Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushes initiative in the state amid questions over his own political aspirations

Ro Khanna is not running for president.

Unlike many of his colleagues in Congress, the Silicon Valley congressman was not in Iowa to test the waters for a White House run. His visit was decidedly more ambitious: to bridge the deepening economic divide between urban and rural America.

On a recent Saturday night, Khanna, a progressive Democrat who was recently re-elected in the diverse, deep-blue California district where Apple, Intel and Yahoo have headquarters, joined tech leaders here in Jefferson, an Iowa town of 4,200 people. It is located in a predominantly white, rural swath of the state represented by congressman Steve King, a far-right conservative whose questioning of Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, during a hearing on Capitol Hill this week fueled criticism that Congress doesn’t understand how technology giants operate.

The gulf between the two districts is precisely why Khanna came to Jefferson.

“The digital revolution is one that every community should and can participate in,” he told an audience of local leaders and out-of-town tech industry executives.

They gathered in the town’s History Boy Theatre to learn about an initiative that promises to bring high-paying tech and software design jobs to Jefferson. If it succeeds, they believe the program could be a blueprint for revitalizing other rural communities.

What we need to do is make sure the young folks have an opportunity to stay in Jefferson Ro Khanna

Sitting in the front rows were Microsoft’s chief technology officer, Kevin Scott; the LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue; the Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse; and other industry players. Behind them were a group of Jefferson high school students who aspired to careers in computer science and software design.

“The innovation is here,” Khanna said. “What we need to do is make sure the young folks have an opportunity to stay in Jefferson, have a family in Jefferson and participate in the new economy.”

Since arriving in Congress last year, Khanna has sought to position himself as an “ambassador” to parts of the country that have so far been left out of the new knowledge-based economy. Rather than outsource tech jobs to India and China, he argues that companies should look to rural and small-town America.

“We have a choice in Silicon Valley,” he said in an interview. “We can either continue to exist as an island to ourselves, focused on wealth creation and innovation … or we can understand that we are in the middle of a software revolution and answer the nation’s call to provide economic opportunity and technology to places left behind.”

“If we take the former approach,” he warned, “then in that void – in the communities that are left behind – movements will continue to emerge that blame technology, that blame automation, that blame immigration, that blame globalization for wage stagnation and job loss.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A county fair in Independence, Iowa, a few hours drive east of Jefferson. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

A decade after the financial crisis, economic prosperity has become increasingly linked to geography, according to research released this month by the Economic Innovation Group, a thinktank founded by the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker.

“The recession and an uneven recovery has led to a rural America that is much more distressed,” said John Lettieri, president of the group, adding: “The trends suggest that it’s going to get worse, not better.”

The study found that between the recession and ensuing recovery, 30% of rural communities were downwardly mobile, nearly twice the proportion of urban communities during the same period.

“Nobody was paying attention to the demise of rural America,” said Linc Kroeger, of Pillar Technology, a national software company owned by Accenture that has an office in Des Moines and is spearheading the Jefferson initiative. “There’s all this talent there but there’s nothing to move back to.”

Kroeger grew up in Independence, Iowa, a few hours east of Jefferson and had to choose: stay in Iowa near his friends and families or move to pursue a career in technology.

He hopes Jefferson’s young people won’t face the same dilemma.

Next summer, Pillar plans to open an office in Jefferson that will employ as many as 30 full-time workers. In turn, the town has agreed to build a “career academy” that will offer a highly specialized software development training program to feed the company’s workforce.

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Kroeger pitched the project to Khanna and the congressman was eager to tap his connections in Silicon Valley.

The culmination of those efforts was a sunset tour of Jefferson’s belltower, which offered the California delegation a bird’s-eye view of Iowa’s farmland. Just below was the 19th-century building that Pillar is renovating as a modern workspace worthy of a Silicon Valley startup. The office, which the company calls a “forge”, will have “everything but the beer on tap” associated with startup headquarters, Kroeger promises: future employees may not be old enough to drink legally.

The community is “overwhelmingly supportive” of the plan, said Toni Wetrich, a Jefferson resident whose husband, Matt, sits on the city council.

“When I heard about it, my first thought was: Jefferson? Iowa? Is this really going to happen here?” she said. “This is the kind of thing that can completely transform a city.”

Microsoft’s Kevin Scott, a product of rural Virginia, said it was problematic that the majority of the country’s tech jobs were concentrated in a handful of metropolitan areas.

“It’s incumbent upon us to make sure other parts of the country have the same sorts of opportunity,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Democratic candidates campaign in Des Moines in 2016. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Next year, Khanna plans to introduce legislation that would establish a “21st century land grant” to bring high-tech jobs to distressed rural communities and declining industrial towns, the places that powered Donald Trump’s rise.

He is courting Republican support for the bill and will lobby the Democratic presidential candidates to adopt the vision as part of their economic agendas.

As Khanna, 42, builds a national profile through his work in “Trump country,” in Washington he has become a prominent voice for progressive causes.

He recently partnered with Senator Bernie Sanders on the Stop Bezos Act, which went nowhere in Congress but resulted in Amazon raising its minimum hourly wages to $15. He co-sponsored a House bill to withdraw the US from Saudi Arabia’s war coalition in Yemen. House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, tapped him to write an “Internet Bill of Rights”. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of the left, has praised Khanna for being an “early adopter” of a “Green New Deal” to invest in renewable energy. And next year, he will serve as the first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Meanwhile, the congressman’s visits to Iowa have raised speculation about his political ambitions. He’s young, progressive and the son of Indian immigrants – a biography that could bolster a presidential ticket or make him a contender for a cabinet position in a future Democratic White House.

Pete D’Alessandro, Iowa director for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, said Khanna’s work here could help shape the debate ahead of what’s expected to be an unsettled Democratic primary in which Iowa will be the first battlefield.

“He’s the perfect person to advocate for progressive policies because he’s not a presidential candidate,” D’Alessandro said. “He could be a go-to person for candidates looking to make in-roads with the progressive movement here.”

Riding across the state in a gray pickup truck, Khanna touted the tech initiative at every stop. He broadened the appeal – tying it to a list of progressive economic priorities that he argues will reduce income disparities and help the US compete on a global stage with India and China.

At a meeting of the Asian & Latino Coalition in Des Moines, Khanna said Democrats needed to articulate a forward-facing vision for rural America to rival Trump’s “nostalgia” for a bygone era.

“It’s not a division between economics and culture,” he said, speaking to a multiracial audience for the first time that weekend. “It’s a matter of having a meaningful place in a 21st-century economy.”

There was a moment of silence and then the room erupted in applause.