Where They Stand: Indiana House District 47 candidate Scott Strother

Editor’s note: Republican Scott Strother is one of four candidates for Indiana House District 47. The district covers the majority of Johnson County and portions of northern and western Shelby County. A Where They Stand interview with Robb Greene, one of Strother’s opponents, ran in Wednesday’s Daily Journal. Another Where They Stand interview with one of Strother’s opponents, incumbent John Young, will run in Saturday’s Daily Journal. The Q&A below includes answers by Strother in his own words. It has been edited for length and grammar.

Four candidates are seeking the Indiana House District 47 seat in the Republican primary May 3: Luke Campbell, Robb Greene, Scott Strother and John Young, the incumbent.

The Daily Journal asked three District 47 candidates questions about what voters could expect from them if they are elected. The fourth candidate, Luke Campbell, declined an interview. Here are Strother’s responses:

» Why are you running for office?

I’ve been a resident of Indiana my entire life. I grew up on the southside of Indianapolis, and joined the military in 2008. I came back home and it seems since I got back, Indiana’s been a little bit different than what I remember growing up. Crime is going up and so many other things are happening here. It seems that some of our politicians are doing things that make them look good, but not really caring about the individuals in the state.

» How are you qualified for this position?

The founders intended for everyday men and women to run. They didn’t want it to just be the high-class or the low-class. They never really had the intention of anyone in particular being better for the office. You just need someone in here who is going to speak for the people and be honest and trustworthy. I know I’m that guy. I’m not going to tell you anything that’s not true. I think that makes me a qualified candidate because I want to stand for the people.

» What are your top priorities/the top issues facing Indiana?

Accountability for all offices. For example, school boards. These guys can get into the office (and) they just have to live there. They don’t have to have kids that go to that school. There’s no accountability if they act out. We can’t impeach them, we can’t remove them from office; it’s just waiting for them to be done with their term. If you’ve stepped out of line, we need to be able to reign them in. If you can’t hold somebody accountable for their actions (when) they represent you, how do you know they actually want to represent you? There’s no way to call them out for doing that.

Law and justice reform. We have so many laws on the books and we add more and more every year, but no one stops to go back and remove some of the laws that have been passed that need to be removed. If all we do is add to the laws and never remove, we’re not doing what’s best for the people. We’re also seeing a high crime rate in our jails, and we need to look at why we send people to jail for low-level crimes and let out some of the higher felony convictions – letting them out early – instead of taking care of those things.

Changing legislative session. We somehow had time to read 437 bills in less than 30 days. I’m a slow reader, my wife’s a fast reader, but even for her it would be next to impossible (task) to read those. If we’re not reading them, how are we voting on things we have not read? Indiana has the part-time legislature, but that was made a long time ago, back when times were simple. We probably weren’t anywhere near a hundred bills coming to the Senate or the House in a year. Now we have 400 coming on either side that have to be voted on. Why do we need to be out in March? If you’re a representative, you should be a representative all year long. It also opens the door, when we have a part-time legislature, to have conflicts of interest. When you’re holding a full-time job somewhere, and you’re voting on bills that could or could not affect you, yes, you’re supposed to disclose those, but are they always? We can’t sit here and say things are what they used to be five years ago, but we’re keeping some laws on the books that were written hundreds (of years ago).

» How do you plan to help your district specifically, and communicate with constituents about what is going on at the Statehouse?

I would like to have an office set up to where we could have weekly or biweekly meetings for the constituents to come and really talk to their representative about what we could see and what we could do. Even when I lived in Indianapolis, I didn’t know who my representative was. A lot of people down here didn’t know who their representative (was) and couldn’t point him out in a crowd. How could you represent somebody if no one knows who you are? If that’s the type of representation we have, then what’s the point in it? At that point we are serving political interest groups and not our constituents. If the House of Representatives was a full year … we could have days off to be able to having meetings with our constituents as well.

» How would you address, at the state level, the concerns of parents and teachers about what is being taught in classrooms?

I’ve tried to have conversations on both sides of this. The simplest way to take care of it would be … asking teachers to provide a lesson plan, maybe not a year in advance, because let’s face it, they don’t write them that far out. But if they posted their lesson plans and the school boards were made of 50% parents and 50% educators, then we could have that discussion. I think that’s what a lot of people want. They don’t want to force anybody to do anything, but they also want what’s best for their kids, and what’s best for their kids is to have the conversation. We don’t want critical race theory in our classrooms – not everybody is teaching it – so we don’t want to overburden our teachers. But we also want to make sure that certain things are being taught properly in our classrooms.

» This year, state lawmakers cut some of the state’s tax revenues due to a bigger-than-expected surplus. What are your thoughts on possibly cutting both business personal property and/or individual income taxes again next year?

How could you own a house outright if you stop paying property taxes and the state can seize it? We tax everywhere – we tax coming in, we tax going out, we tax when you die. There’s taxes everywhere, but yet one of the biggest things we always go to is (that) we tax the roads. I drove semis for about 10 years, and now I’m a distribution manager, but I still get out on the roads every day. Our roads aren’t what they should be for the amount of money we are paying in taxes. I realize it costs a lot to maintain them, but I don’t think the money we set aside for roads is being used properly. You want to set up your structures to not fail, but come to points where they need to be rebuilt in an order so that way it’s manageable. Replacing 10 bridges at the same time is not something that’s really done well, so these companies are jumping from job to job to job to tear down these bridges and rebuild them. Yes, they need them, but we are not setting ourselves up for the future to be able to maintain the bridges without tearing them down earlier than they need to be. There’s a lot of taxes and we need to get rid of some. We do have a surplus, so that means we are overtaxing. I don’t agree with all the taxation that Indiana has.

» Is there a bill that you disagreed with during the 2022 legislative session, and what would you have liked to see passed instead?

I’m disappointed we chose to talk about a state fossil rather than some of the other important bills, like constitutional carry, having more time to discuss CRT or those kinds of education bills. Instead of doing productive things that are helping the state of Indiana, we are talking about a fossil. By all means, it’s a great thing but … we have enough other issues out there. We need to prioritize the important things and not spend time on something that I don’t know even know how (it) would benefit Indiana.

First thing I wanted to address was the amount of time in office. A part-time legislature, we’re beyond that now. The fact that we can’t get things completed (and) everything that was brought forth in the session speaks to that. If they don’t want to go full-time, something needs to be done to extend it so we can get … everything that needs to be done completed in a timely manner. I know people are going to ask about pay and all that — that’s something that I have no words on how to do that and I don’t know where it would go — but that’s a discussion for a lot of other people to have. We need to first change and say “Hey, we need to complete our tasks. We need to get everything done in the session, then we can talk about taking the time off and letting the session end.”

» Is there anything else you would like to say to the voters?

I would love for you to vote for me, but the one question I’d ask of any voter who is looking at any race in the state of Indiana and anywhere really in the United States or around the world is: before you vote for somebody to retain their office, really try to do yourself a service and look at what they’ve done. See what bills they’ve written, see where their mindset is and really, especially for a local election … you should be able to reach your entire district and know who’s representing you. I know the lines changed this year, so it’s going to be an odd thing for a lot of people trying to figure out where they actually live on this line. But you really need to look at who your representative is and want to know that they stand for you and that you can actually get a hold of them and get your voice heard. That’s what we’re supposed to be as representatives, a voice for the people.

The Strother File

Name: Scott Strother

Residence: Bargersville

Family: Wife, Bethany; three children

Occupation: Distribution Manager at Airgas USA

Educational background: Southport High School; WGU Indiana

Past political experience: None

Correction: April 1, 2021 – 2:10 p.m.

A previous version of this story incorrectly said the Indiana House District 47 seat was an open seat. It is not; the incumbent is running for re-election. The story has since been updated.