When former representative John Delaney, D-Md., entered the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination in July 2017, he became one of the earliest entrants into a presidential-nominating contest in modern history. Since then, he’s traveled all over the state and will be making a stop in Ames at noon on Thursday at Cafe Diem.

Delaney was the first candidate this cycle to visit all 99 counties in Iowa. However, since entering the race, Delaney has struggled to break through in the polls. He risks not meeting qualifications to appear on the debate stage for the first debates next month.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has set out criteria to qualify for a podium on the debate stage — a candidate must receive donations from at least 65,000 unique donors with at least 200 donors from 20 different states, or achieve at least 1% in three polls from pollsters approved by the DNC.

In an attempt to meet at least one of the criteria the DNC set for debate qualification, Delaney offered to donate $2 of his own money to charity for each donation by a new individual to his campaign.

Before entering politics, Delaney was a business executive who founded multiple companies and amassed a personal fortune upwards of $200 million. Delaney has loaned his campaign more than $10 million from his own estate — the largest personal loan by any presidential candidate to their campaign this cycle.

Delaney represented Maryland’s 6th district in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms, retiring at the 2018 election in order to focus on his run for president. A federal court ruled in 2018 the district was unconstitutionally drawn to give an advantage to Democrats, and it must be redrawn. Delaney won the seat as previously drawn by less than 2% in 2014.

In the most recent publicly available poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers, Delaney holds the support of 1% of voters and is the second choice of a further 1% of voters. His name recognition is registered at 53%.