Governor Terry Branstad has appointed a former Secretary of the State Senate to be a district court judge.
During the 1997 and ’98 legislative sessions, when Republicans were in control of the state senate, Mary Pat Gunderson stood in the center of the senate during debate, making parliamentary decisions as Secretary of the Senate. She had been an assistant Polk County attorney for nearly a decade before that.
Gunderson is a 1988 graduate of the University of Iowa Law School. In August of 2005, she was appointed to be a magistrate in Polk County. Governor Branstad has appointed her to replace a retiring district court judge in central Iowa.
Her husband, Joe Gunderson, is also an attorney. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for state attorney general in 1994.