Caleb Hanna was a child when Barack Obama won the White House and, like many African Americans, he recalled his excitement at seeing “someone who looks like me become president.
But Mr. Hanna, now 19, soured on Mr. Obama’s policies. This month, he was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates as a Republican, becoming one of the party’s youngest black legislators in the country.
(The youngest Democratic state legislator is Kalan Haywood of Wisconsin, who is also 19 and black.)
Mr. Hanna grew up not only in a state that is overwhelmingly white, but in a white family. He was adopted as a child, and his father, mother, four sisters and brother, who are all white, joined him at his swearing-in ceremony last month. Racial differences have hardly registered in his short life, Mr. Hanna said.
During Mr. Obama’s first term in Washington, his father lost his job as a coal miner, and Mr. Hanna blamed the Obama administration’s environmental policies. “Once I learned more about his politics and how they were affecting our community, my attitude changed,” he said. “By 2012, I was definitely a Mitt Romney fan.”
