Dear Vi: Stay the course

To: State Sen. Vi Simpson

Subject: Campaign Strategy

Sen. Simpson, I know you’ve been busy in the General Assembly, chairing the State Budget Committee and hashing out Indiana’s biennial budget. Not to mention the rigors of running for governor, even at this early stage of the 2004 race.

Don’t go changin’ to try and please us.

We already know that you are a genuine progressive. Even, dare I say it, a liberal. In your 18 years in the General Assembly, you have been a champion for those who needed you the most. You led the way to extending desperately needed Medicaid coverage to disabled Hoosiers (“Practical Progressives,” NUVO, Feb. 1, 2001). You authored the legislation to create the state children’s health care program, Hoosier Healthwise. You have toughened the laws protecting victims of domestic violence and worked to protect the address confidentiality of those victims.

Please don’t run away from those accomplishments. They can win you the election.

I am certain that there are plenty of self-appointed experts already advising you to move to the political center. Those same people were around when our friend Rep. Julia Carson ran for Congress the first time in 1996. The word among many political insiders was that a confirmed progressive like then-Trustee Carson (her job was to give welfare to poor people, for goodness sakes!) couldn’t win. In the next three elections, as she built a solidly liberal voting record, the “out of touch with the district” label continued to circulate among the political and media cognoscenti.

But we still call her congresswoman, don’t we?

The lesson from the experience of Rep. Carson and Rep. Andy Jacobs before her — who I notice has endorsed your candidacy — is that voters like a candidate whose positions are based on genuine beliefs rather than the latest polls. More often than political consultants would have you think, the high road is also the path to victory.

I know that Rep. Carson — and Rep. Peter Visclosky, another successful Hoosier progressive politician — represents urban districts. As a candidate for governor, you have to win in the rural areas, too. For some advice on that score, I tracked down Jim Jontz for you.

“Nothing in the water”

You remember Jim, don’t you?

Jontz was a member of the Indiana General Assembly from 1975 to 1986, then elected to Congress for three terms. From a home base of Monticello, Ind., Jontz was a true liberal representing an area that most of us would regard as conservative territory.

Jontz rejects the notion that his elections were an Indiana anomaly. He points out that he and Phil Sharp and Frank McCloskey were progressive congressmen from the same era, all representing non-urban districts. And there were few U.S. senators more liberal than Indiana’s own Birch Bayh.

“It’s true that Indiana votes Republican in presidential elections. But Indiana has elected liberals before and will again. There’s nothing in the water preventing Indiana from electing a liberal,” Jontz says, who attributes his 1992 defeat more to the Ross Perot-inspired anti-incumbent movement than to a rejection of his progressive voting record.

Jontz is still fighting the good fight, by the way, now working for the Americans for Democratic Action, the unapologetically liberal political organization co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. The ADA sponsored a national survey last fall that offers some clues about how a progressive candidate like you can run a strong campaign.

The good news from the ADA poll is that your natural issues resonate with voters. Eighty-five percent of voters would support a candidate who favored making health care coverage available to all persons. Fifty-nine percent of the voters strongly agree that they want to see a Democrat Party that fights for working people. A solid majority wants to raise the minimum wage, strengthen environmental laws, repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and limit corporate influence over government policies.

The disturbing news from the poll is that the what-party-are-they-really Democrats (see Bayh, Evan) have eroded the public’s perception that the Democrats are the party that represents working people. By a 72-26 margin, Americans believe both parties are “too close to the big corporations and the very wealthy.” Over half say the Democrats don’t do a good enough job making sure corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and don’t do enough to insure access to health care and prescription drugs.

Given your stellar record on those issues, you can confront that perception head-on. “The ADA poll shows that voters want candidates who speak more strongly,” Jontz says. “There is no reason to believe Indiana voters are any different.”

It is true that everyone wants lower taxes and cheaper groceries. But everyone is also an environmentalist when the toxic waste dump is uncovered down the block. And everyone is a health care advocate when Aunt Millie can’t afford her blood pressure medicine. Your job is to make abstract notions of social justice come to life for the voters.

Show us how your principles matter to all of us, because they do.