Candidates hoping to represent the area’s citizens in the Indiana Statehouse come 2023 shared their thoughts on a number of hot-button issues facing Hoosiers.
Those issues include how to handle the state’s $6 billion surplus, a scrapped educational bill that fought the culture wars in the legislature and one of the most controversial decisions the state made in 2022, the currently paused Senate Bill 1, which bans abortion.
House District 42
Alan Morrison (R) vs. Mark Spelbring (D) — Morrison has been serving since 2012. He’s the vice chairman of the Elections and Apportionment Committee and is also on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Utilities, Energy and Telecommunications Committee.
Spelbring previously ran for the post in 2012 and 2014, and is running again because he says Morrison has seemingly avoided interactions with the public.
Morrison’s campaign did not respond to an interview request.
Spelbring said he decided to run again for two reasons.
“Number one, [Morrison] has not been very good at showing up for things such as the Crackerbarrel sessions in the county,” he said. “He was not being accessible and listening to things people had to say. and the [Republican] supermajority that we have in the legislature now, that tends to let them do things that are extreme. He pushes some extreme positions that I don’t think fit well with the people of this area.”
Spelbring has ideas on what to do with the state’s $6 billion surplus.
“One of the things they could have done due to the high inflation is they could have suspended the sales tax on gasoline,” he said. “The gas tax itself goes to roads, some of the sales tax goes into the fund that has the surplus. Eliminating the sales tax could’ve saved people about a quarter a gallon.”
Healthcare is another area in dire straits in Indiana.
“If you look at some of the figures of how Indiana fares among other states, there are several areas where we don’t fare very well — mental health is an example, though overall health is not that good, either,” Spelbring said. “The pandemic is probably going to be impacting us for quite some time, and that is a good thing to be addressed.”
He added, “Public education has been what I consider the number one priority.”
Spelbring said that making education a priority doesn’t mean dictating how things are taught, as the controversial but overturned House Bill 1134 sought to do.
“Respecting teachers is something we need to do,” he said. “The legislature doesn’t need to dictate what you’re going to do in a classroom — ‘Can you teach history this way? Do you have to teach it that way?’ That’s what we have local school boards for. The legislature has gotten into these culture wars and try to micromanage on the local level and they should be leaving that to the local people.”
Abortion has remained one of the hottest subjects in the state since the Supreme Court decision led the way for Senate Bill 1’s ban, though that decision has been paused with the Indiana State Supreme Court considers its Constitutionality.
“The best thing we could do is what they did in Kansas, which is they asked people,” Spelbring said. In this year’s primary, Kansans overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion legal.
“If you look at the numbers, Indiana and Kansas are pretty close,” Spelbring said. I think a lot of people were surprised that Kansas had an 18-point margin in supporting keeping access to abortion services in the Constitution in Kansas. I think the legislature acted too swiftly and restrictively here. I’d love to see them do something like what Kansas did. They went too far.”
District 43
Andrew McNeil (R) v Tonya Pfaff (D) — Pfaff has served since 2018. She’s on the Education Committee, the Elections and…
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