Category Archives: Local Government

The Climate-Denial Party

How, I wonder, do climate-denying Americans manage to ignore the mounting evidence of climate change? I suppose I can understand that people might once have dismissed the overwhelming majority of scientists who’ve been warning us for many years. After all, the changes we actually have experienced until recently–things like spring coming earlier each year–have been subtle. But you’d think our recent episodes of weather disasters, the fires following unusual droughts, and the hurricanes made more powerful and destructive thanks to their paths over warming oceans, would have convinced them.

Evidently not. At least not Hoosier Republicans.

Not only did Mike Braun and Jim Banks vote against added funding for FEMA, Braun and Rokita have opposed Indiana utilities plans to phase out their dependence on coal. According to the Capital Chronicle, Braun just sent a letter to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) opposing a coal plant’s proposed conversion to natural gas.

He urged commissioners to deny the conversion, and encouraged collaboration with policymakers to preserve coal’s role — “the most reliable baseload fuel” — while “looking to the future.”

Todd Rokita, Indiana’s embarrassing Attorney General, has been an even more avid protector of the fossil fuel. As another article from the Chronicle has reported, the Attorney general has urged utility regulators to deny early coal plant retirements.

Coal plants have historically had 50-year lifespans, according to a 2019 article published in Nature Communications. But they can last longer with fixes and upgrades.

U.S. coal plants are about 44 years old, in a capacity-weighted average, according to an analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Plants scheduled for retirement this year averaged 54 years of age: almost a decade older.

But coal plants decommissioned amid their expected decades-long lives have become a political flashpoint.

The IURC says it lacks the authority to prevent a utility from converting from coal–that the agency’s jurisdiction is limited to assessing the reasonableness of rates and other tasks spelled out in the legislation that established it. Rokita, however, argues that the IURC doesn’t need explicit authority. Meanwhile, Indiana’s Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would grant the IURC that specific authority. The article noted that the legislature might also require that such action be made mandatory and not discretionary.

House Bill 1382, introduced last session, would’ve spelled that out. It also laid out conditions utilities would’ve had to meet in order to apply for permission to close any “fossil fuel fired” plant. The proposal never got a hearing and died.

The Hoosier Environmental Council said that bill would slow Indiana’s transition away from coal, a dirty fossil fuel, to greener energy sources.

“Besides adding an unnecessary burden to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, this bill encourages our public utilities to keep their current energy generation sources running as long as possible, which are majority fossil fuels,” the council said on its website.

Indiana’s GOP characterizes concern for the environment as an attribute of “far Left liberalism.” 

The digitally-altered Braun attack ad against Jennifer McCormick is telling. (It was also illegal…) That altered ad was intended to demonstrate to Hoosier voters that McCormick is “unacceptably liberal.” The evidence for that assertion included her prior support for Hillary Clinton and her current support for Joe Biden, a purported attack on gas stoves, and her intention to create a state office that would focus on environmental issues.

The altered ad was visually and textually dishonest. McCormick had never even mentioned gas stoves, and has made it clear that she’s concerned with weightier matters–like women’s reproductive rights. But that accusation was clearly intended to buttress the case for her “unacceptable liberalism.”

What is truly notable about that bit of egregious dishonesty is the obvious assumption that voters will agree with its premise: the only Americans who take climate change seriously are “far Left”–  that people who care about the environment are by definition “too liberal” for public office.

According to Indiana’s GOP, basic scientific literacy–not to mention common sense–is disqualifying. 

I don’t understand when climate change became a culture war issue. I don’t understand people who dismiss knowledge and expertise as some sort of phony elitism. And I really don’t understand how anyone even remotely aware of Hurricanes Helene and Norman can continue to ignore the evidence of their senses.

The Republicans’ rejection of fact, science and evidence does explain the party’s animosity toward education, and GOP support for the vouchers that encourage parents to send their children to schools that will “protect” them from “theories” like evolution and climate change.

It’s just another example of Republicans’ rejection of reality. Hoosiers need to vote Blue.

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Indiana–Aspiring To Be Mississippi

I frequently begin these daily rants by promising to “connect the dots.” That’s because Americans have a distressing tendency to argue policy in silos–ignoring the fact that the effects of policy A will often have a significant effect on policies B, C and D.

A friend recently sent me a column by Michael Hicks that connected our state’s disastrous education policies with our efforts at economic development. Hicks is a conservative and an economist, and his observations are based on data, not ideology. As he reports, Indiana’s economy is not keeping up with national trends. (Evidently, keeping taxes too low to provide the infrastructure necessary to an attractive quality of life isn’t the most intelligent approach. But then, that’s my snarky take.)

First, the data.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation turns 20 years old in early 2025. In 2005, Indiana had 104,854 businesses, 2.96 million jobs and 6.28 million people.

In the most recent year for all these data, 2021, Indiana had 99,280 businesses, 3.23 million jobs and 6.81 million residents.

If the state had grown at the same pace as the rest of the nation, we would have 110,305 businesses, 3.23 million jobs and 7.05 million people. That leaves Indiana with a two-decade growth shortfall of more than 11,000 businesses, 151,000 jobs and 240,000 people.

Hicks says the reality is even worse than these numbers suggest.

Since its formation in 2005, Hoosier factory employment has declined by almost 55,000 jobs, or 10%. Indeed, since Indiana’s LEAP district was announced, the state has shed a further 14,000 factory jobs, while the nation as a whole added 166,000 manufacturing positions.

Over the past two decades, average real wages for manufacturing workers in Indiana dropped by a stunning 14.4%. Nationwide, they rose by just under 1%.

This performance–as Hicks acknowledges– is “policy failure in its purest, most unadulterated form.” But as he also acknowledges, the failures aren’t attributable to poor performance by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which he says is one of the better such concerns. The problem is that the IEDC represents a “state with increasingly poor economic fundamentals”.

Hicks predicts a future performance that is even worse, thanks to Indiana’s war on education. There is, to begin with, 15 years of funding cuts to state universities–funding cuts that have left us with 10 years of declining attendance and graduation. Our legislature’s failure to reverse that decline places us behind Mississippi, of all places,  where one-third more high school graduates attempt college each year than here in Indiana.

The lack of action on college completion removes from our economic development organizations the single most important aspect of a region’s future economic performance — educated young people.

To illustrate this disaster, we can look to the recent past. Since 1980, 72% of population growth, and almost all job growth, went to the 15% of U.S. counties with the highest educational attainment. There are only six of those in Indiana — four in the Indianapolis suburbs and the host counties of Purdue and Indiana University.

Over the same four decades, the least well-educated half of Indiana counties lost 13,764 people. This will inevitably worsen in the decades to come. Education is now more, rather than less, important to economic growth and prosperity.

Indiana’s education failures aren’t limited to higher education. There’s a reason fewer of our high school graduates to to college.

Indiana spends less per student on K-12 education than we did in 2010. One result is the average college graduate working in one of Indiana’s public schools is paid less than they were in 2004. On top of that, Indiana’s proposed high school curriculum will make it among the weakest in the nation…Either Indiana gets a lot more kids to finish college each year, or it gets used to slow growth, declining relative incomes, fewer businesses, wage declines and economic stagnation.

If Indiana’s goal is to be worse than Mississippi, then we’re doing great. Not only are we spending less on education at all levels, we are siphoning off what we do spend on educational vouchers that have done nothing to improve educational outcomes, but have deprived the public school system of critically-needed resources in order to support religious schools and enrich upper-middle-class families.

Early voting in Indiana begins on October 8th. By November 5th, Hoosiers will have made a choice between Jennifer McCormick, a gubernatorial candidate who understands the importance of education to economic development and overall quality of life, and Mike Braun, a candidate who wants to destroy public education by using our tax dollars to fund a “universal voucher” program.

McCormick has consistently done her homework. Braun clearly has not.

We will either elect someone who can begin to reverse Indiana’s steady decline, or we can continue to vie with Mississippi for the title of America’s most failed state.

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Connecting The Dots

A few evenings ago, I introduced a Zoom meeting sponsored by ReCenter Indiana. It was focused upon the very negative effects of our legislative super-majority. Democrats have identified four districts in Indiana that–should they all go Blue in November–would reduce the current super-majority to a simple majority. My job was to begin the session with an explanation of how a legislative super-majority advances extremism and stifles democratic deliberation.

Here are those introductory remarks.

__________________

Let me begin this discussion by connecting some dots. Hoosier voters need to understand how partisan redistricting—usually referred to as gerrymandering–has given Indiana its legislative super-majority, and how that super-majority has given us increasingly extreme legislation: a virtually-complete abortion ban, education vouchers that are starving our public schools, gun laws that allow anyone who can fog a mirror to possess a lethal weapon– basically, a focus on culture war at the expense of attention to actual governance.

It’s a vicious circle, because in Indiana, the GOP’s legislative super-majority also allows the party to continue the extreme gerrymandering that has made Indiana one of the five most gerrymandered states in the country.

Gerrymandering has all sorts of undemocratic consequences, one of which is voter suppression. In districts perceived as “safe,” people who favor the “loser” party tend to stay home. That’s one reason why Indiana ranks 50th among the states in turnout. (Interestingly, due to Indiana’s population shifts, a number of those theoretically “safe” districts wouldn’t currently be safe if discouraged folks came out and voted. Those demographic shifts are one of the reasons there’s a chance this year to break the current GOP supermajority.)

Indiana is an excellent example of how the gerrymandering that leads to legislative super-majorities has a profound and very negative impact on policy.

We know that primaries attract the most ideologically extreme voters in either party. When the primary is, in effect, the general election, Republican incumbents protect their right flank, Democrats their left. In Indiana, which has been gerrymandered to produce more Republican districts, that reality has steadily moved us farther and farther Right. Today’s “culture warriors” win office in order to focus on issues like banning abortion, waging war on trans children, and removing common-sense restrictions on gun ownership. And it’s getting worse–there are indications that during the next session we’ll see the introduction of anti-vaccine measures that—if passed–would threaten public health. (For reasons I fail to understand, opposition to vaccination has become a preoccupation of what I’ll call the “Micah Beckwith wing” of the GOP.)

These are the pet issues of extremists, rather than the issues that most Hoosiers care about and that we traditionally consider governmental: roads and bridges and other infrastructure, crime and punishment, economic development.

Thanks to the gerrymandering that has given Republicans a super-majority, these extremist legislators face virtually no barriers to enacting measures that research tells us are deeply unpopular with most Hoosiers. Members of a super-majority don’t face pressure to negotiate, or to moderate the most extreme versions of their extreme positions.

A party with a super-majority also faces no obstacles to rewarding its donors and supporters; in Indiana, that has given us policies that almost uniformly favor the well-to-do. It has defeated even the most minimal efforts to protect renters. It has given us privatization programs like vouchers, in which our tax dollars are used almost exclusively by the well-to-do while impoverishing the public schools that serve poorer children, and it has given us what is arguably an unconstitutional effort to protect gun manufacturers from litigation.

That super-majority has also blocked more stringent ethics measures.

Any super-majority—Republican or Democrat—gives those in power the ability to ignore contending arguments, unpalatable data and the needs of Hoosiers likely to vote for the opposing party. They don’t need to negotiate or compromise. They don’t even need to look like they’re negotiating or compromising.

Indiana can’t get rid of the gerrymandering that makes our legislature’s extremism possible—we lack a referendum or initiative, mechanisms that have been used by other states to institute nonpartisan redistricting. In this state, only the legislature itself—only the people who benefit from the system—can change it. The only way Indiana will get rid of the gerrymandering that allows legislators to choose their voters rather than the other way around would be Congress passing the John Lewis act, which (among other very positive things) would make gerrymandering illegal nationally.

Since the GOP benefits from America’s gerrymandering far more than the Democrats do, passing the John Lewis Act would probably require a Democratic trifecta: a Democratic House and Senate to pass it and a Democratic President to sign it.
Until that happens, if it ever does, Indiana’s Republican gerrymandering is likely to continue giving Hoosiers a Republican legislative majority. But we do have a chance this year to defeat the super-majority, and to slow down our state’s march toward culture-war extremism. One reason is the shifting demography that I previously mentioned. Another is that the GOP has moved so far toward a very unconservative extremism that its candidates are turning off voters who previously voted Republican.

Those realities give four candidates in particular a better-than-usual chance to win their districts:
• Josh Lowry, District 24;
• Tiffany Stoner, District 25;
• Victoria Garcia Wilburn, District 32 (incumbent); and
• Matt McNally, District 39.

We’ll now hear from each of them.

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More About Those “Rutabaga” Districts..

A few days ago, I wrote about the problem posed by what I called “rutabaga” voters--Hoosiers who would elect a vegetable if it had an “R” next to its name on the ballot. In that post, I focused on District 88, but I’ve received an email from a very politically-savvy friend about another district that is eminently winnable if the sane candidate has sufficient resources to get his message out. My friend has long been negative about Indiana voters and Democratic chances in the state, so his belief that this district is winnable is consequential.

Here’s that email in its entirety.

Friends,

I have had multiple discussions with people regarding how to make a meaningful and impactful impact on elections here in Indiana. That is genuinely a challenge these days. After chatting with knowledgeable people, the most meaningful thing we can do is to try to help the Democrats win enough seats to end the Republican supermajority in the Indiana legislature.

If we are going to be successful in doing so, the most challenging seat to flip will be in IndianaHouse District 24. If we win this district, however, we impact the Republican’s ability to keep their uncontested grip on Indiana governance.

Indiana House District 24 encompasses Westfield (54%), Carmel (33%), Sheridan (7%), and portions of Zionsville (7%). It is a lean Republican District with much new suburban growth since 2020. Joe Biden received 45.7 percent in 2020. Since 2020, registrations have increased by 70% inWestfield. These registrations bode well for Democrats, as new voters are mostly under fifty and tend to lean Democrat. House District 24 is an open seat.

The Democrat candidate is Josh Lowery. Josh and his family live in Westfield. Josh ran for the state senate in 2022. His wife Alexis ran for Westfield City Council in 2023 and lost to a well-funded Patrick Tamm by thirty votes. So, the Lowry name identification is better than average, particularly in the population center of Westfield. Josh is an attorney. Josh and Alexis are well-known in the community beyond their political participation. They are foster parents and have fostered twelve children, five of whom they have adopted.

Hunter Smith is a former Indianapolis Colts punter who lives in the Zionsville portion of House District 24. Hunter Smith is a disciple of Republican Lt. Governor candidate Micah Beckwith and his extreme Christian nationalist agenda and the most extreme elements of the Republican party. He supports Beckwith’s positions, including those he took as a member of the Hamilton East Public Library when he voted for a book-banning policy that put Hamilton County in the national news.

Smith won a contested GOP primary where he ran to the right. He is pro-life without exceptions, pro-parents’ rights in school, pro-school choice, and anti-LGBTIQQ, particularly emphasizing he wants to ban Pride Month because it promotes the “wickedness of the LGBT agenda.”

House District 24 is winnable and a key district in House Democrats’ push to flip four seats to break the Indiana House Republican’s supermajority in the House. While it is a lean Republican District, Josh Lowry is more aligned with the district than the far-right extremist Hunter Smith. Lowry’s hopes are enhanced by the top of the ticket, where both Kamala Harris and Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Jennifer McCormack are currently polling above expectations in that district.

This race is winnable if Josh can raise the necessary funds to inform voters that Hunter Smith is one of the most extreme candidates in the state on the Republican ticket this fall.

I am not holding a fundraiser or going to pressure anyone to donate. Still, I wanted to share this information if you are inclined to do something that could make a material difference for Indiana. It takes relatively little money to make a meaningful difference in a legislative district, and winning this district could have an oversized impact on the Indiana government. If you are inclined, you can learn more about Josh and donate online at www.lowryforindiana.com.

That’s the end of the email.

I have sent a contribution to Lowry, and I hope many of you reading this will join me. The last thing we need in this state is a pro-censorship, anti-choice clone of theocrat Micah Beckwith buttressing a GOP super-majority in Indiana’s already-terrible, culture-war legislature.

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Another Rutabaga Election?

The reality of the Electoral College keeps Americans fixated on the “swing states.” National parties and the media routinely dismiss Indiana as a place where voters would elect a rutabaga if that vegetable had an “R” next to its name. That belief isn’t founded on actual voter preferences; it’s a result of extreme gerrymandering. Our legislative overlords draw lines that cram Democrats into a few urban districts while ensuring that a majority of districts include a greater number of (presumably reliable) Republican voters.

I’ve posted frequently about the negative consequences of that practice, but I’ve recently stumbled across an emerging positive–the discernable over-confidence it breeds in GOP candidates.

Take a look, for example, at the campaign for Indiana’s House of Representatives in District 88. That district covers Geist, Lawrence, Ingalls, McCordsville, Fortville, and Cumberland, and was clearly drawn to maximize Republican advantage. But it also contains a lot of educated voters, and in the wake of growing MAGA extremism and the Dobbs decision, is considerably less reliably Red.

Enter a serious Democratic candidate: Stephanie Jo Yocum, who is emphasizing her support for women’s reproductive rights, strong public education, safe and connected communities, workers rights and economic prosperity for all. (You can access her interpretations of those promises on the “issues” page of her website.)

After a conversation with a member of Yocum’s campaign, I went to the websites of the incumbent Republican, Chris Jeter–a campaign site and a personal one–and was astonished to find that neither site bothered with those silly things called issues. Instead, there were photos of his family, a biography (including an undergraduate Baptist College), and his reportedly active memberships in his church and the NRA.

The absence of policy positions seemed odd to me, but I assume Mr. Jeter feels it is sufficient to be a Republican running in a “safe” district. No need to defend his positions, which–after more googling–are unlikely to be widely popular even among non-MAGA Republican voters.

Jeter earned a ZERO rating from Indiana’s ACLU, for example. That rating was based upon several votes: he voted FOR Indiana’s ban on virtually all abortions; FOR a bill discriminating against trans girls (a bill vetoed by our Republican governor); FOR onerous limits on charitable bail organizations; and FOR a bill that would have limited how public schools and employees could address concepts related to an individual’s sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation. (The vagueness of this bill would have effectively chilled discussion and instruction in Indiana classrooms.)

He also voted FOR new, onerous restrictions on absentee voting and voting by mail, and FOR a bill that would have given the Indiana Attorney General the power to request the appointment of a special prosecutor whenever county prosecutors exercise their (entirely lawful) discretion in ways the Attorney General disapproves, essentially allowing Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita to substitute his discretion for that of an elected county prosecutor.

My brief research into Jeter’s voting history told me two things: he is a Republican culture warrior, and he is relying on his district’s gerrymander rather than his performance to return him to the legislature. He evidently shares the belief that all he needs to prevail is that “R” next to his name.

My analysis of District 88 can be replicated around the state. But despite the smug assurance of the Republican operatives who drew the lines and the candidates who confidently expect to benefit from them once again, I think they are missing some significant danger signals.

Over the past several years, Republican reliance on the “rutabaga” theory of Hoosier elections has allowed the party and its candidates to become more and more extreme–to ignore the grind of actual governance and constituent service and to focus almost exclusively on waging culture war. Rather than the day-to-day business of ensuring that Indiana’s bridges and roads and parks are well-maintained, they’ve waged war on women’s reproductive rights and the LBGTQ+ community; rather than attracting business to the state by enhancing our quality of life, they’ve cut taxes for top earners and their donors. Rather than strengthening our public schools, they’ve siphoned off tax dollars and sent them to religious schools.

The basic question for Hoosier voters in November is whether we will continue to vote for the rutabagas–the empty suits and Christian Nationalists and gun extremists and “privatizers” who–thanks to the absence of competition ensured by gerrymandering– now represent virtually all of Indiana’s Republican candidates.

Stephanie Yocum’s positions are far more likely than Jeter’s to reflect those of voters in House District 88, Democrat OR Republican.

It’s really past time to retire the rutabaga vote.

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