WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance attacked Iowa Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand as a former “underwear model” while blasting his supporters as “out and out lunatics” during a Friday campaign trip to the state.
Vance name-checked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and ridiculed Brooklyn congressional candidate Claire Valdez for using the Fourth of July holiday to call for “liberation from Palestine to Puerto Rico” as he campaigned for Republicans in Council Bluffs.
“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, is leading Republican businessman Zach Lahn by an average of 5.2 percentage points in polling ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm election.
The Dem candidate and Iowa state auditor worked as a fashion model in Paris and Milan while in college, according to a New York Times profile. Purported Ambercrombie-style images of his underwear modeling show a young man bearing a resemblance to the candidate wearing little if any clothing embracing a young woman.
Vance also attacked the Democratic front-runner as a “billionaire” — a reference to the wealth of his wife’s family, which controls the health and nutrition Lauridsen Group — and his remarks about 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 The Post’s request for comment.
Vance also targeted New York Democrats to more broadly frame the election as a national choice 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.”
