“Now there’s a third layer to it: people thinking about who goes on to be the nominee,” he said, hoping for the state’s sake that person is the Democrat Iowans get behind.

The fear is not unfounded, with Democrats from out of state continuing to lambaste Iowa for its heavily white population after Castro dropped out of the race.

During a recent swing through South Carolina, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who serves as national co-chair of Elizabeth Warren's campaign, told POLITICO that the order of the primary states should "absolutely" change because it favors white and male candidates.

The call for a change diverged from Warren, who has said she’s “just a player in the game.”

Rachael Rollins, a district attorney in Massachusetts and fellow Warren surrogate, called Iowa and New Hampshire “two of the least diverse places on the planet Earth” when speaking to an auditorium in South Carolina last week filled with primarily black women. “Maybe not the planet Earth ... because there’s Norway.”

Iowa has weathered criticism about its lack of diversity every election cycle, always prevailing. The state’s small size is appealing to many Democrats because it forces candidates to interact with voters personally, benefiting contenders who do not start with large fundraising bases. Iowans famously show up to see even long-shot candidates at their events.

And for Iowa, the political stakes are more than a point of pride. Steve Gorman, a Council Bluffs firefighter running for a state Senate seat, said Iowa is so small that Washington might ignore it entirely if the caucuses weren’t held first here.

“To lose that status, we feel that we would lose our say in our government,” he said. “There’s nervousness around losing that because we know there’s a chance we could lose it.”

That possibility seemed more remote after Barack Obama won the caucuses — and the presidency — in 2008. Ever since, Democrats have pointed to his performance in Iowa as evidence that diversity has not suffered.

“We may not be diverse, but we vote diverse,” Nagle said. “One of the leading contenders right now is an openly gay mayor [Pete Buttigieg]. We’ve nominated a woman [Hillary Clinton], we’ve nominated an African American.”

Invoking Obama, Mark Smith, a former Iowa House minority leader who recently endorsed Joe Biden, said, “We had a senator from the neighboring state of Illinois who came over and had a theory of winning the Iowa caucuses, winning the nomination and winning the presidency. And Iowa gave him a big boost even though all minorities in the state are less than 3 percent.”