NEVADA, Iowa — In 2008, this overwhelmingly white state was Barack Obama ’s unlikely launching pad to become the nation’s first Black president.
DeJear, a 36-year-old Des Moines businesswoman, cemented her status as a rising political star in 2018 when she became the first Black candidate to win a statewide primary in Iowa.
She is struggling to translate that lower-wattage fame into support from voters.
Meanwhile, she posted an anemic $8,500 fundraising balance in January, raising less than $300,000 since announcing her candidacy in August.
DeJear tried to put any such doubts aside as she bounded onto the stage at an event in Nevada, a small farm town in central Iowa.
In 2009, the Iowa high court ruled gay marriage legal, making the state the third to allow it, after similar rulings in Massachusetts and Connecticut but five years before the U.S.
Iowans ushered in the new millennium with Tom Vilsack, a Democrat and former mayor from rural southeast Iowa, as governor.
In a striking illustration, Obama carried the state in November 2008 by winning 52 of its 99 counties.
After decades of divided state government, Republicans have controlled the Legislature and the governorship for six consecutive years, cutting taxes and reining in voting and abortion rights.
The 34-year-old Smith, who was voted the Iowa Democratic Party’s “Rising Star” award recipient in 2019 and is Black, found it difficult to persuade some of the party’s major donors in the state, who are white, to give him a look.
Despite Smith’s promising profile and DeJear’s 2018 breakthrough, some wealthy Iowa Democrats sought out others to run, including state Rep.
A wealthy Des Moines-area businessman, Hubbell spent $7 million of his own money in narrowly losing to Reynolds.
“It wasn’t about the dollars,” said Smith, who ended his campaign in January, leaving DeJear unopposed in the primary.
Hubbell endorsed DeJear in a written statement last month, two months after Smith’s withdrawal made her the Democrats’ only candidate.
But DeJear is the only Black woman campaigning in such a predominantly white state.