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Service to community is nothing new for Pat VanZante, Democratic candidate for Iowa House District 71. Throughout her life she has volunteered and worked for the betterment of both her immediate community and the state at large. Being elected to serve in the state legislature, she said, would be a way she could continue what she’s already started and make a difference on a larger scale.Pride in the state and a want for it to be the best it can be is ingrained in both her and her husband, Arvin VanZante — descendants of families that have long made Iowa their home.
“[Running for the Iowa House of Representatives] is very exciting, but also a little scary,” she admitted. “I’ve lived in Iowa all my life. In fact, my ancestors’ homestead is near Prairie City. My father’s people came from Ireland and had their homestead in Delaware County. I grew up in Des Moines, but my family has been a part of the Iowa landscape for many years.
“My immediate family and I grew up on the east side of Des Moines. So, we played in the Statehouse as long as I can remember. … My mother and my grandmother were there quite a bit. I know that during the Depression, they use to sleep out on the grounds when it was so hot.”
Although VanZante is sure she will face a Republican opponent come November, she’s awaiting primary results to see if she will face incumbent Jim Van Engelenhoven or challenger Marc Held, a technician for Iowa Telecom. The challenger decided to compete against Van Engelenhoven in the primary following a complicated child custody case that ended with an abandoned infant family member being removed from his family’s care and returned to the child’s biological father. Held has said publicly that his frustration from the case prompted him to make the bid for the Iowa House.
Given Van Engelenhoven’s track record with education and family welfare, VanZante said she can understand why someone who has gone through what Held has might want to enter the race. VanZante was “surprised” when she learned that Van Engelenhoven had supported the safe haven law that allows parents to leave infants at Iowa hospitals, no questioned asked.
“I’m very pro-family and, what’s more, I’m extremely pro-child,” she said. “[The existing incumbent] is very adamant and uses being anti-abortion to his advantage against anyone. He’s not above calling people — even people within his own party — that take positions opposite of his own child murderers. But the truth is that once a child is born and is living here in our state, [Van Engelenhoven] really just doesn’t do much to support that child or that family.”
In addition, VanZante said she, unlike Van Engelenhoven, will pledge to be a representative to every individual and community within House District 71.
“Van Engelenhoven is backed, of course, by the Republican Party of Iowa as well as the Farm Bureau,” she said. “He has a tendency to just service those areas of the district — the large farm, the large agricultural operations. In contrast, I have every intention of serving every individual and every community in my district.”
She knows that her gender may have an effect on the outcome of the race, but says she hopes that her active role in the community as well as her and her husband’s family history will play a bigger role.
“My being a woman will probably play a role on some level,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I chose to run as ‘Pat’ instead of ‘Patty.’ But I still think that in this district, that my last name and the history it brings with it, combined with my community activism, will play more of a role than my gender.”
VanZante, who is currently employed by Capstone Behavioral Health Centers in Newton and Knoxville, has lived in Pella for 31 years. She co-founded Hospice of Pella after caring for a dying neighbor and seeing firsthand the need for such services. She has also worked as an adjunct professor, teaching various human services courses through Des Moines Area Community College. In addition, she has served on the board of Pella’s community theater group, The Union Street Players, and has been a director, producer and costumer in numerous productions. She has volunteered as a member of the League of Women Voters on their corrections study committee and served on the Pella Friends of the Library Board.
“I’ll bring a wide range of interests, knowledge and experience to the table for the residents of this district,” she said. “All along, I’ve worked with diverse groups to find common ground. I’ve been in Christian Bible studies, and some of my closest friends in Pella are strict reform Christians. As a supporter of the arts, I’ve worked with many of the area’s home-schooled young people. When people work toward common ground, instead of pointing to their differences, amazing things happen for everyone.”
VanZante plans to advocate for:
- Diverse, renewable and responsible locally controlled stewardship of Iowa’s natural resources.
- Fiscally responsible and diversified economic development.
- Pro-child initiatives for early childhood education, promotion of competently trained and adequately compensated Iowa teachers, and improved health care prevention and intervention programs and services.
- Providing veterans and Iowa National Guard members with the highest quality medical services and educational opportunities available.
- Parity, fair coverage, services and medication reimbursement for mental health services.
Because of her experience providing therapeutic service to clients with mental illness and substance abuse issues, VanZante knows medication parity is already becoming an issue for the state’s mentally ill.
“It is now being mandated that individuals with mental illness cut down on existing medications or take older medications,” she said. “There has to be proof that the older medications don’t work before approval is granted for the individual to be placed on newer and better medications.
“I attended a conference where a gentleman from Tennessee informed us that his state has already has limited people on Medicaid to five medications. So, if an individual has a mental illness, is diabetic and has a heart condition, that individual is still limited to only five medications. Not only are individuals in the state being forced to decide, at least in some cases, which condition will be treated, but I’m sure the individual is also being limited as to which medications can be approved to treat those conditions.”
VanZante, who has worked as a clinical social worker for more than 20 years, said her training and experiences in that field will be one of the things that her future constituents in the district will see as positive — and it won’t just be limited to medical or mental illness issues.
“I’m a quick learner, and I’m a good listener,” she said. “I’ve been trained to listen to people and really hear what their problems are. My job is to find solutions — things that will work. I think I can bring that experience to bear politically for just about any issue there is — hog lots to transportation infrastructure.”
