How Democrats Lost Indiana
Em Smith
Indiana hates the Republicans.
The average electric bill in Indiana has skyrocketed by 18 percent since last year. An estimated 100,000 people are going to lose Medicaid coverage under new Republican work requirements. The minimum wage is still criminally low at $7.25.
The two richest people in Indiana have a combined net worth of more than $16 billion, yet the Republicans have used their supermajorities to block taxes on the rich. They have made it illegal for cities to pass tenant protections and passed an abortion ban that almost everybody hates.
So it’s easy to see why Governor Mike Braun is the third most hated governor in the country.
But people hate the Democrats even more. The latest approval rating for the Indiana Democratic Party is 25 percent.
In their 2026 platform, the Indiana Democrats don’t call for taxes on the rich. They don’t call for a $15 minimum wage, much less the $30 wage that’s needed. They don’t call for an expansion of public housing. They don’t call for free childcare, free mass transit, or free healthcare for all. Instead they tell us to “celebrate the Affordable Care Act.”
Indiana has two Democrats in Congress: Frank Mrvan and Andre Carson.
Mrvan has taken nearly $400,000 from AIPAC and the Zionist lobby. He’s backed by weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon/RTX, and Boeing. He’s also backed by for-profit health insurance companies like UnitedHealth.
Carson poses as a “progressive”, but he’s funded by all the same corporations: Lockheed Martin, Walmart, Eli Lilly, etc. He’s backed by union-busting law firm Barnes & Thornburg, which helped break a union at Lowe’s. Carson has taken nearly $70,000 from the Zionist lobby.
Mrvan (from northwest Indiana) has voted for every military budget since taking office, including $900 billion last year to fund Trump’s wars. He voted to break the railroad workers’ strike in 2022 and won’t even pay lip service to Medicare for All.
Carson (the “progressive” from Indianapolis) also voted to break the rail strike. That same year, he voted for $858 billion in military spending, $45 billion more than Joe Biden requested. Carson made a show of voting “no” on Israel’s Iron Dome, but this was only under pressure from the anti-genocide movement and his own Muslim community. He had no trouble endorsing Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, the people most responsible for the genocide in Gaza. Carson and Mrvan both voted to increase ICE funding under Joe Biden, to nearly $8.4 billion (but now they’re “anti-ICE!”)
Working people may hate the Republicans, but they also know that Democrats are full of shit.
Democrats held the Indiana Governor’s office from 1989-2004. They held the state house from 1997-2004, and again from 2007-2010. Even today, the Democrats have supermajorities on city councils in the biggest cities: Indianapolis, Evansville, South Bend and Hammond.
They’ve done less than nothing with that power. Even with all the restrictions that Republicans have put in place, Democrats in these cities could pass key protections like the right to a lawyer for tenants facing eviction. They could build free healthcare clinics or expand public housing. They haven’t done it.
But as always, there’s money for the police. Since 2020, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett and the Democrats on City Council have increased the city’s police budget more than 36 percent, from $373 million to $509 million. That’s nearly a third of the entire city budget.
If that $136 million went towards healthcare, we could build dozens of free healthcare clinics serving more than 120,000 patients. If it went towards housing, it could double the budget of the Indianapolis Housing Authority and create 5,000 new units of affordable public housing over the next 10 years.
Instead, Democrats have carried out policies on behalf of big corporations, like the expansion of AI data centers. Just last month, Democrats forged ahead with the creation of a massive data center in southwest Indianapolis, despite huge protests by the community, including a petition of more than 1,300 people against it. Sabey Corporation, the company backing the project, is expected to receive a 50% property tax break from the city, a corporate giveaway of $10 million per year. Sabey Corporation also makes money leasing property to ICE.
The Indiana Democrats are a dumpster fire, and they’re not getting better. Earlier this year, the Marion County Democratic Party blocked over 100 progressives and socialists from running in internal party elections. State Democrats are currently on track to choose nepo-baby Beau Bayh, who stands for nothing, to be their candidate for Secretary of State.
Union members and socialists across the state have responded by launching the Socialist Party of Indiana.
Workers everywhere are fed up with both capitalist parties. After decades of failures by the Democratic and Republican Parties, working-class Hoosiers deserve a party that will fight them.