Des Moines — Dana Van Woert strolled into this city’s downtown plaza on a September afternoon eager to help make history. Hillary Clinton was in town to headline a get-out-the-vote rally, and before it began, Van Woert scribbled her contact information on a campaign worker’s clipboard with the intention of volunteering at future events. The 27-year-old graphic designer, a graduate of Iowa State University, lives here in Des Moines and took her lunch break to cheer for a candidate who she hopes will become America’s first female president.
A few hundred feet away, just outside the event fencing, Dan Edwards was working to prevent that from happening. The 54-year-old retired painter and facilities worker, who lives 20 miles away in the tiny outpost of Van Meter, wore a camouflage NAPA Racing cap and a “Donald Trump for President” shirt. He thrust a handmade sign into the sky: Crooked Hillary. On the flip side: Honk if Hillary Lied. Edwards went to trade school, he explains in between the blare of motorists obliging him, where he learned to paint everything from iron beams to household furniture. But he never attended college.
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