A long-time incumbent faces a challenge from a conservative advocate in the Republican primary for Indiana Senate District 37.
Rodric Bray, the Senate’s president pro tempore, has been in office since 2012, taking a seat that was held by his father for a number of years. He is running again because he’s found the work in the Senate meaningful and enjoys trying to craft policy that “makes sense” for Indiana, he said.
Jay Hart, a self-described “full-time advocate for conservative policy” and former antique motorsports restoration specialist, seeks to oust Bray. Hart, a believer in term limits, alleges the district is not being represented well since Bray took on the leadership role and thinks it’s time for someone new to be put into office, he said.
The top issues facing the state in Bray’s eyes include how 20% of children in third grade fail to pass IREAD-3, inflation, workforce challenges and child care affordability and access, he said. Hart believes the top issues are taxation, education, “bad” growth, crime, economic development being pushed by forces outside the state and illegal immigration, he said.
District 37 encompasses most of White River Township and all of Union and Hensley townships in Johnson County, along with all of Morgan County and parts of Putnam and Owen counties. Only residents living within those boundaries will get to vote in this race.
To help voters make their decision in this Senate race, the Daily Journal asked the candidates their takes on issues facing the state ahead of the May 7 primary and early voting.
Here’s a snapshot of what they said, edited for length, repetition and clarity:
How do you plan to push legislation that addresses the issues facing the state?
Bray: We have to be strong fiscal stewards of our state, making sure we’re spending our money wisely, don’t spend more than we have, and don’t invest it badly so that our state continues to grow. We continue to have a AAA credit rating, which just a couple of states have across the nation. That gives us options and flexibility when times are challenging like they have from time to time over the last few years. … For education, I talked about the reading proficiency bill, Senate Bill 1 that we just passed. The other thing you’ll see us do is continue to work toward [school] choice; so the parents have a choice as to where to send their kids, whether it’s to the public school next door, or a charter school, or use a voucher to go to a private school, we want to fund that child and his or her education. We want parents to find the best option for that child. The other thing we’re working on in earnest right now is to make sure that kids have options for workforce and education. We’d like to get to a spot where kids across the state can have an apprenticeship where they can go to work outside of the class day, like career technical education, but maybe even go into a workplace or an employer where they get some credit for that and get a grade for that; it has to be part of what we do to get kids ready for the workforce. I think that’ll help keep some kids in our schools and engaged … If we can get them out into a workplace for part of the week learning skills and learning a trade, learning how to function effectively in a workplace, all the while making sure they get their education as well, that can help keep some more kids engaged, who maybe aren’t engaged right now.
Hart: There have already been bills presented by some of our more conservative legislators that would deal with reforming the way we assess property values. … Here’s where I start on property taxes. I don’t believe that any government has any business, putting a price on things I have earned with my right to pursue happiness. … I realize that’s a very conservative way to look at things. We’re free people in this country, we have the right to pursue happiness. … And I don’t believe the government should be placing values on the things I own. I believe we should all be taxed fairly on the things we use and equally on the things we use. … I don’t think retired Hoosiers ought to be paying property tax at all. … I think No. 1, if I were going to take a shot at fixing property taxes in Indiana — simplify everything. Everything would be much more simple — and there would be no loopholes for local governments to get around. … What we have right now is folks who have sent their legislators downtown to solve problems with property taxes, and then we have legislators lobbying leadership in the statehouse to make sure they get a loophole to get through the cap that the people want to set on property tax. You see, it doesn’t work. We have to close all that up. … Illegal immigration … Very simple; if you knowingly house and hire people who have violated our sovereignty in this nation, if you do that in the state of Indiana, you should face very serious consequences. If we had that, we would no longer magnetize our state to illegal immigration. … We need more transparency. For me, I think transparency would help a lot. I think making sure that economic development is good for all Hoosiers, not just developers, bankers and politicians. We need to reform economic development to where it’s transparent and where it reaches all Hoosiers. Because it is very frustrating and insulting to a lot of people to hear people in our state government, like Senator Bray, tell us that he’s doing a wonderful job for the state with economic development while we know every tax has increased and wages have gone down. … Another big reform that I’d like to see is guarantees that when we utilize these tools within economic development — things like tax increment financing — that we have the resources, especially public safety, for any project that would reasonably increase the population of an area. There has to be guarantees for public safety prior, we have to guarantee readiness of our resources. We can’t keep moving people into these areas that aren’t ready for growth.
The legislature has spent some time addressing social issues the last few sessions. Do you think this time has been well spent? Should this continue?
Bray: We need, as a general assembly, you hope at least that we’ve tapped into what is important for our state and our constituents. Making sure that we stand up for and represent the values of our community is absolutely imperative, and that’s what those issues do.
Hart: No, absolutely not. … We are spending so much time focused on these issues that tear us all apart and cause us to fight while ignoring these giant issues like property tax, drugs, crime. Our priorities are completely upside down in this state and in this country. … I care about all people who are hurting and I don’t want to ignore them, but we have to prioritize. When we know that people aren’t able to care for their children all across the state. It’s not a small portion of people dealing with social issues. Some of the social issues are literally there. Some of them are fabricated and grown for nothing more than dividing us, and it’s done by leadership in both parties, certainly at a national level. And I don’t think we should continue to fall for this. … I’m a man of data. I look at data. Education, suicide, and poverty data in this state frightens me … We can’t keep ignoring it. But we have to prioritize. Right now I think our more serious problems are taxation, crime and losing our freedoms.
Lawmakers will be setting the state’s next biennial budget in January. What would you advocate taxpayer dollars be spent on?
Bray: Inflation is a big factor. It’s still hurting people right now. We all go to the grocery store, you’ll walk out with two bags of groceries … and you’re north of $100 … So that hurts in rent and house payments; housing becoming less affordable because there’s a small supply and interest rates are going up. So all those things have very dramatic effects on Hoosiers. First and foremost with the next budget, we’ve got to make sure we’re spending the dollars we have wisely. … There’s a state and local income tax commission working now, that started last year, they’ll work through 2024 to rethink what our tax structure is like in Indiana. By and large, we’re one of the best — or the least the top 10 — perennially states in the union for our tax structure, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to improve ourselves and be more competitive. So this group is looking at our tax structure, where can we cut taxes. We’ve cut 15 taxes over 10 years but we want to continue to look at that in particular. Right now of interest to everyone is property taxes. We have seen those go up and up and up to the point that it’s really causing pain for farmers, businesses and — most importantly — homeowners. So, we’re going to try and find ways to give some relief there. … Education is the biggest thing; it’s nearly half of our budget, and so we’ll focus on that. The other thing — if you ask me — that keeps me awake at night is the cost of Medicaid. It is the second largest budget item that we have and it’s trying to grow, we need to make sure we find ways to cut that so that it doesn’t become a part of our budget that grows out of control. You’ll see us spend a lot of effort on that over the next year or two.
Hart: We are spending way too much money. Our problem is allocation. … I think the way we reward educators is completely unfair. … I feel for people who have a classroom of busting at the seams. We keep pouring more on them and telling them their job is not only to teach 123s, ABCs, real math, real science, real history; their job is to parent children. It is not their job. I want to see great teachers make more money, and the way I want to do that is to implement more competition in that market. I want teachers themselves to figure out how we’re going to do it, not legislators, not politicians. I want teachers to decide how they want to be graded. I think that’s fair. I think it’s fair to ask teachers to give us a more competitive way to reward them, and reallocate funding accordingly. That means that great teachers will make more money, and we will incentivize educators to be better. I’m very concerned about education. We have three out of five third-graders who can’t read proficiently, we need to pay attention to the science of reading. We know what works, but again, we have legislators serving big donors, rather than serving the people and the data. … We are focused on so many things outside of … the basics.
How would you describe, in your own words, Indiana’s future?
Bray: It is extremely bright. Here’s one example that I’ll give you. In 2017, Indiana broke a record for capital investment coming in from out of state into the state of Indiana for to create businesses and jobs. Every year since 2017, we’ve broken that record again and again and again. In 2021, that record was $8.2 billion of investment into the state of Indiana. And in 2021 and 2022, we didn’t break that record, we shattered it. It went from $8.2 billion to about $24 billion, and then 2023, that went to $28 billion. So people across the country and across the world recognize Indiana as a good, solid stable investment and a place to do business. We are watching ourselves grow wild, and these jobs that are coming in are well over the average pay that Hoosiers are getting today. We’re in demand right now, and it’s frankly pretty exciting.
Hart: The first thing we need to do is start being honest with people. The future looks really dark for the state of Indiana if people do not get involved in these elections. … We can’t have low turnouts in these primary elections at the state level, at the federal level. We need everybody participating, everybody trying to understand and everybody looking at data. It’s so complex, so confusing. It’s very difficult for these families [that] are struggling to pay attention, but they need to. They need to understand how important that is or we’re in big trouble. We’re gonna find ourselves in a match. I think we can change it, but the time is right now. It’s so critical.
ABOUT THE JOB
Indiana Senate District 37
Term: Four years
Duties: Senators draft and vote on legislation brought before the General Assembly, including the bi-annual state budget.
Salary: $29,749 a year plus a $196 per diem a day (2023). As President Pro Tempore, Bray made $85,279 last year.
THE BRAY FILE
Name: Rodric “Rod” Bray
Age: 55
Residence: Martinsville
Family: Wife, Kelly; two children
Occupation: Attorney
Education background: Indiana University, Bloomington; Valparaiso University School of Law
Political experience: Elected to Indiana Senate in 2012. Been President Pro Tem of the Senate since 2019.
Memberships: Home Bank board member; Emmanuel Church
THE HART FILE
Name: Jay Hart
Age: 51
Residence: Morgantown
Family: Wife, Brittney; one daughter
Occupation: “Full time advocate for conservative policy;” former antique motorsports restoration specialist
Education background: Frankfort High School, IUPUI
Political experience: Unsuccessfully ran for Indiana State Representative for District 58 in 2020
Memberships: National Rifle Association; 2A Project; 4-H; Antique Motorcycle Club of America; Speedway Antique Motorcycle Club
