Anna Banowsky, Iowa House candidate

By Cheryl Allen
Posted 10/25/24

KALONA

As an undergraduate studying political science, Anna Banowsky thought running for office might be an interesting thing to do in the future. Now a graduate student at the University of Iowa, …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Anna Banowsky, Iowa House candidate

Posted

KALONA

As an undergraduate studying political science, Anna Banowsky thought running for office might be an interesting thing to do in the future. Now a graduate student at the University of Iowa, it occurred to her earlier this year that the future may be now.

“I was talking to people during the caucus and realizing we don’t have anyone who’s running for the House on the Democratic side, and thinking about all of the policies that I saw that didn’t represent me and didn’t represent the people that I knew in my community,” she says.

Once she figured out how she could campaign and hold office around her teaching and class schedules, she decided challenging Heather Hora for the Iowa House District 92 seat was “something that’s worth doing now.”

Banowksy grew up in Redmond, Washington, 15 miles east of Seattle. She came to Iowa for graduate school, which wasn’t too much of a stretch; “My mom is from Bettendorf, so I do have Iowa connections,” she says.

When she arrived, she wanted a place to live that wasn’t tied to the UI campus but would provide her with a sense of community. The city of Washington turned out to be that place.

Her realtor showed her a few houses in Washington. When Banowsky visited downtown, she knew she was where she wanted to be.

“It was like, oh my gosh, there’s this downtown square. There’s all these shops, there’s people going about their business, kids playing,” she says. “It really just had this great community vibe that I have found has continued since I’ve been there.”

“I really wanted some place that had that small-town feel, where everyone knows everyone and everyone’s excited to talk to you, something I just didn’t have growing up,” she says.

Now into her second year as a Washington resident, Banowsky has political leadership in her sights. The areas where she wants to make an impact are education, reproductive freedom, and mental healthcare access.

Education

When it comes to education, Banowksy sees things from a slightly different vantage point than most: that of a university teaching assistant.

“I see students when they’ve graduated mostly Iowa schools,” she says, estimating 80% of her students attended high school in Iowa. Through interacting with them in the classroom and evaluating their coursework, she discovered “many of them just don’t really know how to evaluate a source, or they don’t know how to tell if something’s biased.”

She says that as instructors, they are told to expect undergraduate students to know how to write research papers, having learned that skill in high school. “And I’m going, well, wait a minute. They didn’t, you know.”

And it isn’t just a few students who may have neglected their past studies. “It’s like half the class, and they’re paying attention in my class,” she says.

Banowsky believes there is a clear link between declining state funding and her students’ lack of knowledge. The diverting of public funds to private schools through Education Savings Accounts and the recent restructuring of AEAs don’t seem likely to improve the situation.

“I don’t think it’s that teachers didn’t want to teach them. I think it’s we have fewer and fewer resources being allocated to the schools, and people are making do with what they have available to them,” she says. “I think we could do a lot better and give people more resources and give them a better chance.”

Reproductive Freedom

Reproductive freedom is also a concern for Banowsky; as a young woman herself, she is one of 600,000 Iowa women of childbearing age who could be directly affected by the Iowa Supreme Court ruling in June that upheld a law banning abortion when a “fetal heartbeat” or cardiac activity is detected.

“Six weeks isn’t long enough for people to know that they’re pregnant in many cases,” she notes. “It’s before a lot of testing gets done to see if the fetus is even viable.”

Iowa law does make exceptions in the case of medical emergency or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, but Banowsky finds this inadequate.

Sexual assault survivors must report the incident to law enforcement or a public or private health agency, which may include a family physician, within 45 days of the incident (140 days for cases of incest) before receiving care, which may place an undue burden on women.

“Some people might not report things,” Banowsky says. “We know that sexual assault tends to be underreported.”

Studies bear that out; about 30% of sexual assaults are reported on average. Reasons for this vary, but silence and avoidance are typical first responses to most types of trauma; guilt and fear are also common. If a survivor can’t overcome these responses quickly, she may find herself carrying a pregnancy to term under Iowa law.

Banowksy is also concerned about the unforeseen implications of limiting abortion. “What impact will this have on IVF?” she asks. “What kind of impact will this have on foster care? What kind of impact will it have on adoption?”

Men’s roles also are in question. “If the woman has to keep the child. . . does that have implications for things like paternity? Does it have an impact on things like child support?” Banowksy wonders.

Generally, too, she worries about bodily autonomy, the ability to plan a family, and the state dictating those decisions.

“For me, especially as a young woman, seeing that passed into law and then kept at the Supreme Court level is a really scary thing, because why is it anybody’s business if, when, and how someone else becomes a parent?” she says.

Mental Healthcare Access

Access to mental healthcare is the third issue that Banowsky is passionate about.

“Everybody should have the ability to take care of their mental health, but I think it’s something that’s seldom talked about,” she says, noting that in the past there has been a stigma surrounding this, but that has improved in recent years. “I think the problem now is that, where do you go?”

Every person has different needs, from monthly check-ins to weekly therapy sessions. In smaller communities, like those in Washington county, mental health services may not always be easy to find – and in many cases, those that exist don’t have the capacity to take on new patients. That leaves those in need of care looking to telehealth, or outside the county.

Banowsky understands that telehealth may not be accessible to all. “Cell service might be a little iffy in places, or internet costs a lot. So is that really a viable option?” she asks.

The GuideLink Center in Iowa City, which offers immediate care for adults facing emotional, mental health, or substance use challenges, is a valuable resource; however, “this is meant to be a county-run, no state support institution,” Banowsky points out, and yet “they’re having people drive from two or three hours away, because this is one of the only places like that.”

If elected, she would push for a state grant program that would allow each county to determine their own plan for mental health services, which the state would contribute funds toward.

“Maybe that’s building a crisis center. Maybe that’s incentivizing mental health care professionals to move there and work at an existing place. Maybe it’s training existing staff at a county hospital to manage things like crises,” she says. “[It might be] different in every case, but we want all the counties to have access to something that fits their community, but with that state support.”

An Accessible Representative

During her campaign for the Iowa House, Banowsky has committed herself to being a good listener, both when she goes door to door and when holding open meetings during her “10 towns listening tour.” She aims to keep that line of communication open should the people of District 92 send her to Des Moines. Her plan is to hold open forums twice a month, each one in a different town, so that she can hear from people when and where it is convenient for them.

“Especially during the legislative session, when you’re making those decisions,” she says. “That’s when that communication needs to happen the most, when you’re actually on the job advocating for policies or advocating against others.”

She’s also aware that not everyone likes to voice their questions or concerns before a crowd, so she hopes to hold “office hours” of sorts at local coffee shops so that folks can drop in and chat with her more informally. Virtual office hours, also, are something she would like to be able to offer while she is in Des Moines.

When you see her name on the ballot, Banowsky hopes you will keep in mind not only her approach to education, reproductive freedom, and mental healthcare, but also her accessibility.

“I might not agree with what someone says, and they may not agree with what I say or do as a representative, but at the end of the day, I think that I’m someone that they can have a dialog with,” she says. “Just having that open communication is really important.”

“The title is Representative. You’re supposed to represent the people,” she concludes. “If you’re not willing to listen to them, I don’t think you can represent them well.”

Anna Banowsky, Iowa House, candidate, Washington, Iowa, Democrat