What’s with the bow tie, Eric?
Signature neckwear for candidate stems from a father-daughter Christmas story
A decade ago then 15-year-old Caitlyn Van Lancker of Clinton grew weary of what had become a predictable Christmas gift for her father — the traditional shirt and tie.
Yeah, boring, right!
So Caitlyn summoned more inventiveness on the shopping excursions for her father in 2012 and landed on a Christmas present that is now a signature sartorial feature for Eric Van Lancker, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in Iowa.
“I was finally like, we’ve got to get more creative than this,” Caitlyn, now 25 and working in Clinton, said. “At Kohl’s we saw the bow-tie rack and there were three or four of them hanging there. I was like that’s what we are doing this year.”
Now, when people see Eric Van Lancker in public, he’s generally sporting a bow tie. It went from lark to brand, notes Caitlyn, rather proudly.
Van Lancker, a four-term Clinton County auditor, who is running with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deidre DeJear, says he has about 70 bow ties in a growing collection. His daughter is always scouting for new ones, and friends and acquaintances often send the ties.
“It’s a thing in our relationship where we show each other something new and we always both go head first into whatever it is,” Caitlyn said. “I guess the bow tie is just the most physical thing you can see, kind of a symbol between the two of us.”
“It’s like our unique bond, something we both have interest in and we share in and I get a chance to display that,” Eric said.
Van Lancker, 53, and his wife, Tanya, also have a son: Jackson, 21, a paramedic in Cedar Rapids.
That first bow tie around the Christmas tree in the Van Lancker home was a purple paisley one.
“I have pretty much every color, every pattern,” Van Lancker said.
He has one adorned with zombies for Halloween and one with Christmas wreaths for December.
“I think it just kind of wound up fitting in to the way I just like to dress as nice as I can,” he said. “What I enjoy about it is you don’t see bow ties very often so people will say, ‘Oh nice bow tie,’ and I might start up another conversation with someone with whom I normally wouldn’t have talked. So I have really enjoyed that aspect of it.”
It’s to the point where if Van Lancker isn’t wearing a bow tie, the absence attracts disappointment, or at least attention.
“People will kind of yell back at me, ‘Hey, where’s the bow tie?” he said.
Van Lancker ties all the bow ties he wears he ties himself. No clip-on shortcuts here.
He owns many red, white and blue ties, and patriotic-themed ties, for walking in parades and other official functions.
His only issue with bow ties is that it’s often hard to loosen them.
How long does it take him to tie a bow tie?
With the help of YouTube, and then with the experience of the years, he can do that quickly now.
“Oh goodness, I’d say 30 seconds, depending on which bow tie it is because some of them are little tougher than others,” Van Lancker said. “Some of them are a little stiffer, a little tighter, because of the material.”