Episode 103: Defying the Odds
Guests: Nick Marshall - Candidate of State Senate District 45
https://hoosiersfornickmarshall.com/
Welcome to the HoosLeft Podcast, a show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from an unapologetically leftist perspective. My name is Scott Aaron Rogers and I’m recording from Bloomington.
We’re releasing the episode during a week when the Indiana General Assembly is single-mindedly focused on one thing: delivering the 9-0 gerrymandered congressional maps Donald Trump demands. While the Statehouse scrambles to carve real Hoosier communities into safe MAGA fiefdoms, working families across the state are staring down childcare cuts, defunded public schools, rising food insecurity, and collapsing local services.
In other words: the supermajority is not focused on serving the voters who put them there, but serving their mad god-king who demands complete loyalty under threat of violence.
That contrast - between the extremism demanded from above and the reality lived below - is exactly why today’s guest matters.
My guest for this episode is Nick Marshall. Nick isn’t part of the political class; he isn’t from some legacy family and didn’t have a road to the Statehouse paved for him. He is forging his own path - climbing mountains, fording rivers, and blazing new trails. Nick grew up in foster care. He survived heart surgery. He worked farms before dawn, maneuvered through systems that wanted to write him off, and became one of the tiny percentage of foster kids who go on to graduate from college. Today, he lives in Jeffersonville and works as an education advocate - helping families navigate schools, services, and the bureaucratic traps meant to keep people from the getting the help they deserve.
And while legislators in Indianapolis obsess over pleasing the Trump administration, Nick is talking to the people those lawmakers have forgotten - the parents losing access to affordable childcare, the families staring at ballooning grocery bills, the towns losing fire protection because of MAGA Mike Braun’s so-called tax reform.
Today’s episode isn’t so much about Nick’s campaign as it’s about a looking at things from the view of the little people - a bottom-up perspective instead of top-down directives. In the following conversation we’ll get into his childhood in foster care - and the heroic families that raised him. We’ll talk about navigating rural Kentucky as one of the few Black kids in the whole county, to navigating urban Louisville as a small-town farm boy. We’ll look at the unique makeup of Senate District 45, lessons from his first campaign four years ago, and his motivation for pursuing public service. We’ll also hear what voters are telling him -and how often their concerns come down to just wanting someone to listen.
Real quick before we get to the interview, please listen to this plea for financial support. This is an independent media project; I don’t paywall content; I don’t sell out to advertisers; I don’t have billionaire benefactors. Only individuals like you keep this thing going. I refuse to gatekeep valuable information in the middle of a political crisis, even to my financial detriment. So please, if you find value in this work, go to HoosLeft.us and subscribe at the paid level - it’s only $5 a month, or $50 a year, to help me write more, research more, and organize more. Not ready for long-term commitment? You can make a one-time contribution on Cash App or Venmo. Links are in the show notes. Look, it is my sincere hope to turn this thing into a full-time progressive media outlet to pop the bubble of right wing disinformation in the state, but I need your financial support to do so.
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Now, here is my conversations with Nick Marshall.
In the Interview:
1. Origin Story — Foster Care & Defying the Odds — 00:00
Two foster families: rural farm → Louisville caregivers.
Childhood heart surgery and academic support.
Beats foster-care statistics by graduating college.
NFYI: studies have found that just 3-4% of former foster youth obtain a four-year college degree. And between 2 and 6% receive a two-year degree.
Foster Youth of America: Nationwide, only about half of youth raised in foster care end up finishing high school
2.Identity & Cultural Navigation — 08:30
One of few Black kids in a rural white county.
Hancock County, KY is about 1% Black as of 2023
Later seen as “not Black enough” in Louisville.
Learns resilience and emotional intelligence in both spaces.
3. District 45 & Community Ties — 14:30
Move to Jeffersonville to grow family, buy home.
District overview: Clark + part of Floyd.
Ballotpedia: State Senate District 45
Special connection to Claysburg’s historic Black community.
Indiana Historical Society: Early Black Settlements in Clark County
4. Why He’s Running — 17:45
His little brother challenges him to “do more.”
Hitting policy walls in education advocacy.
Wants to give back what foster families gave him.
5. Lessons From Previous Campaign — 20:00
Campaign infrastructure built.
Learned the necessity of fundraising for message reach.
Returning with more organization and focus.
6. Fundraising & Volunteer Philosophy — 22:30
Always opens donor calls by asking how he can help.
Stories of affordability challenges from voters.
Longtime volunteers still engaged; pacing energy.
7. What Voters Want From Him — 29:30
They want someone who shows up.
Cited: Wendy Dant Chesser
Lions Club story: talking to a room of Republicans.
What is Lions Club?
Emphasizes representing everyone, not just Democrats.
8. Kitchen-Table Concerns: Affordability — 37:00
Childcare voucher elimination and fallout.
The74: Indiana Child Care Providers Struggle to Stay Open After State Slashes Rates
Daycare closures, fee hikes, and tough choices for families.
Resurgence of food insecurity — “nice cars” in pantry lines.
National Library of Medicine: Healthy diets cost more than unhealthy ones
NYT: Having a decent vehicle doesn’t mean you’re not struggling.
9. SB1 Fallout & Local Service Collapse — 41:30
SB1 promises savings up front, but comes with added costs on the back end.
Michael Hicks, BSU: Downstream effects of SB1
WDRB: Charlestown mayor concerned about impact of property tax bill on city funding
Jeffersonville–Utica fire territory dissolved.
WHAS 11: J’Ville backs out of fire agreement after budget cuts.
Utica relying on volunteers; emergency times ballooning.
Many effects kick in after 2026 elections for political cover.
10. Accountability & Values — 47:00
Foster parents taught accountability; statehouse avoids it.
Indiana should be run like a community, not a spreadsheet.
Budgeting is moral, not abstract.
Catholic News Agency: Budgets are moral documents.
11. Closing Vision & Committees — 50:30
Plans to join Appropriations, Education, FSSA committees.
Connects committee interests to lived experience.
Gives website and social plugs.
Once again, that was Nick Marshall, candidate for Senate District 45 - a kid raised by foster parents who learned the value of hard work, compassion, and accountability - who’s betting on that same grit to rebuild Indiana from the bottom up.
He doesn’t engage in flower but empty rhetoric - he speaks of real, concrete things in peoples’ lives: crowded food pantries, increasingly unaffordable daycare, diminished emergency services. Lots of politicians can talk, but Nick listens. And if you want to understand what Indiana’s choices at the Statehouse really mean for working Hoosier families - you should listen to him.
But, if you want to listen to a certain leftist curmudgeon bring together a couple of friends to rant about the week news from across Indiana and beyond, then you should tune into HoosLeft This Week, which is now streaming exclusively on our own channels - YouTube, Facebook Live, and of course at HoosLeft.US. Indiana’s most thorough weekend morning news and politics talk show, it’s a lot of fun - if you can call following the news in this timeline fun. My panel and I go “around the corn” to cover all the week’s top Indiana news stories and look at US and international happenings through a Hoosier lens. I hope to see you there in the comments, but if you can’t make it live, the program will be available for download later Sunday afternoon. This week, we’ll be following the ongoing gerrymandering attempt by the State House and look ahead to the Senate’s response next week. Please join us.
Thanks again to Nick for this interview, for his inspiring story, and for the humility he brings to process so-often populated by the self-obsessed- and thank you for listening. One last reminder to please consider contributing to this project with a paid subscription at HoosLeft.US, where you’ll find my entire archive. I rely solely on the generosity of kind patrons like you to make this information available for free to everybody. In addition to the website, you can find me on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads at HoosLeft.US and on Facebook, X, TikTok, Mastodon, and YouTube at HoosLeft. Direct message me at any of those sites with feedback, tips, ideas, and concerns or email me at scott@hoosleft.us. While you’ve got the old email machine out, please forward the show to a friend and have them pass it on, too. Let’s keep building this project - and a truly democratic state - one conversation at a time. Until the next one, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana.
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