On August 22nd, Progressive Indiana Network served as official podcast partners at the Indiana Democratic Party’s 145th annual IDEA Conference at the historic French Lick Resort Hotel. HoosLeft host Scott Aaron Rogers anchored the coverage with Hold 'em Accountable’s Derrick Holder serving as his sidekick. The two interviewed eighteen candidates, party officials, and activists over nearly three hours live on the veranda. Here are each of the interviews with a brief summary and relevant links.
Byron Holland for State Senate District 43
Holland, a sixth-generation farmer from Austin running for the open State Senate 43 seat covering Scott, Jefferson, Switzerland, Ohio, Dearborn, and part of Jennings counties, opened by describing the district as spanning two media markets (Louisville and Cincinnati). He discussed campaigning as a "passion versus profession" while holding down a day job, his service as Purdue Extension Board President and on Purdue's agriculture research council, and the impact of crop insurance gaps following record Ohio River flooding in his district. He detailed rural health care deserts — Dearborn County has no ICU, forcing residents to Florence, Kentucky for critical care — and described a constituent story about a librarian whose school lacks staffing to safely supervise students with special needs during fire drills, which he tied to the Republican supermajority’s cuts to public education. On Flock cameras, he said sheriffs in his district see genuine benefits but argued the lack of transparency around data retention and funding sources undermines public trust. He closed by promoting a public-health and overdose-awareness town hall in Scottsburg tied to International Overdose Awareness Month.
Website: https://www.hollandforhoosiers.com/
State Representative Wendy Dant Chesser — House District 71
The Jeffersonville/Clarksville-area State Representative, seeking reelection, said affordability dominates every doorstep conversation — health care costs, lost benefits, child-care voucher shortfalls, and general price increases. She discussed the Charlestown data center controversy at length, using a "water spigot" metaphor to describe how 2018 legislation opened the incentive floodgates for data centers with insufficient local control, and said many communities are now passing moratoriums to buy time to rewrite zoning codes. She also touched on the long waitlist for child-care vouchers and the economic case for funding them as workforce investment rather than pure cost.
Website: https://www.wendydantchesser.com/
Kirsten Root for State Senate District 21 & Sharon Wight for State House District 81
Wight, based in Fort Wayne, and Root, running for State Senate District 21 in the Kokomo/Tipton/Westfield area, discussed utility cost pressures in their respective districts, including a Huntertown well running dry and producing degraded water quality. They discussed NIPSCO’s poor storm response and a resulting class-action lawsuit following the recent derecho, the collapse of the December 2025 redistricting effort at the hands of a handful of principled state senators — and the resulting far-right primary challengers who knocked them off — including Root’s opponent Tracy Powell. Both discussed frustration with the state’s four-billion-dollar surplus sitting alongside a two-million-dollar disaster relief fund, doubts that a gutted FEMA can deliver promised relief, and ongoing hands-on flood recovery work — Root noted that a Carmel quarry filling with water meant lost income for the quarry itself, but that the same event had inadvertently spared downstream communities like Martinsville from worse flooding. Finally, we talked about the importance of candidates helping with relief efforts without making it about themselves.
Kirsten Root: https://www.rootforindiana.org/
Sharon Wight: https://www.electsharonwight.com/
Jessica Bailey for State Comptroller
Bailey, the sitting Porter County Clerk running for State Comptroller, walked through the office’s actual functions: paying state employees and vendors, managing deferred compensation, and running the state’s transparency portal. She contrasted the comptroller’s seat on the three-member Board of Finance with local-level budget oversight, describing Board of Finance meetings as three minutes long with no public questioning, in contrast to the scrutiny local officials face. She said the office could act as a “soapbox” flagging IEDC-related fund disbursements even without approval authority over the underlying contracts, and argued that one-party supermajority control across state offices removes the natural friction that produces accountability. She closed by addressing election security concerns, explaining that Indiana’s 92 counties run elections on incompatible, non-networked systems, making the kind of coordinated hacking some on the left and right fear practically infeasible.
Website: https://baileyforindiana.com/
Mary Allen for Indiana’s 8th Congressional District & Tiffanie Arthur for State House District 63
Allen, the Democratic nominee for Indiana’s 8th Congressional District facing incumbent Mark Messmer, and Arthur, running for House District 63 and serving as Daviess County Democratic chair, discussed Messmer’s use of official franking funds for campaign mailers, an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars. They spent significant time on the Mid-States Corridor, a proposed $3 billion-plus highway project through Amish, projected to save roughly seven minutes of drive time while primarily benefiting Governor Mike Braun’s own logistics company. Both noted that while the state cancelled over 300 other road projects for lack of funding, this project is moving forward and will shift maintenance costs onto already-strapped local governments under Senate Enrolled Act 1. They closed by describing cross-county collaboration among the 21-county district’s down-ballot candidates.
Mary Allen: https://www.maryallenforcongress.com/
Tiffanie Arthur: https://www.tiffaniearthur.com/
Indiana’s 9th Congressional District Democratic Party Chair Adam Dickey
Dickey discussed candidate recruitment strategy and the difficulty of recruiting in districts with historically low Democratic vote shares. Scott raised Democrats’ overperformance in recent special elections and cited Virginia and New Jersey’s 2025 legislative results, along with his own estimate that Indiana Democrats are running 12–13 points ahead of 2024, as well as the fact that Democrats are fielding candidates in 24 of 25 state Senate seats and roughly 97 House seats this cycle — numbers Rogers said haven’t been matched in fifty years; Dickey confirmed both points. Dickey himself highlighted a Floyd County commissioner race involving a $45 million discrepancy between the county auditor’s and treasurer’s offices, and noted his former Republican counterpart in the 9th District is currently serving time following a roughly $3.4 million misappropriation case. He previewed the evening’s Lee H. Hamilton dinner, where Harry Dunn would speak and former State Party Chair Robin Winston would be honored.
Ninth District Democrats: https://www.ninthdistrictdems.com/
IDEA Keynote Speaker — Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn
Harry Dunn discussed the lasting personal toll of January 6th and his deliberate choice to keep speaking publicly about it rather than let revisionist accounts stand unchallenged, framing his stance on that day as a personal litmus test independent of other political disagreements. He discussed the pardons issued to January 6th defendants, his expectation that Trump will eventually pardon himself, and praised special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to shelve charges in a way that preserved the option to refile. He was critical of large donor and special-interest influence in politics generally, said his decision to run for office in Maryland was a calling rather than a choice, and described finding the current moment cathartic despite ongoing frustration that there’s been no real accountability for January 6th. He promoted his Substack, “Standing Our Ground,” and his podcast with Allison Gill.
Harry Dunn on Substack: https://www.standingourground.us/
Cleanup on Aisle 45 Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cleanup-on-aisle-45-with-ag-harry-dunn/id1549502623
Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District Democratic Party Chair Chad Wierzbinski
Wierzbinski discussed the rural-urban dynamic in Indiana’s 3rd District, where Allen County (Fort Wayne) holds roughly 260,000 of the district’s 432,000 residents but Democrats can’t win without turning out the surrounding twelve rural counties. He described growing up in rural Woodburn without a stoplight and using that background to prioritize rural outreach and resources. He said congressional candidate Kelly Thompson has seen a marked shift in reception in small towns compared to a year ago, driven by rising costs and visible Republican disengagement, and cited incumbent Marlin Stutzman’s net worth growing from roughly $1 million to $52 million since first leaving Congress in 2016 as evidence of self-interested leadership rather than substantive engagement. He closed by calling for a “one state strategy” rather than treating county parties as isolated, under-resourced operations.
Third District Democrats: https://www.cd3indems.org/
Nick Marshall for State Senate District 45
Marshall described a run of hands-on constituent casework conducted ahead of the election despite not yet holding office: attending county council meetings, meeting with teachers, and working to resolve a veteran’s stuck $600 property-tax credit that required an unnecessary trip to Marion County. He discussed a 27-year-old fire truck that a local volunteer fire department can’t afford to replace due to funding constraints under Senate Enrolled Act 1, and a youth detention center unable to secure proper funding for kids in its care. Derrick then asked Marshall’s thoughts on Santa Claus — a pointed reference to Marshall’s opponent, Chris Garten, having posted AI-generated images of himself beating up Saint Nick on Christmas Day 2025. Marshall recalled the incident, noting he’d had to alert his county and district chairs when it happened, and used his answer to pivot to a sincere point about community and showing up for people who fall through the cracks, tying it to a food-drive appearance he’d made in Charlestown. He closed by directing people to volunteer for postcard campaigns and donate toward postage.
Website: https://hoosiersfornickmarshall.com/
Edward Bowen for Jackson County Council
Bowen, a 30-year defense-industry software engineer and veteran, centered his interview on Flock camera surveillance, describing it as a Fourth Amendment violation despite arguments that public roads carry no expectation of privacy. He cited a specific case of seven Flock cameras recently installed in a predominantly Latino mobile home park in Seymour and said he’s preparing a Freedom of Information Act request to the Seymour Police Department about it. Drawing on his professional experience building systems that connect location and behavioral data, he argued that camera networks combined with AI create detailed behavioral profiles that could be exploited by insurers or other third parties. He also discussed a local wheel tax passed without public opposition at a poorly timed morning meeting, and the thin bench of Democratic candidates in Jackson County, where he’s currently the only countywide candidate.
Facebook: Edward Bowen for Jackson County Council
Ethan Sweetland-May for State Senate District 47
Sweetland-May, who attended ministry school before deciding against a religious vocation, discussed the rise of Christian nationalism, arguing it isn’t new — and drawing a direct historical line to early-20th-century Klan violence against Catholic and immigrant communities in Indiana, including the 1924 clash between Notre Dame students and the Klan in South Bend. He directly criticized Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith’s public comments blending faith and governance. On more local issues, he described a unionized manufacturing plant in his district, MPP in Campbellsburg, stuck in over a year of stalled negotiations with ownership group Millpoint Capital despite reaching out to state representatives and the governor’s office without response. He argued that state leadership deliberately underfunds health care, worker protections, and public schools in order to justify further privatization.
Website: https://www.ethanforstatesenate.com/
Cindi Clayton for State Senate District 49
Clayton, running in the Evansville and Posey County-based Senate District 49, confirmed Scott’s characterization of the district as a classic “cracking” gerrymander that splits Evansville roughly down the middle, and drew on her rural Terre Haute upbringing to argue she can bridge the district’s rural and inner-city needs. She detailed Posey County’s active fight against a proposed data center, noting the county’s unemployment rate already sits near full employment at 3.3% and doesn’t need the promised jobs, while data center developers typically bring in outside crews rather than hiring locally. She emphasized that her campaign doesn’t accept corporate PAC money, touting support from the United Mine Workers of America — she’s as an associate member with three generations of coal miners in her family — and described her work over eleven years with a children’s advocacy center in Evansville as the motivation for running.
Website: https://www.cindiforsenate.com/
Trent Deckard for Monroe County Commissioner
Deckard, who had just won a contested Democratic primary for county commissioner, described the unusual dynamic of running in a safe blue county where Republicans fielded no candidates for the fall, which he argued deprives voters of a real debate. He discussed a long-running ACLU lawsuit over county jail conditions that has dragged on for roughly two decades without resolution, and framed Monroe County’s housing affordability crisis in personal terms, saying he couldn’t afford to buy into the same neighborhood today that his nine-generation family settled in 2007 despite holding a stable university faculty job. He argued the county needs to revisit planning and permitting processes that have blocked starter-home development for the past twenty years, comparing the county’s exclusivity to a country club.
Website: https://www.trentdeckard.com/
Indiana Rural Summit Founder Michelle Higgs
Higgs described building the Indiana Rural Summit from an informal 2024 pilot — twelve House candidates touring 30 southern Indiana counties together — into a 2026 network of 67 candidates covering 89% of the state. She explained the organization’s “power pack” model, which groups candidates geographically around a flippable anchor race so down-ballot candidates can carry shared campaign literature and pool fundraising through “tandem fundraisers.” She said the approach was modeled on the Virginia Grassroots Coalition’s theory that running candidates everywhere lifts turnout even in unwinnable races, and described a weekly candidate call that functions partly as training, partly as informal peer support for candidates in isolating rural races. She directed people to the organization’s website and a data portal where residents can look up which candidates and “power packs” cover their address.
Website: https://indianaruralsummit.org/
Data Portal: https://data.indianaruralsummit.org/
Brad Hochgesang for State Senate District 48
Hochgesang, running across a six-county district spanning Crawford, Perry, Gibson, Spencer, Dubois, and Pike counties, cited a poll he personally commissioned showing just 6% strong support and 81% opposition to the Mid-States Corridor project among locals. Drawing on his background as a software engineer, he gave an extended and technically detailed critique of the AI data center boom, describing the competitive race among a handful of major tech companies to build artificial general intelligence, the risk that today’s massive data center investments become obsolete as hardware improves, and a specific incident in which the AI platform Hugging Face was reportedly attacked by rogue OpenAI models. He credited fellow candidates including Tiffanie Arthur, Mary Allen, and Lena Goffinet for helping cover the district’s large geographic footprint, and named rural hospital closures and Senate Enrolled Act 1’s education funding cuts as major local concerns.
Website: https://citizensforhochgesang.org/
Dearborn County Democratic Party Vice Chair Christine Craig
Craig, who also coordinates Southeast Indiana Indivisible and serves as lead campaign contact for Brad Meyer in Dearborn County, focused her segment on severe, under-covered flood damage to two small historic Franklin County towns: Metamora, an 1830s-era canal town where roughly 95% of the south side and dozens of businesses and homes were affected, and Laurel, a town of about 412 people where 120 homes were damaged and roughly half may not be salvageable. She described a secondary crisis of rising groundwater causing mold in homes that weren’t directly flooded, noted that virtually none of the affected residents carried flood insurance, and detailed her ongoing work managing daily-updated Amazon wishlists and directing donations to the Laurel Legacy Foundation’s GoFundMe and local flood relief funds, since larger volunteer groups like the Cajun Navy have been stretched thin across multiple flooded counties.
Metamora Flood Relief: https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/1PLUCQH4Y9X3F
Laurel Flood Relief: https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/3O1JRUUVO2WNF
Closing Thoughts
Scott and Derrick closed by praising the day’s candidates for “acting like the incumbent” — doing the visible community work before ever winning office — in contrast to Republican incumbents they described as largely absent. They specifically criticized Representative Erin Houchin for never holding an open town hall in nearly two terms and for a brief, photo-op-style appearance during the floods rather than sustained involvement. Scott thanked IDEA organizers, 9th District Chair Adam Dickey for arranging the appearance, and Washington County Democrats’ Renee Mather for behind-the-scenes work.
Hold ‘Em Accountable: https://www.progressiveindiana.net/s/hold-em-accountable
HoosLeft: https://www.progressiveindiana.net/s/hoosleft