Deidre DeJear was a candidate for Iowa Secretary of State. DeJear lost the general election on November 6, 2018, after advancing from the primary on June 5, 2018.
As the founder of a small business that provides entrepreneurs affordable marketing tools and business strategies, Deidre became aware of the lack of access to state resources for building and growing small businesses primarily because those resources simply were not available. In 2012, she took a leave from her company to serve as Iowa’s African American Vote Director for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. In this role, she worked to register, educate and mobilize voters across the state.
Deidre sees the correlations between high quality education; healthy, safe neighborhoods; and affordable communities where families can support and nurture themselves with living wages and benefits. She knows stable communities attract, sustain and grow small businesses, and she believes all Iowans deserve to live in such communities.