State Sen. Farley will ‘not be silenced’ after departure from GOP
CARSON CITY — State Sen. Patricia Farley had the perfect “mom job.” It was by happenstance she traded it in for steel-toed boots, a hard hat and politics — the latter undergoing an evolution of its own.
Farley, elected as a Republican in 2014 representing Senate District 8 in Las Vegas, left the GOP in November and will serve in the 2017 Legislature as an independent. She will caucus with Democrats but gave no promises on how she’ll vote on issues.
A novice in the 2015 session, Farley said she was put off by partisanship.
“I’m not going along with political agendas,” she said in a recent interview. “I’m just not going to do it. I don’t need to do it.”
FROM PLAYGROUNDS TO CONCRETE
Divorced with two young daughters in 2012, she opened Kids Club, a 10,000-square foot indoor playground in North Las Vegas.
“I loved it. It was the perfect mom job,” the 43-year-old Farley said. She could have her children with her. There were arts and crafts, playground equipment, big TVs. Parents would bring their children for birthday parties.
“It was just fun,” she said.
Farley, who holds a political science degree from University of Arizona, sharpened her business senses working for an accounting firm and then Las Vegas-area homebuilders, managing insurance, human resources, payroll and assisting in acquisitions.
After her first daughter was born, she tired of the long hours and started her own business handling back-office operations for clients in four states. Then she opened Kids Club.
CONSTRUCTION BARBIE
But the sudden death of a friend and client, Todd Van Blankenstein, took Farley down an unexpected path. Blankenstein owned Southwest Specialties, a custom concrete and paver company, and his family turned to her for help.
“I went into the office thinking, I need to make payroll, I need to pay vendors and I need to sell this business,” Farley said.
There were 65 employees and $7 million in active jobs. “He had vendors who were very concerned about the tens of thousands of dollars that were now owed to them from a company that just lost its owner,” Farley said.
She met with employees, with vendors, with clients. Her prior business contacts helped soothe some angst.
“We tried to sell it and that didn’t work out,” Farley said.
“I ended up buying it and kept going,” she said. “I didn’t lose a vendor. I didn’t lose a customer and I didn’t lose an employee.”
A tall blonde, Farley can turn heads. Snarky comments about her gender, such as being dubbed “Construction Barbie” by a foreman on a job in Oregon, are dealt with swiftly.
“That clears up real fast when you’re talking about money,” she said. “My name’s on the check and I sign the contract.”
Politics
Farley’s family was active in politics in Arizona.
“My dad made the conservatives now look liberal,” she said.
Her uncle was a mayor in Gilbert, Arizona; a brother is a lobbyist and her sister-in-law has held state roles in education.
“I had no desire to do that,” Farley said. But as her daughters entered school, she saw need. She purchased history books for her daughter’s fourth-grade class so the teacher didn’t have to make copies of lessons out of one book.
“I have not met a bad teacher, but I’ve been in a lot of underfunded schools. And I just thought that was crazy,” Farley said.
She thought she could help.
She went to lunch with a friend and state Sen. Michael Roberson, a Henderson Republican and then the Senate minority leader, showed up. “I had no idea who he was,” Farley said. “An hour later he was introducing me to campaign people.”
Political Rift
Farley’s election helped Republicans take control of the Senate in 2015. But she said she quickly tired of partisan maneuverings.
“I do this for very different reasons,” she said. “I don’t want to be governor. I don’t want to be the leader of the party. But I also don’t want to be backed into a corner, silenced or told I can’t do something.
“If anybody was mistaken about who I was when I was running, that’s their problem.”
She said she has not spoken to Roberson since she left the party. In a Jan. 8 Tweet, Roberson said, “Looking forward to electing a Republican to Senate District 8 in the upcoming election.”
Farley shrugs off the dig. “He isn’t a factor in any of my equations,” she said. She intends to seek re-election in 2018.
Social Issues
Despite her conservative upbringing, Farley said her father also instilled a conviction to help those less fortunate.
“He always said, ‘If you have a dollar, share it,’” Farley recalled.
Farley supports the concept of education savings accounts — a school choice program giving parents ability to tap state funding to send their children to private school — but believes there needs to be parameters.
“I think there should be some sort of means testing on actual income and if the public school is actually failing,” she said.
In 2015, she co-sponsored a bill to allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill, mentally competent patients. The bill didn’t get a hearing but will be introduced again this year.
Farley watched both the woman who raised her and her father, who died last January, succumb to cancer.
“My family is deeply Catholic,” Farley said in a previous interview. The choice, she said, is “really between an individual and … God, not an individual and society.”
She has also watched a younger brother, the father of four children, struggle with opioid addiction and mental health problems. Farley said she put him in in-patient rehabilitation three times. The last time he made it 65 days.
“It’s probably the longest he’s been sober in 20 years,” she said.
Then their father died. Her brother inherited some money and a house that was paid for. He sold the house and went through six-figures in two months and two days.
“When the money was gone he showed back up on my door,” Farley said.
She is sponsoring a bill to prevent insurance companies from putting large sums of money intended to pay for care into a patient’s account instead of paying providers directly.
She also supports tighter laws on doctors and pain management clinics.
“When opioids get harder to get they go to heroin,” she said, “or eat the gel out of pain patches. That’s what they do when they’re desperate.”
Farley loves her brother, but she’s a realist. “There’s literally nothing we can do,” she said.
“So we go out and try to help other people,” she said. “Try to change it so somebody else can get the help they need.”
Contact Sandra Chereb at schereb@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-3821. Follow @SandraChereb on Twitter.
