A Congressional colleague once told Rep. Beth Van Duyne ’95 that running for Congress was more difficult than being a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter.
“When you’re in the ring, you know where that punch is coming from, but up here you have no idea,” Van Duyne remembers being told.
Fortunately, Van Duyne is no stranger to confronting difficult challenges. Prior to graduating high school, she left home at the age of 17 and for the next two years worked multiple jobs to support herself before moving to Ithaca to attend Cornell. She also challenged a long-time incumbent to win a seat on city council in her hometown of Irving, Texas, where she eventually became mayor; all while juggling early health challenges for her daughter and ultimately becoming a single parent.
Van Duyne, who represents Texas’ 24th Congressional District, recently won re-election to her third term. She represents the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
“I’ve always told people considering a run for Congress that you don’t run for the title, you run for the purpose,” she said. “I’m like a duck. I let it all run down my back and it looks a lot easier than it is. People don’t see you kicking frantically below the surface, doing all of the work it takes when you’re not on the floor — a lot of reading, a lot of research.”
Van Duyne was a College Scholar at Cornell, where she studied psychology, government, business, law, and economics. Her senior thesis focused on date rape and the survivor versus victim mentality.
“I remember reading the Big Red Book [the former printed class catalog] with a fine-tooth comb,” she said. “There were so many classes I wanted to take.”
Van Duyne said she sometimes found herself on opposite sides of an issue with her Cornell professors, but “if they saw you were a serious student, they were more than willing to meet with you and talk to you,” she said.
Those experiences taught her how to be prepared and organized and how to be able to defend her opinion, a skill she’s found vital in politics.
“I was challenged a number of times as a Cornell student and there were some professors I didn’t agree with…but I put the work in to define what I believed,” she said. “I went to their office hours and I formed strong relationships with a lot of professors. I may not have agreed on the surface with their arguments, but having the time to have conversations with them directly, I was able to have a healthy political discussion with people that I admired.
“I try to separate out the policy from the person.”
Graduating a semester early, Van Duyne stayed on campus to work as a course manager of a human sexuality class, stepping in to help professor Andrea Parrot. While in school, she also volunteered for the non-profit Ithaca Rape Crisis. After graduation, she worked in marketing and communication roles until founding her own consulting firm.
As a young mom, she became involved in her community. As chair of the parks committee, she led an effort to build shade coverings in a neighborhood park, because it is what her daughter, Katie, needed after having nine eye surgeries in her first year. She continued tackling other projects in Irving, a city of 250,000 people. When she found herself butting heads with her city council representative, friends encouraged her to challenge him for the seat. “If you have a problem, be willing to be part of the solution,” she said.
“I ran without any financial backing,” she said. “But we had a message and were able to defend it. I ran a grassroots campaign, talking to people, building relationships and sharing the vision I had for the city.”
When her opponent won the mayor’s seat the next year, Van Duyne challenged him during the next election and became the city’s first female mayor. And she caught the eye of Republicans on the national level. In 2017, she was appointed as a regional administrator for the Trump administration in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And after that, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy approached her about running for the open seat in Congress in her district in the 2020 election.
Van Duyne is part of the Cornell alumni network in North Texas, so she talks to prospective students and often offers advice about broadening their horizons while on campus.
“I encourage them to become all-around knowledgeable people and get outside of their comfort zone,” she said. “As a city council member, I needed to know about infrastructure, neighborhood planning, zoning, permitting, transportation; and then in Congress, the level of information you are expected to become an expert on is astounding.”
And she encourages students never to take “no” for an answer.
When she visited Cornell as a prospective student, she sat for hours in a dean’s office waiting to meet them, even though their assistant said they had no openings that day.
“I figured that sometime he would have to leave his office, so I just waited,” she said. Eventually, she got into his office and had an hour and a half conversation with him.
As a member of Congress, she said she abides by the same mission she had when she first ran for city council.
“Find out what people’s needs are and figure out what you’re going to solve for them,” she said. “And do it because you’re passionate about it.”
More News from A&S
Ask an Ambassador: A class that changed my approach to my studies
Student experience
