It’s a bit of a stretch—a local man gets kidnapped by terrorists and then, 40 years later, feels compelled by the experience to rescue his state from the clutches of the GOP. But this year, many Iowans don’t seem to mind his idiosyncratic explanation for why he’s running. They want change, and their support for Hubbell is part of a broader backlash against Republican leadership at both the state and national levels.

Hubbell’s home state is traditionally a purple one, but it’s recently taken a sharp rightward turn. After backing Democrats in six of seven previous presidential elections—including Barack Obama twice in 2008 and 2012—the state swung to Donald Trump by 10 points in 2016. A Republican has been in the governor’s mansion since 2011, and the state legislature in recent years has passed some of the most conservative reforms Iowa has seen in decades, from defunding Planned Parenthood to privatizing Medicaid.

This year’s gubernatorial election, then, will help gauge Iowans’ support for Republican policies and leadership across the board—from the White House to Des Moines. It will also offer a useful temperature test in the state with the first-in-the-nation caucuses, through which a steady stream of potential 2020 candidates has already begun to flow.

An avenging wave of indignation could turn Iowa blue again—very blue—in 2018. And Fred Hubbell is riding it.

To win, Hubbell needs to wrangle a coalition of Democrats and independents, the state’s elusive middle voters.

The proportion of Democrats and Republicans in Iowa is roughly the same, but nearly 40 percent of voters are unaffiliated with any political party. They’re the people who, sick and tired of the status quo, pulled the lever for Trump in 2016 and have largely been credited for his huge win there. Now both candidates are vying for independents’ allegiance: Reynolds is betting that they’re happy with the state’s growing economy and will cast their votes to maintain it, while Hubbell believes that they’ll find the state’s current political direction too extreme.

So far, Hubbell seems to have the edge. The two candidates have been neck and neck in recent polls, with Hubbell taking a slight lead over Reynolds in two recent surveys. In a September Iowa Poll conducted by the Des Moines Register, Hubbell had a lead of 6 percent among unaffiliated voters. On the campaign bus, I asked him why he thinks he’s beating Reynolds among that subset: “I just think it’s kind of natural for my campaign to appeal to independents,” Hubbell told me. “Democrats like the social side, independents like the business side.”

Most Iowans are familiar with the name Hubbell. Fred’s great-great-grandfather, F. M. Hubbell, co-founded Equitable of Iowa, a life-insurance company, in Des Moines in 1867. Fred served as the chairman of the company’s department-store chain, Younkers, for two years before becoming the president of Equitable in 1987, where he stayed for a decade. More recently, Hubbell served as acting director of Iowa’s Department of Economic Development in 2009.