There are a couple things I like about State Senator Mike Delph. First, the past couple years he’s spearheaded the legislation to restore all of Indiana to the Central Time Zone (or at least assign it a study committee), and he’s sponsored legislation to return the public school start date to the Tuesday after Labor Day, as when I was in elementary school here in Carmel.
But for the most part, Delph has been a big embarrassment to his constituents and to the entire state. His most egregious move: Not only did he oppose marriage equality for all Hoosiers (on religious grounds, no less), but to publicly defy a federal judge’s ruling is just plain stupid. Heck, even the Indiana Republican Party reprimanded him. Further, neither the Fraternal Order of Police nor the ever-conservative Indiana Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Delph this year. How did he get to be such a GOP wingnut? Well, he used to work for Dan Burton, if that offers any clue.
But before holding your nose and voting for Delph again, please know that there is an alternative. His name is J.D. Ford, and while J.D. is a Democrat, he shares the same fiscally conservative values of most of our Republican State Senators. The difference is that not only does J.D. believe Indiana legislators should stop wasting their time discriminating against gays and lesbians, but he actually supports our long-overdue recognition of gay marriage. And as J.D. campaigns door-to-door in Carmel, he’s finding that Carmel residents (yes, fiscally conservative Carmel residents) also support legalizing gay marriage! And here you thought you and I were the only two. Wrong! Carmel residents (perhaps representative of all of Indiana) are ready to put this divisive issue behind us, and provide equal opportunity for all Hoosiers.
Furthermore, J.D. Ford believes Governor Pence should have followed the lead of all our neighboring governors, and accepted the expansion of Medicaid for Hoosiers without health insurance. Instead, we’ve been “treated” to an expansion of the Healthy Indiana Plan, which does not cover the poorest Hoosiers – those most in need of coverage! While the Affordable Care Act is admittedly disastrous in many ways, we in Indiana pay our federal taxes which are sent back to Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio (but not to Indiana) via Medicaid funding to cover their poorest residents. So poor Hoosiers are hurt by a lack of coverage, and middle-class Hoosiers are hurt by paying for services for residents of other states rather than our own.
Mike Delph has been part of what I call the Indiana Legislative Cheering Section for a potential presidential bid by Governor Mike Pence. Delph and his ilk have taken care to pass almost every item on the governor’s agenda, no matter how ridiculous or controversial. Pence (and by extension, Delph) wants to be seen as a governor who bucked the trend and proposed a health care plan different from President Obama’s (although it is actually less effective than Obamacare), and who proposed academic standards different from the federal Common Core standards (although Pence’s practically mirror those of Common Core).
Delph is an admitted Tea Partier. Therefore, he does not speak for the remaining 75 percent of Republicans in his district who are not Tea Partiers. It is time for Delph to go, and this time, the Democrats have put forth an excellent candidate.
The bottom line is this: Delph has been in office too long, and, thanks to his falling-out with the Republican Senate Leadership, has effectively limited his ability to accomplish anything else while serving in his constituents. J.D. Ford comes from a family of educators. He wants to actually invest in public education in this state. He wants to make job training and higher education more affordable. And by extension, he wants Hoosier businesses to be able to actually hire local workers. And he wants Hoosiers to be able to marry whomever they love – what a novel concept!
But there’s a catch. We all must vote! We’re stuck with Governor Pence and Attorney General Greg Zoeller for two more years, but we can begin to “throw the bums out” in 2014. Let’s return the state of Indiana to Hoosiers. Let’s get corporate interests out of the Statehouse. Let’s insure that we receive at least as much back from the federal government as we put in with our taxes. Let’s be proud of Carmel again. Let’s elect J.D. Ford to the Indiana Senate.
