Krull
Indiana is going to be a busy place this spring, summer and fall.
The announcements that two more members of the Hoosier delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives — U.S. Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-Indiana, and U.S. Rep. Greg Pence, R-Indiana — will retire from office when their terms end this year further guaranteed that.
The departures of Bucshon and Pence mean that four of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats will be open and therefore highly contested. U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Indiana, already had announced plans to step down, plans she reconfirmed in the aftermath of the Bucshon-Pence news.
And U.S. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, has launched a campaign for the U.S. Senate seat fellow Republican Mike Braun is leaving so he can run for governor.
Braun is part of a crowded field in the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Four other serious candidates also seek the party’s nod. They all have natural constituencies. At least three of them will be able to raise substantial funds.
At least two of them — including Braun—sit on significant personal fortunes that they have shown no aversion to using to gain office.
All this relentless activity — this coming and going from office to office — means several things.
Having so many open and competitive seats will result in massive amounts of campaign money flooding into Indiana. Because the margins are so close for control of both chambers of Congress, both parties—and all the special interests attached to each of them — will flood every media platform with ads. We’ve already started seeing that in the gubernatorial and Senate races, where commercials have been popping up for weeks now.
It will get worse — much worse — between now and November. By the time election day rolls around, many Hoosiers will be tempted to gouge out their eyeballs and puncture their eardrums just so they don’t have to watch or listen to the nastiness any longer.
Which brings us to the second thing.
Whatever hard feelings and divisions exist in the state likely will be more pronounced after this election season.
Braun and Banks in the gubernatorial and Senate races, respectively, have gone to lengths to establish themselves as the favorites of and water carriers for former President Donald Trump. Questions of ethics, law and morality aside, their approach makes a certain amount of sense politically. Trump carried Indiana by 16 points and nearly a half-million votes in 2020.
Particularly in a contested GOP primary, having the Trump brand on one’s forehead has value.
Whether it still will have the same value if or when the former president is convicted on any of the 91 criminal charges that he faces is an open question.
Historically, Hoosiers have not been loving supporters of felons and other wanton lawbreakers.
If Trump is convicted, Banks, Braun and probably others will have little choice but to go even more negative — to re-scorch the already scorched earth.
That will accelerate the dynamic that may have prompted many departures from the House.
While there doubtless were specific and personal reasons Spartz, Bucshon and Pence chose to retire — at least one of their shuffles of the stage seems to coincide neatly, even suspiciously, with serving the minimum number of years necessary to qualify for a congressional pension—there likely was one overarching motivation all three had for packing it in.
Unless one is a masochist, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives can’t be any fun.
That’s always been the case if one is in the minority, but now it’s true even if one is a Republican and in the majority.
Last year, the Republican-led House passed only 27 bills into law — a near-record low. That’s because Republicans spent much of their time fighting not Democrats nor foreign adversaries but each other.
They went through two prolonged battles choosing a speaker, which managed to grind all legislative business in Congress to a halt for weeks at a time. Now, they appear appeased to do so again.
Most decent people, Republican or Democrat, who run for office do so because they want to help people and get things done. They do not dream of spending all their time squabbling with colleagues — particularly with colleagues they thought were supposed to be on their side.
But getting things done has become almost impossible in the House these days.
That’s why serving there is moving into so many officeholders’ life-is-too-short folders.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
