York Democrats, seeking to cast the Iowa governor’s race and the broader election as a contest between “common sense versus crazy.”
“There’s somebody running for Congress in New York, and I promise I’m not joking about this, who on July 4, 2026, our 250th anniversary as a country, she said that July 4 is actually about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico,” he said, referring to Valdez.
“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.
AOC, who is believed to be set to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, making her a possible challenger to Vance, meanwhile received as shout-out as an example of someone who is “very good” at “learning how to say nothing.”