Moses Bloom
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Moses Bloom was born in France in 1832 and headed to America at seventeen. He worked his way west until he settled in Iowa City in 1857.
A childhood friend gave him a job at his clothing store.
Bloom purchased the Iowa City clothing firm a year later and, within one year, he had doubled sales.
Moses Bloom, Iowa politician
In 1860, Bloom won his first election to the Iowa City council. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor as a Democrat in 1871 and 1872—but won in 1874, on his third try.
He next sought a seat in the Iowa house but narrowly lost.
In 1877, he won a house seat and was re-elected in 1879.
In 1883, Bloom won a term in the Iowa senate. His public stature had become so high that the
Republican-controlled senate appointed Democrat Bloom as a committee chairman, a vanishingly rare honor for a minority legislator.
Bloom was the first Jew elected to each of the state’s legislative chambers and the first Jewish mayor of an Iowa city.
He was Iowa’s only Jewish representative and state senator during his twenty-eight year political career.
Moses Bloom died at 61, leaving his wife and seven children.
Source
- Mark Rutzik, Breaking New Ground: The Untold Story of Early America’s Jewish Electoral Pioneers – 1788 to 1920, 2025.
Mark Rutzick is the curator of this Moses Bloom exhibit.