He’s fresh out of college and he’s only 23 years old, but Gentry Collins is determined to take House District 62 back for the Republican Party.

Collins, a 1998 Iowa State political science graduate, is running against Huxley lawyer Dennis Parmenter for Democrat Bill Bernau’s empty seat. Bernau is retiring this year after eight years in the House.

“I think it’s about time that Ames had a member of the Legislature who’s in a political position to be effective,” Collins said. “If we continue to elect people from the minority party, that lack of effectiveness will continue.”

The Republicans have controlled the House since the 74th General Assembly, which ended in 1992.

If elected, Collins said he will take a “two-pronged” approach — helping teachers and students — to improving Iowa’s educational system.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do on education,” he said. “We still have world-class schools here in Iowa. But we can do a better job than we’re doing today.”

Collins said the state should provide block grants to local districts to raise teacher salaries, and he thinks teacher competency tests should be given before certification and then once every five years.

For students, he advocates more emphasis on learning basic academic skills and proposes an intensive phonics program for first- and second-graders who are not reading at their grade level.

“We’re not going to try to stigmatize these kids, but we are going to provide the funding to find out who’s having the problem and remedy the problem early on,” he said.

Despite his age, Collins is no stranger to politics or the Statehouse. As a legislative aide during the 1996-97 session, he did preliminary research for two major bills passed in 1997, the 10 percent income tax reduction and workplace drug tests.

About this time last year, Collins made the decision to run for his own desk on the House floor.

“We started looking at some of the districts that the Republican Party could target in 1998, and the more I looked at my home district, it looked like a winnable district,” he said.

One key for Collins has been fund raising. Since November 1997, he has raised about $30,000 and has spent “darn near all of it” on radio and newspaper advertising, signs and direct mail.

“Ever since I’ve been involved, the Republican candidate has been outspent by the Democrat,” he said. “My feeling was, we needed to reverse that to have a real shot at reaching this district.”

Collins is planning some new tactics for the last two weeks of the race, but he would not divulge any details.

“We have a couple surprises on the way,” he said.

House District 62 includes Ames south of Lincoln Way, as well as the downtown area and Helser Hall.