Stewart named 'rising star' consultant

Politics magazine named Dee Stewart one of its 2008 rising stars.

He helped U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry win his first campaign for Congress and worked for Bill Graham in his run for governor. Stewart runs a political consulting and public relations firm in Raleigh, Lynn Bonner reports.

At 25, he became one of the youngest executive directors of a state party in the country. Among his proudest professional achievements: getting some 40,000 people out to the 1999 Iowa Straw Poll, which set an attendance record for a political fundraiser and helped cement the straw poll's status as the kick-off to the GOP presidential primary season. At 27, Dee took a big risk by leaving Iowa to start his own firm in North Carolina. "I literally went from executive director of the Iowa GOP to the absolute bottom of the ladder," he says. 

The trade magazine for political consultants put 10 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and five others under 35 who have made a mark in consulting and campaigns on their stars list.