Just a few days ago, Bryan Moon didn't need to go candidate shopping.
Moon, a Des Moines native who works as vice president of a marketing firm in town, was leaning strongly toward supporting Donald Trump. He describes himself as a "closet Trump supporter" and said he was planning to caucus for the outspoken businessman.
"I liked that he would bring the experience of being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and assumed that he could get good people around him, cause you need that when you're building a company," Moon said Wednesday. Trump, he continued, could "get the economy on track and get our jobs back from China. And build a wall."
And yet here he was at Wellman's Pub in West Des Moines one night before the Fox News debate and five days before the Iowa caucuses at a rally for Marco Rubio. What changed?
"Now I'm seeing what his true temperament is – I obviously don't know him personally – but I've seen him say and do some things that I disagree with but haven't been deal-killers," Moon says. "But the last few hours – over the last day when he decided he wasn't going to debate with the rest of the candidates – that really was the last straw."