The Democratic nominee for State Auditor made a campaign stop in Jefferson Thursday at the Milwaukee Depot.

Former prosecutor in the Iowa Attorney General’s office Rob Sand is running for State Auditor. Aside from being the lead prosecutor who solved the fixed lottery ticket fraud case, during his eight years in the AG’s office, Sand prosecuted more public corruption cases in Iowa in the last decade and worked closely with the State Auditor’s office. He said it’s because of his work with the Auditor’s office that he believes makes him the ideal candidate for the seat.

“And I can tell you that the office needs more balance. They need to have people with law enforcement experience working on those investigations from day one, rather than giving it to law enforcement when it’s over. I mean it’s pretty straight forward, you want to have people know how to do a thing, doing that thing.”

Sand said currently the Auditor’s office isn’t providing efficiency solutions as part of their annual audit reports for entities as they are allowed to by state law. He also believes that when the Auditor’s office calls the state’s budget “stable” and “balanced” even though there was four cuts made to the budget and state government had to borrow over $100 million this last fiscal year. Sand describes his passion for making some changes in the Auditor’s office.

“We don’t need to change a lot, we just need to elect somebody who’s got some vigor (and) wants the office doing more than what it’s doing right now, to do all of those things. It’s supposed to be the taxpayers watchdog, that’s why our campaign slogan is ‘Wake Up the Watchdog.’ We want a watchdog that is sniffing around. And when it’s finding something that’s problematic going on with the taxpayer’s money, it ought to be barking.”

Greene County was Sand’s 90th county on his 99-county tour ahead of the November general election.