The candidate

Five months ago, Mike Denklau, at the age of 26, decided he needed a career shift. He had spent two years at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., most notably doing his part as a young analyst in a private equity fundraising. When British bank Barclays plc bought bankrupt Lehman in the fall of 2008, Denklau stayed on for a further nine months, "working on lots of deals that didn't happen."

By the summer of this year, Denklau says Barclays offered him a promotion, but after less than three years of the Wall Street life, Denklau declined it and the pay increase it would have brought. "The [Lehman] bankruptcy was definitely an eye opener," he says. "It was hard to see it all fall apart."

Now Denklau has chosen a venture with perhaps as little stability as the life he left last June: He headed to his home state of Iowa to run as a Democrat in the 5th Congressional District. It is a solidly Republican enclave where the biggest city, Sioux City, has 80,000 residents, and much of the rest of the district is filled with corn and soybean farms. The election is a year away; so far, Denklau is unopposed for his party's nomination.

Denklau, who says he participated in raising $550 million for the 2007 Lehman Brothers Private Equity Fund (now the Neuberger Berman Private Equity Fund), has a 2006 bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa, where he majored in finance and political science. He grew up in Blue Grass, Iowa, the son of a local tax assessor, and now lives in Council Bluffs, on the east bank of the Missouri River across from Omaha.

Denklau is running against a vocal fiscal and social conservative, four-term Rep. Steve King, who won 59% and 60% of the votes in his past two House races even as Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006 and added to their margins in 2008.

Some may remember King from when he announced his re-election bid last year as he disparaged the then candidacy of Barack Obama. "If he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror," he told voters. "Additionally, his middle name [Hussein] does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world." The presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain of Arizona disavowed King's comments as "a type of politics that degrades our civics."

King declined to comment on Denklau's candidacy. But even with King's past electoral success, Denklau says he thinks he can win as a "fiscally conservative progressive." He argues that even though his experiences on Wall Street may not be the everyday stuff on the minds of western Iowa voters, "People do realize out here that things that happen on Wall Street affect Main Street. A year and half after the collapse, we still have no real policy on [financial institutions] that are too big to fail.

"I was frustrated by Congress' lack of action," he says. "Sure, they're going after the pay of CEOs, and that's important. But it's more important to stabilize the market and protect consumers."