2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWhy is Mike Pence so disliked in Indiana?
There's a difference between being a representative and being a governor.
As a representative, you push for your special interests.
As a governor, you do what's best for your state.
Pence got the endorsement from the much-liked former Republican governor Mitch Daniels (now president of Purdue) basically with the promise that he wouldn't pursue a social agenda. Mitch Daniels was liked because he focused almost exclusively on the economy and government efficiency. He gave no fucks about social issues, and it was implied that Pence, as the successor of Daniels, would set aside the social dogmas that he was known for and govern a state that was on a very good path, economically, after Mitch Daniels' two terms.
He didn't do that.
From day one, Pence didn't govern--he played national GOP politics. Whatever the big firey debate of the day was among the national GOP, he grabbed ahold of it and pretended to be its conservative crusader, even if it had absolutely zero relevance to the state of Indiana. He spent time, money, and resources on championing issues that Hoosiers didn't care about or didn't support, because he wanted to pander to the National GOP's ultra conservative base for his future career. Essentially, he was using Indiana as a stepping stone. He never cared about being governor. He always had higher aspirations, and the governorship was a stepping stone to a higher federal office. Most Hoosiers, left or right on the political spectrum, espouse this opinion about him.
As I said before, Mitch Daniels literally gave no fucks about social issues. Indiana is generally a conservative state, but it's never been a state particularly hung up on social issues, and it's never been a state that follows the national GOP's social platform. Indiana has, for as long as I've been alive, been a business Republican state--politicians like the Bushes, Mitt Romney, etc. We voted Obama into office, and prior to Mitch Daniels in 2005, we had 16 straight years of Democratic governorship. Indianapolis, the capital and largest city in the state, routinely switched between Republican and Democrat mayors, and it has managed to have long-term plans and continue its momentum regardless of which party is in office.
So Pence, with his national conservative GOP politics, has been an aberration that has directly harmed Indiana's image and its pocket book.
In the three years since Pence took office, he:
Pushed through legislation making harsher penalties for drug crimes against the protests of numerous major legal organizations including the Indiana Bar Association, as well as most Hoosiers
Inherited a phenomenal state balance sheet from Mitch Daniels and used it as an excuse to push tax cuts so extreme (would have caused a tremendous deficit) that the Republican-controlled Congress shut him down
Tried and failed to amend the Indiana constitution to ban gay marriage, despite widespread polling that showed that Hoosiers didn't support it, and despite the vociferous condemnation of virtually every major business in the state
Since his gay marriage amendment failed, he literally, as payback (not exaggerating, the signing ceremony was invite only, no media was allowed or invited, but someone leaked a picture that showed Pence surrounded by well-known anti-LGBT extremists), came back with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which was a genuine political circus. It humiliated Indiana on the national stage, directly harmed Indianapolis, and was met with, perhaps, the fiercest backlash by the people of any state in the Union. The extraordinary protests of Hoosiers and businesses allowed the state GOP leaders to basically coerce--to his visible chagrin--Pence to amend the law and "fix it" (this was actually the front page
of the biggest newspaper in Indiana).
The RFRA was such a debacle that Pence ended up hiring an expensive out-of-state public relations firm to heal Indiana's national image. He couldn't answer why he chose an out-of-state firm. He couldn't answer why he chose such an expensive firm, when there are many firms in Indiana that could have done the job. It was eventually canceled, and was yet another waste of taxpayer money. To date, the RFRA has cost Indianapolis (a city that fought against it, changed the official tourism website to rainbow colors, and hung a huge rainbow banner at the airport) $60 million, and the total cost--to the economy and reputation--to the rest of the state is unknown.
During the gay marriage supreme court fight, he literally sent the Indiana attorney general to other states to advise them on how to craft their laws and fight gay marriage nationally. He did this on the taxpayer dollar. He continued to spend taxpayer money fighting gay marriage in the courts and with lawsuits despite, at the time, everyone knowing what the Supreme Court decision was going to be. It was basically a political stand by Pence; an expensive political stand that Hoosiers didn't support.
He fought to pass a law preventing cities from passing their own minimum wage statutes. Is this "small government"?
He has acted like a strongman (think Turkey's Erdoğan), doing everything in his power to make Glenda Ritz, the state superintendent and an elected official, quit her job, and barring that, stripping her of the power given to her by the Indiana constitute and the Hoosiers that elected her through backroom deals, conspiracy, and highly technical legal challenges. Just Google "Mike Pence Glenda Ritz." You could write a thesis on it.
Everyone, literally everyone, was on board for receiving a huge federal grant for preschool funding. The Indiana Department of Education was literally in the final stages of the application process--and the federal government was happy with Indiana and going to give us an especially large chunk of money--when Pence came in and shut it down for no reason because accepting money from the feds became politically untenable among the national GOP tea partier crowd. And, of course, you can't be elected president--Pence's eyes were always on the future--without support from the GOP's far right base. After shutting down the process, he has recently been opining that it would be a good idea to get federal money to fund preschools... A year after he shit all over the Dept of Education's proposal to do just that.
The HIV epidemic in southern Indiana is out of control and among the worst in the country. Of course, we could provide free needles for heroin addicts like has been done in many states to curb HIV problems, but that is politically repugnant to Mike Pence. He also managed to get the Planned Parenthoods in that part of the state shut down, eliminating the opportunity for poor people to get tested. The HIV epidemic, which never had to be an epidemic, continues, and Pence gets to push the problem on our future governor as he goes to join Trump on the national stage.
Speaking of Planned Parenthood, Pence is highly proud of his accomplishment at passing the single most restrictive abortion law since Roe vs Wade. The law, HEA 1337 is far stricter than anything even in the Deep South and is almost certainly unconstitutional. He knows that it's probably unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Indiana taxpayers will spend millions of dollars for our attorney general to fight the law all the way to the Supreme Court, just so Pence could make his political statement.
He literally tried to make a state-run news agency that he would then give exclusive interviews and access to. I don't even know if that's legal, but he tried to do it and was promptly crucified by the media and even his own party.
He asserted authority to ban Syrian refugees from being settled in Indiana. He has no authority. No governor has. He knew that, but he was planning to be a GOP presidential candidate, and he needed to show that he was strong and anti-Muslim refugee to appease the national GOP base. He took leadership role in this discriminatory crusade, appearing on national TV to preach his ignorance. This particular event managed to throw multiple refugee settlement organizations into disarray--which, by the way, actually include the Catholic Church of Indiana (the arch bishop of Indianapolis publicly criticized the governor)--and several Syrian refugees which were well into the process of moving to Indiana had to be relocated to another state. Pence didn't back down until the courts affirmed that his order was unconstitutional.
He shut down a highly successful energy efficiency program--one of the first in the nation, making Indiana a trailblazer--initiated by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with the support of previous governor Mitch Daniels. He did this for no good reason, other than to signal to his far-right constituents that he was fighting against Obama's evil despotic EPA.
This is all just in his three years in office. He is reviled across the state, and especially so in Indianapolis. There is (was--now that he's the VP nominee, he can no longer be governor) a bipartisan Pence Must Go campaign to get rid of him, and there are literally billboards
and yard signs
plastered all over the city. Pence is, by virtually all objective measures, one of the worst governors in recent Indiana history, at least in terms of working for the benefit of the state. He has basically focused on far-right Christian social conservative interests to the clear detriment of all else, most importantly the current and future well-being of the state's reputation and economy.
Reposted w/accreditation from /u/massamunecyrus on reddit
https://np.reddit.com/r/Indiana/comments/4u6qfr/slug/d5ng4e0
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)He's virtually punishing women for having miscarriages by forcing them to have funerals or cremation for the fetus. Tampons for Pence is a real group. Women whose fetuses are genetically abnormal cannot get an abortion for that reason. (I have hope that this will be overturned.)
He has busily reduced funding for public schools to the point where they're hardly able to survive. The I-Step tests for kids have become an education eating nightmare.
I could go on, but I won't. My last act as a citizen of Indiana was to vote against Pence as I headed to my new home in Florida. And say what you will about how bad Florida is, it isn't nearly as bad as Pence has been for Indiana.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)woman convicted of both killing a fetus and failing to take proper care of a living child. Apparently the autopsy said the aborted baby (not early term) breathed at least once before dying, so they slapped them both on.
Without making any excuses at all for abortion at possibly as late as 6 months, Indiana's prosecution of a pregnant woman for infanticide via abortion set an extremely dangerous precedent. Pence probably grieves the miscarriage of this 20-year sentence.
Chicago Tribune: Indiana court tosses woman's feticide conviction
The ruling comes in the case of Purvi Patel, who was convicted of neglect and feticide last year. However, the court upheld a lower-level felony neglect of a dependent conviction.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015, two years after her self-induced abortion at her family's home. Women's advocacy groups have been heavily involved in the case, saying it marks the first time a state feticide law was used against a woman because of an alleged self-induced abortion.
The appeals court ruled that Patel, who is currently in state prison on the neglect and feticide convictions, should be resentenced on the lower-level felony charge, which carries a possible prison term of between six months and three years. It wasn't immediately clear how quickly that resentencing could happen and whether Patel could soon be released from prison.
...
The attorneys also argued that Indiana's feticide law could apply to pregnant woman, not just "to third-party actors," and that Patel hadn't shown the feticide law constituted an undue burden on the right to an abortion.
The appeals court disagreed, saying the feticide law only had been used since it was enacted in 1979 to prosecute those who attacked pregnant women. The judges also wrote that the wording of state law on illegal abortions shows the Legislature "intended for any criminal liability to be imposed on medical personnel, not women who perform their own abortions."
StrictlyRockers
(3,855 posts)How totally reactionary.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)He's on the ticket to please hard-right conservatives who tend to be very punitive even if they're not very religious.
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)The baby died, but she lived. I think she was in prison a year before her sentence was finally overturned. Indiana is not a good place to be a woman of child bearing age. The baby's father had left her and she was so despondent she wanted to die, but that didn't matter.
Purvi Patel has another charge of neglect (or something similar) because the one pound fetus was put in a dumpster and they claim it took a breath before it died.
In both cases, the women were from minority communities. If it had been a rich woman from Carmel who did either of these things, I am pretty confident that nothing would have happened to her.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)involved and secure protections for both, but politically speaking both sides are far more interested in fighting each other than caring properly for the mothers and babies.
rurallib
(62,423 posts)don't think any republican governor does that any more.
Now all is tied up with 'movement conservative' and moving the country in one direction only
crazylikafox
(2,758 posts)StrictlyRockers
(3,855 posts)This is the kind of info I look for on DU.
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)Indiana has been sort of a test state for all the crazy right wing ideas. It's because, for the most part, people don't pay attention to what happens in Indiana. The exception was the Religious Freedom Act that allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT folks. I think that was why Pence was so clearly flummoxed by the outrage that transpired after he signed it. He never expected anyone to notice.
AwakeAtLast
(14,130 posts)We can't take any more of living in Indiana. We will be gone by next year.
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)We moved to Florida on my 65th birthday and I've never looked back. I hope you have an easy move.
AwakeAtLast
(14,130 posts)shrike
(3,817 posts)But we live up in the sea of blue that is Chicagoland. We get all our media from Chicago, have so many Chicago transplants that we're part of Indiana in name only.
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)Although I was born in Indianapolis I was in southern Indiana most of my life, in a county with no diversity and lots of racism. That's hard to take.
shrike
(3,817 posts)Though it has beautiful topography (Hoosier National Forest. Caverns, Bloomington) whenever I drive through there, the theme from "Deliverance" keeps running through my head . . .
AwakeAtLast
(14,130 posts)Because it means WE ARE RID OF HIM!
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)Have you heard yet. Vote Gregg. He's the typical Indiana semi-conservative Democrat, but he's a pretty reasonable guy.
AwakeAtLast
(14,130 posts)Great guy!
There are three Republicans vying for Pence's spot: the Lt. Governor, Susan Brooks, and Todd Rosita. All vomit inducing like their predecessor.
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)My husband is a retired teacher and an active member in ISTA. If you ever hear about the "Worthington Three" one of those was my husband.
Easy choice. Gregg is a down to earth guy and he's pro-education (something Indiana has lacked for quite a while... but I don't need to tell you that!).
AwakeAtLast
(14,130 posts)I was one of my district's Reps for the state assembly. I get so much out of those! Most of my colleagues act like it takes too much time out of their day.
I will make a point to ask about the "Worthington Three"!
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)It was in the 70s. Small school trying to form an ISTA group... the top three were fired to try to stop the organizing. They were also blackballed at other schools in Indiana. It went to court after court and the school kept appealing but the three were finally reinstated and given their back pay because they couldn't be fired for trying to form a union. It was a landmark case.
Here's a link to one of the appeals. It's hard to find much online from that far back. The ISTA represented them well throughout the three years they had to fight to get their positions back.
http://in.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19761005_0030438.IN.htm/qx
My husband was the Terrell in the Walton Terrell Hunter trio mentioned.
AwakeAtLast
(14,130 posts)One of our oldest leaders was let go in 1971 because she (gasp) got pregnant (she was married). It is amazing how far we have come!
radical noodle
(8,003 posts)We have come a long way, but sadly there's still a long road ahead for teachers to get the respect and rights they deserve.
My daughter is an inclusion teacher now and a proud member of ISTA.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)as Pence.
The Second Stone
(2,900 posts)Will Rogers never met him.
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)Don't get me started! Aside from being an utter asshole, a bigot, a sexist among other things. He's just flat out a nasty piece of work.
I'm GLAD he can't run for re-election. Needless to say, it wouldn't matter as I'm voting for Gregg anyway!
anotherproletariat
(1,446 posts)shrike
(3,817 posts)It's of Pence throwing out the first ball at a ball game. The stadium fills with boos, and you can distinctly hear people yelling "Fuck you!" I wasn't surprised. That's how much we hate him.