<strong>Why are you running for office? </strong>
When my husband and I returned to Indiana a couple years ago, when we retired, we decided to live in Brown County — in Nashville. I started to pay attention to what was going on at the statehouse. What I saw was a totally captured supermajority, and that supermajority is Republicans. When they have a supermajority, that party doesn’t have to listen to or interact with the other party at all and that makes for terrible policy. So I stepped up because nobody else did. I like to frame myself as a TikTok grandma. Some of the things I’m fighting for are for my grandchildren, so they can have a better quality of life. I don’t see that happening in the statehouse right now. I think they are all captured by the big-monied interest. I think that needs to change.
<strong>Why are you qualified for this position? </strong>
I’m qualified because I care. Because I’m educated and I know a lot about public health as a registered nurse and a public health professional. I think we need more medical personnel as legislators in the statehouse right now, so that we can prevent what has happened with the pandemic and make sure it never happens again. What happened didn’t need to happen. States that have supported their workers and businesses didn’t have to close. Workers didn’t have to lose their jobs as much as they did. Our public health department was not prepared. They should have been able to step up and better handle testing and contact tracing. They’ve been underfunded for years. I know from working at the CDC what … a strong public health structure should look like and I’d like to bring that to the statehouse.
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<strong>What are the top three issues facing Indiana?</strong>
The top issues I hear about all the time are public schools, affordable health care for everybody and protection of our environment.
I support health care for all. This pandemic has shown us that linking your health care to your job is a really super bad idea. I think there is a lot we can do with Medicaid. I know that Medicaid has already been expanded a bit, but I think we can expand that and (the) Healthy Indiana (Plan) and cover a lot more people. I support expanding it to 400% of the poverty line … I hear this all the time: “I’m tied to this job because I need health insurance for my family.” If we can uncouple that, the Indiana economy would be better off and people overall would be happier.
There is a huge issue with public schools in Indiana. There is a reason Indiana was targeted for the vouchers for private schools and online schools. I think we need to have a moratorium on vouchers and we need to rethink the school funding formula. The way it stands now, where I live in Nashville and Brown County is … We have lost students to surrounding communities because of a lack of jobs. Or because kids can transfer to a different school district, which is fine, but that punished the school distinct that loses the kid … It is not the school system’s fault. They have been underfunded because of that.
We all want clean air, clean water. We all want corporations not to be able to dump toxins on our land and leave them there and take off. You’ll hear the Republicans say the business community is so great in Indiana; we have so many people fighting to come to Indiana … Why do you think that is? It is because Indiana is low-paid so they can save on salaries. As far as regulations, contaminations, they are pretty weak. So of course they want to come here. We need to hold their feet to the fire on that … You see with the hurricanes, the fires, the droughts, which we are in right now, that we need to coordinate better nationally and with the states and with the locals … At the end of the day, if we don’t address that, it doesn’t matter if people have health care or businesses want to come here, because at that point, the environment won’t be suitable for life.
<strong>How do you plan to push legislation that addresses your priorities?</strong>
I think getting on those committees that address those priorities would be my top focus. And working with the professionals, the business community and the public health community and finding out where we stand … Because all the decisions we make should be made on data. It would be (about) getting the groups together and not to give in to big-monied interests who want it to go a certain way. It would be about what is best for the people. I agree with (Dr.) Woody Myers (the Democrat running for governor) and Linda Lawson (Myers’ running mate) that it should be people over politics.
<strong>How do you plan to help your district specifically, and communicate with constituents about what is going on at the statehouse?</strong>
My district, because of gerrymandering, is made up of five different counties. So my plan is to hold regular town halls to listen to people in each part of the district.
What my district needs is (its) fair share of the funding. In rural southern Indiana, we have not received our fair share of the funding for years. We need mental health providers, addiction services, and we need a re-do of the school funding formula. We need to work with the farmers and the small family farms … We have small towns that are suffering, like Bedford, from the brain drain. To support the arts and job training in those (small town) areas is important. It is important to draw industry to the area, but we also can’t cave in and allow them to spoil the water, the air and to dump those toxins. In Brown County, we don’t have a hospital, a medical facility, or a women’s health clinic. You have to drive 30 minutes to receive health care. We should work with the federal government to get a federally qualified health center.
<strong>State revenues were about 8% lower than expected as a result of the coronavirus shutdowns. What measures would you propose to weather shortfalls next budget year?</strong>
It isn’t a matter of raising taxes; it is a matter of priorities. What Republicans like to say is that it is a top-down, trickle-down approach; that we support businesses with COVID-19 relief money. They say that money will trickle down to the workers. But that’s never worked. I think the state should support the workers and the families. What will happen when you support them is they use that support, go into their communities and buy groceries, keep their home or apartment and their cars. They keep the local economy going and it trickles up to the rest of Indiana when they pay more taxes. We will have more scarcity, but I think the overall approach with what we should have is to support the people.
Of the $2.4 billion given to the state from the federal government … the governor is still sitting on half of that. When I go around Monroe County and Lawrence County, people are crying out for that money. They need that rent relief. What we are going to see is an increase in homelessness. We are already seeing an increase in people who need food.
<strong>Is there a bill that you disagreed with during the 2020 legislative session, and what would you have liked to see passed instead?</strong>
One of them was the pregnancy accommodations bill. That would actually require no real funding for the state to implement because it would be up to the businesses to implement the accommodations. They put that bill to a study committee, but they never did conduct the study. To me, it seems like a no-brainer in Indiana, (which) people say is a pro-life state. But they don’t really support women to the extent they can … To deal with these issues that affect women, we should elect more women.
