(Music) President Joe Biden withdraws from the race.

Another disciplinary complaint against Attorney General Todd Rokita.

Plus, the fiscal close out and more from the television studios at WFYI.

It's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending July 26th, 2024.

Indiana Week in Review is made possible by the supporters of Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

This week, Indiana was one of the first stops for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

As Jill Sheridan reports, the vice president spoke to a crowd of thousands of black women at the Indiana Convention Center.

Harris's speech at the Zeta Phi Beta sorority, National Ballet, was planned before President Biden's announcement that he would not seek reelection at the sold out event.

Harris told the crowd that voters will have a choice between two different visions of America, one focused on the future and the other focused on the past.

And with your support, I am fighting for our nation's future.

Much of the speech focused on accomplishments of the Biden administration, including a cap on insulin prices, school debt forgiveness and Medicaid expansion.

The sorority said while they don't endorse political candidates, they do support voter education and getting people to the polls.

Can Kamala Harris win the presidential race?

It's the first question for our Indiana Weekend Review panel.

Democrat Lindsay Haake.

Republican Mike O'Brien.

Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief of the Indiana Chronicle.

I'm Indiana Public Broadcasting Statehouse bureau chief Brandon Smith.

Lindsay Haake, can Harris win?

100% It's brought summer, and I just loved the statement she made when she was speaking here in Indianapolis that we aren't playing around.

And I'm ready for it.

And so is Indiana.

What does this do to down ballot races in Indiana and elsewhere?

I don't think it does anything that we've seen yet in down ballot race.

I thought the polling was really interesting to me.

I think if you think about this five week period has been pretty extraordinary.

obviously, breaking news.

It's been an extraordinary five weeks.

But part of the thinking about it, I thought, you know, like, I remember seeing two candidates from different parties have better weeks or come out of something better, like Donald Trump or worse than Joe Biden for things that only had to do with themselves, not because the other one was impacting, you know, the debate, assassination attempt, resignation.

you know, Trump's speech at the convention could have been so much better.

You know, he kind of gave.

Oh, yeah, he tossed the speech.

You got to kind of get both speeches.

Well, there's the old one and.

The new one.

But there's a conversation happening, too, about how the a lot of the feeling at the convention from people who've been going to a lot of Republican conventions in their lives, was they've never seen the party more confident.

And energized and.

Energized.

And in four days, that kind of flips on its head.

Well, yeah.

Think so, I think I think the performance, not the Trump, did a bad job.

I just think he could have done he could have done better and kind of pivoted from use that assassination attempt, like he kind of talked about where he was going to pivot and from a style standpoint, but he really couldn't help himself.

And bringing up the election and brand name calling, all that stuff, the old stuff.

So I think there was more upside to it found there.

What I said along, what I've been saying for a while, is that I always thought the first party that got rid of their octogenarian candidate was going to be the one that was the clear winner.

It's not clear yet.

The New York Times had a whole yesterday out yesterday.

And it's quick.

Right.

But these are two.

In a week.

These are both.

They're not they're not two unknown people.

Yeah.

Not entirely you know.

So you would have thought there would be a big a jump for Harris.

She closed it by a point based on their last poll.

When?

When it was Biden, you know, and then the style questions like ability to unify was tied strong leader Trump easily wasn't that capable of being president.

Harris clearly won that.

She was.

Weak leader.

Careful.

It was just it was it was just like.

It's like voters are figuring it out.

And it wasn't what I kind of thought.

I thought what I think I believed before, which was there was a big population of people that once one of these guys out, they were just like, I'm in for the other guy, right?

It's just because it's been like so stuck for so long.

And we're starting to see.

I mean, you talk about an excitement gap because clearly that existed before Biden left the race.

I think I saw the staff that, you know, through Actblue, which is the Democrats, donation portal, they raised something like 80 something million dollars in the first 48 hours, and something like 60% of those donations were first time donations to the campaign.

Does that reflect, perhaps more than anything else at the stage, why this needed to happen?

For sure, absolutely.

I think there had been an enthusiasm energy gap, not just for several weeks, but arguably for a couple of years.

and it's just because of the way the race is played out, because of the president's age, because of, sort of the baked in memes or storylines that we knew were coming.

And sure enough, the calendar turned and there we were.

So I think a lot of people were sort of thinking, well, I'm just going to sit this one out, literally or figuratively.

And I think this has brought an incredible infusion of energy.

We saw it.

You're right about the money.

I saw the number I heard for her campaign was $100 million.

And then if you look at, super PAC dollars and so forth, another 150.

So we're talking about a quarter of $1 billion that came in and.

Less than a week.

48 hours, essentially at that point.

So, there'll be money to to spread the message, I think, even though to Mike's point, they are both known candidates, I don't know that Kamala Harris is really known such a fine.

She's known through a she's known through a filter.

She's known through the meme.

She's known through the the 15 second little funnies on Instagram or on on Twitter.

Or even at the most basic level, people know the name Kamala Harris.

They know maybe that she's the vice president.

That's part of that.

And that's why the next I think, you know, 7 to 10 days are crucial.

As she reintroduces herself.

I think she gets an entire convention.

And that's the thing that will be delicate.

I mean, her first speeches seem to have hit the mark.

you know, she's being portrayed as the die candidate.

So I think, David Axelrod, who knows a thing or two about winning presidential races with, minority candidates, has said, you know, don't play up the historic nature of this campaign.

Play up the fact that here you have somebody who's energetic, qualified, is has been vetted.

and.

They also are rolling out the prosecutor versus the.

Which is which, you know, that's certainly an effective component.

Are you surprised how quickly she basically cemented her candidate, her place as the presumptive nominee?

Yeah, I mean, they definitely turned on a dime.

obviously anyone can still I mean, any other Democrat who wants to challenge her, can they?

They need 300 delegates to file to run in the convention.

But, you know, everyone has lined up behind Kamala.

I think there was I mean, some practicality.

I'm not saying they don't support Kamala in general, but I also think a lot of Democrat Party leaders were thinking practically, which is we're 100 days out like we can't really afford to have a fight right now.

Like somebody 100 days.

Okay.

Yeah.

I wasn't going to move off this topic because as someone who knows something about running a 100 day campaign for office, obviously state versus a federal or, you know, state versus nationwide is a little different in terms of.

But is that is this achievable for the very.

Important reason that it's different?

We ran when Holcomb ran in 16.

It was it was hit and miss down the stretch.

But then by the end it was it's clearly going for Trump in Indiana anyway.

and so you you fall into that.

And we knew that if Trump won one by 20, everybody's in like no Democrats or anyone in 16.

So yeah.

And then you kind of hear layer in from there.

Todd Young probably wins by 12 or 15.

Holcomb maybe, you know, maybe 9 or 10 if Trump's at 15.

Todd you were in you know, we the Holcomb campaign or okay, now we're in territory we don't want to be in.

But all of that was true because of the national environment that's set by this race.

Like they're not running underneath anything.

Yeah, right.

like like we were in 100 days, you know, for $1 billion, you can do anything.

You can do anything.

That comes to your original question, which was, does this help Indiana down ballot races?

And the answer is yes.

For those reasons.

Again, I'm sure hundred and one days I might.

Yeah.

And it's it's we've had great support and great enthusiasm just over on the Destiny Wells camp.

not speaking for any other candidates, but it's been it's been invigorating.

I haven't seen energy like this.

Well, it's just solidified to so fast because Democrats came out of that debate, panicked.

And then we had a great convention.

Yeah.

And they went, we have no time.

Where your.

Own members left to.

Wonder, wonder.

For Trump speech, I might remind.

We can't we can't squander 3 or 4 weeks.

Try to figure out is it Gavin Newsom and who's that guy?

And Democrats are going, who are these people?

Now you're fighting at a convention till three in the morning.

All right, Tom, it's time now for viewer feedback.

Each week we pose an unscientific online poll question.

This week's question is who will win the presidential race?

A Democrat, Kamala Harris, beat Republican Donald Trump or C someone else.

Last week's question who will win the race for Indiana governor?

35% of you say Republican Mike Braun, 63% say Democrat Jonathan McCormick, and 2% for Libertarian Donald Rainwater.

If you want to take part in the poll, go to wfyi Mortgage Wire and look for the poll.

An Indianapolis lawyers filed another complaint against Attorney General Todd Rokita with the state's attorney disciplinary commission.

The complaint alleges Rokita violated the state's rules of professional conduct for attorneys.

Earlier this year, Rokita held a press conference asserting that terminated pregnancy reports are public records that should be disclosed.

That came after the department of Health began withholding the reports out of privacy concerns, and the state's public access counselor backed up the agency's decision to do so.

Rokita, whose clients as attorney general include the Department of Health and the public access counselor, accused them of collusion.

Attorney William Gross disciplinary complaint says Rokita press conference violated multiple rules governing attorney conduct that includes a rule prohibiting lawyers from giving legal evaluations that could materially and adversely affect their clients without their clients consent.

Growth has filed two of the three disciplinary complaints against Rokita during the attorney general's three plus years in office.

Mike O'Brien, do most Hoosiers care, or even to the point?

No, about these complaints?

Most Hoosiers.

Don't care.

Even know about the race for attorney general.

Generally, it's down ballot enough to pay attention to them.

Do they even know.

That maybe Lindsay can work some magic and take up a room?

I think Todd Rokita is doing that because.

I think I do think if voters are paying attention, I think you layer on any series of negative things that look alike, it starts to create a narrative and a, you know, in a trend.

But I think on I think on this, I think on this issue, I said it a few weeks ago.

So I want to be consistent.

He's also not wrong that he needs that.

There needs to be some record.

You can hate this law and I get it.

But he's also not wrong that these records are the only thing that make it enforceable for.

Them right now.

Also, if they were public before, why.

Are they not?

It's not about the records.

That's the problem for the whole.

Again, it was the basis of the complaint is about the mere fact that he invited litigation to his own client.

I mean, that solutely.

I'm I'm looking more through a political lens.

I'm not going to go argue the, you know, the merit of the merits.

Of course.

I asked Destinee Wells this question a week or two ago, which was in 2022.

I talked to, a staffer of, Diego Morales campaign on on election night who destiny, of course, ran against unsuccessfully in 22.

And he's told me, kind of unprompted, we were really worried about all the negative stuff about Diego Morales in that campaign.

And then we got outside of I-4 65, and no one knew about any of it.

Why are we not going to have that same?

Why are Democrats not going to have that same problem in 2024?

Because you have Todd Rokita, who's so chasing after national media all the time and has been for his entire.

Well, how long has he been a part of the elite.

Now is one of the, elected class, if you will.

That's just his that's what he does.

He chases after the national media picture on 2022, and we were on that race.

He was on Fox News left and right, taking that at health care providers in this state.

so I don't think he's, I don't think he's short of any critics across these 92 counties of Indiana.

He's certainly a more, much more high profile because that's the way he wants it to be, in part.

but we are also in another campaign cycle.

One, yes, way more people are paying attention.

But there's also way more to pay attention to.

Will these sorts of cans, something like this break through to the general electorate?

I mean, I think right now in the where we're at in the process, probably not, because all we have is one guy saying, I filed a complaint.

It's all private until the Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission would actually substantiate and filed their own complaint.

And so unless that happened, I'd like if that would happen, I would say maybe it would cause a bit of a problem.

About how you do that.

And I'll tell you, you layer them in and start running a campaign and put money behind it.

The question is whether or not anyone's going to support the Destiny Wells campaign to be able to do that.

We've talked about this a lot on the show for a number of different, offices, and you've particularly mentioned this a lot, which is increasingly politicians run a campaign based on I fought this, I fought that doesn't mean it doesn't matter if you did anything as long as you fought for something.

That's what matters to a lot of voters in here.

Short of, like, being disbarred by the Supreme Court, which I don't see happening.

Does it matter if even, you know, to Niki's point, let's say that this stuff is substantiated and there is more of a process or even he gets sanctioned again, does that matter?

As long as he can go tell people I fought against.

Not to his base, his hardcore voters, those individuals, no matter what, who think that the elites are always trying to get their guy and that he's fighting the establishment and the establishment, the deep state, state, the state, deep state, deep state, the state, deep state, is sick of that is out to get him.

Not a trademark that I think I want the t shirt rights on that that that just makes them say he was right all along.

I'm.

I was 99% before.

Now I'm 100% behind him or 110% where it does, I think, come into play and Mike mentioned this is for those.

Are there any independent voters left?

I'm don't know if there are any independent voters, third.

Party candidate this year on the presidential as well.

For those who don't follow it as closely or don't have those kinds of rabid allegiances when they hear there's a pattern of alleged misconduct, you know, this is the third complaint, etc., etc., that might give someone pause.

It's not going to give his true heartache.

It's going to give heartburn to his his true supporters.

But any candidate, if you're given the option with sort of the middle ground, do you want complaints, disciplinary complaints against you or not?

I think the answer would be I don't want them.

All right.

Indiana closed the books on its fiscal year with more than $2.5 billion in reserve this week, the lowest amount since the pandemic.

That's after the state spent more than a quarter of $1 billion to cover a shortfall in Medicaid funding.

Indiana ended its fiscal year with a $421 million surplus, by far the lowest margin in the post pandemic era, an era when up to now the state had been wash in federal pandemic funding.

Still, Indiana was easily able to cover the fiscal years.

Medicaid funding shortfall.

State Comptroller Elise Nieshalla says that's a credit to fiscal conservatism.

That stands as a bright light, especially during this.

Time where we are facing a national debt crisis.

The state's major tax sources grew over the last fiscal year by less than 1%, a potential warning sign for the next state budget.

But Office of Management and Budget Director Chris Johnston says that's why robust budget reserves are important.

Give us the the confidence that we'll still be able to.

Deliver.

On the services.

Lawmakers will write a new state budget next year.

Jon Schwantes does this feel like a fiscal close out that's starting to get back to normal?

what's normal?

You know, it's, it does.

I mean, if you look at a chart, if you're in close outs and you go back ten, 15 years, this is more normal.

Now, a lot of the charts, if you adjusted for inflation, maybe, it's it's not as healthy as we saw maybe in the mid teens.

in 2014, 15, 16. but.

Certainly not the last couple.

Certainly not the last few which, which threw everything into a tizzy.

I often joke, and I don't think it's a joke that that budget architects in some ways prefer this kind of climate where they can talk about the need to be good fiscal stewards and to have fiscal austerity than the notion that you have, you know, an extra few hundred million dollars just sitting around, as has been the case in the past, because then the expectations are high and everybody thinks this is my chance to get while to get good.

And the path to their door, you know, goes all the way down to the state House and out the door.

This when you set the tone.

And I'm not saying this was I mean the numbers of the numbers, but the spin certainly can be.

We have to be very shrewd about how we spend dollars.

And we're already hearing that messaging.

And, it makes it easier to say no, makes it easier to, to, lower expectations so that, you know, there can be some victories at the end and there can be historic, you know, we got to have what's a session, a budget session without the ability to say we had historic increases in, x, Y, or Z.

So I've got to preserve that.

Mike.

Exactly.

To that point, are folks like you got skipped on this one?

You'll get the he'll get stuck on that.

Are you have something to say?

Oh, I just wanted to point out that it does throw some cold water on the tax reform discussions.

I think lawmakers for the last couple of years were like, you know, we we did two years in a row of tax, automatic taxpayer refunds.

And we were seeing these huge, you know, sums of money sitting there.

And now it's sort of coming back down to reality and they'll have to really think through, you know, whether we can be further cutting income taxes and things like that.

Yeah.

If you're the legislative budget, architects, Ryan Mishler in the Senate, Jeff Thompson in the House, are you looking at these numbers?

And obviously they're not great news because you'd like to have more money than last.

But for a budget writer to to Jon's point is this, like, okay, this is pretty much right where I want to be to be able to say no to a whole bunch.

Well, there's going to be something down my door.

All right.

From the strategic standpoint.

Sure.

I think a couple of things, I think there's different sources of revenue.

The last several budgets because of Covid, a lot of federal money, that really part of that and we saw that and handling has been hanging the surplus around my neck for like ten years.

so I want a little credit that's being spent down and it's being spent on social services of all things, for Republicans.

But, She also didn't want to give back 325. oh.

She's still committed.

So she probably would say, had you not done that, there still would be a lot more money in the.

I think I think what we've seen, I think what concerns the budget writers right now the most is that you have a leveling off of surplus revenue, at a time when you have if you miss a little on some of the big programs like we've seen in Medicaid, you miss a little there, you miss a percent or two, and now it's $500 billion.

Your surplus is gone entirely, which is the reason which is back to the argument of why you have it to begin with.

And for every time a group wants a want something funded, they point at the surplus.

And this is why it exists.

It exists because because that budget can miss by a little.

And you got and you've got nowhere to go if you don't have a surplus.

So kind of that point, particularly now we've seen we found out last year we have a medicaid mis on the forecast of about $1 billion.

And we've now seen and we've now seen that shortfall.

Basically half of it paid off through Medicaid reserves and general fund reserves.

So they could do that and still have a comfortable surplus, but they're still half of that shortfall to come.

And is that why we're seeing benefits being curbed?

You're going to have so much more at stake in the next coming months.

It's hard for me to even believe that this press conference was given with a straight face.

Given these, frankly, an unfolding human crisis that I think is happening with FSA and our budgetary, priorities over at the state House.

And frankly, I don't see how this happens without an expansion of revenue somewhere else.

There's got to be an option.

and frankly, I mean, we're sitting here without any type of, of marijuana, revenue at all.

And that's been a conversation that starts for a long time.

Advocates have been pushing for this.

Have.

Mr.. Yeah.

And everyone.

So, their answers to this problem, but they're it's not appropriate to call it a miss when you have have have made an error in a forecast by $1 billion for a program.

That's by definition, it is.

It is it has.

They missed the been predicted wrong.

Tell these families who are dealing with these changes on the the the.

Marijuana has come in and help is on the way.

Visit.

That'd be that'd be great Justin.

Be awesome.

And he'll be so excited by that.

But I think you've got bigger, bigger problems coming with the with the state House.

And if there's a Ryan Mitchell or Whisperer out there, I'll hire her.

High childcare costs and low availability are strongly linked to women's workforce participation, according to new research from Ball State University.

Indiana Public Broadcasting's Maria Cunningham reports how childcare can be a barrier to entry for Hoosier women looking for work.

Michael Hicks is an economist at Ball State who worked on the study.

He says that for some families, the financial incentive to pay for childcare so that both parents can work can be unrealistic.

In 2022, the median hourly wage for a woman in Indiana was $21.53.

An average worker at that rate could earn less than $4 an hour after taxes and childcare costs.

That same year, the national median hourly pay for childcare workers was $13.32.

The problem is, on both sides of this is that we're not seeing high enough wages, and so we know that the thing that would improve wages, for for both women in the workforce here in Indiana and childcare providers is better education.

Hicks says that having more workers with a degree could help fill childcare jobs and increase the availability of childcare.

Niki Kelly Does the state need to be more aggressive in expanding access to childcare?

Yeah, they could, and one way they could do it is and there was another report that came out this week.

That or sorry, was a couple weeks ago was that we have a lot of people who are eligible for ccdf childcare assistance who just aren't getting it.

They don't know about it.

And also, Indiana has really low eligibility guidelines compared to what they're allowed to offer, you know, federally.

So they could expand those and that would reach more families.

That's one way to help these women struggling to get into the workforce.

This also is a budget problem for Indiana, because some of the women just spending money is not the answer, but money can be part of the answer.

And we just talked about how we're going into a budget cycle where the dollar is going to be a lot tighter.

You've got a whole issue to with with a care desert, being with with the providers themselves.

And so, you know, these are the opportunities to discuss, even what you might think would be a kind of old conversation, which is a minimum wage conversation.

You don't have a fair wage, being offered to many of these workers.

And so they seek help elsewhere, and people then have this smirk on their face with, oh, well, sorry, it's not my problem with the state House.

And yes, it is your problem.

It is all of our problems.

We are accountable to all of us.

And when people can't get care for their kids and go to try to try to keep a job doing that, it's impossible.

I mean, as we talk about workforce development being the watchword of building an economy that lasts well into the future, this seems like a pretty fundamental, huge obstacle in the way of doing that.

Right?

Well, I think when you see these constituencies that aren't traditional, just social service constituencies looking at this like, like workforce, the chamber, you know, others that more traditionally at least aligned with Republicans that are in control.

The state House legislators sort of talked about this last three during the last year.

It didn't really go anywhere during this last short session was.

Except.

Short session.

They did some some stuff.

There's some regulation there.

They're starting to focus on it from a, you know, from money standpoint.

It's like, you know, okay, well we're going to have this is a microcosm of the legislative session.

It's like okay, there's about $60 billion in assets and about $40 billion in money.

So who's who's willing to step down.

You know.

To the provider side, it reminds me a little of the teacher paint conversation, which lawmakers did try to address with a bunch more money to meet these new guidelines that the governor's commission set forth.

Well, they still have to keep that up and now find another pot of money to also not the childcare part of their.

Policies in this.

And I think this is becoming more and more priorities will becoming more and more of a yeah, obvious problem.

All right.

Well that is Indiana Week in Review for this week.

Our panel is Democrat Lindsay Haake.

Republican Mike O'Brien, Jon Schwantes of Indiana Lawmakers and Niki Kelly of the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

You can find Indiana Week In Reviews podcast and episodes of wfyi.org/IWIR or on the PBS app.

I'm Brandon Smith of Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Join us next time because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the panelist.

Indiana Week in Review was a wfyi production in.

Association with Indiana's public broadcasting stations.