During Progressive Indiana Network’s Portraits and Perspectives event, I sat down with Lilliana Young, candidate for Indiana State House District 61 in Bloomington. From the opening moments, Lilliana made her frustration clear: she’s exhausted with the status quo and believes Indiana is fundamentally broken.
When I asked about her inspiration for running, Lilliana argued that the solution isn’t just voting out Republicans—we also need to put what she calls “everyman type of people” into the legislature. As a lifelong service worker, she stands in stark contrast to most legislators who are business owners or lawyers with money to fall back on. They’re never really affected by what happens in the state, but Lilliana is affected by everything. She genuinely believes she knows better than anybody in the statehouse how to approach problems affecting the majority of Hoosiers.
We discussed personal struggles, and Lilliana’s answer cut to the heart of working-class life: no matter what she or her wife do, no matter how many raises they get or extra shifts they pick up, there’s just not enough money. Wages are fundamentally too low. Her very first legislative priority is pushing for a $20 an hour minimum wage—and even that might not be sufficient. Research shows a single person working 40 hours a week needs to make over $22 an hour just to afford an apartment, not even a house. The current $7.25 minimum wage is criminal, and because that floor is so low, businesses get away with paying $10, $11, or $12 an hour and calling it “competitive” when anyone living in Indiana who works for a living knows you need at least $18 an hour to pay your bills.
Interestingly, the part-time nature of the Indiana legislature actually works in Lilliana’s favor. The state representative position pays more than anything she’s made in the 10 years she’s lived in Indiana. She’s learned to get by on $15,000-$17,000 a year, so the roughly $30,000 legislative salary would be an improvement.
When I asked about fictional characters, Lilliana chose Kira from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—a woman surrounded by people who want to impose a lot of crap on her that she’s very over with before it even starts. Lilliana relates to that more strongly than she can put into words. She’s done putting up with BS, whether it’s nonsense at her day job or online transphobia or any number of other things.
Our conversation turned to interpersonal relationships in the statehouse, and Lilliana’s answer was unequivocal: she doesn’t believe Republicans would be her colleagues. It’s one of the big things she puts forward in her campaign rhetoric. She doesn’t believe we’re in a place anymore where we can actually work with Republicans in any reasonable way to benefit the state. She’s watched for 30 years—whether in Texas where she’s originally from or in Indiana—and seen the same pattern of Democratic compromise leading nowhere.
When I asked about legacy, Lilliana’s answer was powerful in its simplicity: she wants to be remembered for never letting anything or anyone stop her from doing the right thing. The right thing isn’t always popular—there have been many points in our history where the right thing was unpopular for a long time. But there were people even in those eras who recognized what was right and fought for it anyway, even when it wasn’t popular yet. Lilliana wants to be that person.
This wasn’t a conversation about political strategy or coalition building. It was a straightforward discussion with someone who has lived the struggle, understands exactly what working people need, and refuses to pretend that compromise with those blocking progress is a viable path forward. Lilliana Young is running to bring working-class representation and unapologetic advocacy to a statehouse that desperately needs both.
Check out Lilliana’s interviews with Derrick Holder and Brianna Newhart, and all of our interviews with other candidates from this event at progressiveindiana.net.
