https://progressiveindiana.net
https://timpeckforcongress.com/
SUMMARY:
With Indiana’s May 5th primary two days out, the Progressive Indiana Network hosted its final virtual town hall of the primary season, featuring Dr. Tim Peck, emergency physician and Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 9th Congressional District. Peck, who lost the 2024 general election to Republican incumbent Erin Houchin, is making his second run for the seat covering Indiana’s 18 southeastern counties. Over the course of the hour, Peck made the case for a grassroots, no-corporate-PAC campaign rooted in his medical experience, discussing healthcare affordability, the Supreme Court, AI and data centers, the Fifth Circuit’s mifepristone ruling, bipartisan dealmaking, and his evolving view of corporations — closing with a pitch for why this cycle is different from 2024 and how viewers can join his movement before Tuesday.
IN DEPTH:
00:00:21 Opening Remarks
- Scott introduces the show as PIN’s final virtual town hall of the primary season, two days before the May 5th primary
- Peck thanks Scott for the work PIN does to bring educated voters to the polls and introduces himself as an emergency physician living on a farm in Clark County, across the river from Louisville
- Peck frames his campaign around a door-knocking encounter: a constituent who told him “it costs too much to go to work,” citing gas, credit card interest, housing, childcare, student debt, and healthcare premiums
- Peck notes that only six of IN-9’s 18 counties can deliver babies, calling the district a microcosm of rural healthcare collapse
- Peck says he has sworn off all corporate PAC money and has built a movement of 1,000 volunteers who have knocked over 10,000 doors
00:06:02 Viewer Question (Sarah, web form): Will you accept corporate PAC money, and how do you guard against taking it indirectly through leadership PACs?
- Peck says he signed on with roughly 70 candidates nationwide to a pledge covering term limits, no individual stock trading, no corporate PAC money, Supreme Court ethics transparency, and a five-year post-office lobbying moratorium
- Peck defines his pledge broadly: he also refuses dark money PACs and money from Democratic incumbents who themselves take corporate PAC money — including declining a check offer from Rep. Andre Carson
- Peck argues that taking corporate PAC money creates a structural conflict of interest: when Chase Bank calls, you cancel your constituent meeting; without that money, you don’t
- Peck says the national Democratic Party — including the progressive wing — has abandoned Indiana, which actually gives him freedom to run the campaign Hoosiers deserve rather than one dictated by national party strategy
00:12:03 Viewer Question (Christine, YouTube): What type of Democrat do you consider yourself?
- Peck calls himself a left-of-center Democrat with progressive ideals who is willing to work with those who don’t share all of them — distinguishing that from moderation
- Peck says labels obscure more than they reveal; he knocked on a door that same day belonging to a union worker with a Trump yard sign who voted for Trump three times and is now unhappy with him
- Peck argues that working with Republicans isn’t ideological compromise but legislative strategy: there is bipartisan support for things like the PRO Act that simply never gets to the floor because Mike Johnson blocks it
- Scott offers “pragmatic progressive” as a label; Peck says he’ll take it
00:16:13 What do we do about the Supreme Court?
- Peck opposes court expansion, calling it the nuclear option — like eliminating the filibuster, it only empowers whoever holds power at the moment
- Peck’s path forward: pass Amy Klobuchar’s anti-mid-decade gerrymandering bill, enact binding Supreme Court ethics legislation, win the presidency to appoint new justices, and use impeachment only once ethics laws are in place and being violated
- Peck says he does not support using impeachment for messaging purposes, but that Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and John Roberts cannot be impeached yet because Congress has not yet passed the ethics laws that would make their conduct clearly illegal
- Peck frames the long game: chip away at the structural damage, neutralize the court over time, and focus on winning elections rather than procedural shortcuts
00:22:04 How do you tackle healthcare affordability and get toward universal coverage?
- Peck believes healthcare is a human right but does not think Medicare for All is achievable now, and argues Medicare itself has serious flaws: no dental, vision, or hearing coverage; 20% of recipients still carry medical debt; no long-term care coverage; and lengthy ICU stays can bankrupt patients
- Peck’s plan centers on weakening insurance monopolies through antitrust enforcement: UnitedHealth owns Optum (a physician network), nursing homes, pharmacy benefit managers, and NP groups — Aetna and CVS have merged similarly
- Peck wants to haul insurance executives before Congress and demand an accounting of how much Medicare payroll tax money went to executive bonuses and shareholder payouts
- Peck calls for banning prior authorization (an insurance company making a medical decision) and eliminating pharmacy benefit managers, which he says extract money from the system with no added value — both have bipartisan support
- Peck argues that Citizens United is the real obstacle to full Medicare for All; until corporate money is out of politics, the insurance industry has too much power to be displaced entirely
00:32:21 Viewer Question (Anonymous, web form): Your career has ties to Sam Altman of OpenAI and Joe Lonsdale of Palantir. Your FEC filings show a $2,000 donation from Brian Bloom, VP of Millennium hedge fund. Will your votes on AI and tech policy protect Hoosier working families or will your industry connections sway you?
- Peck says the Bloom donation came from a childhood friend who is a Democrat, not from Millennium as an institution
- Peck focuses on data centers as the most immediate AI policy question: deals are being struck in backrooms, contracts signed, and only then is the public invited to discuss — he calls this insane and in need of regulation
- Peck draws a parallel to Indiana’s casino licensing process, where communities had robust public input and could negotiate community benefits (schools, libraries, a YMCA) before deals closed — data centers should work the same way
- Peck says he is directly affected: a massive Facebook data center is being built in Clark County, his home county, and he has no meaningful say over its electricity or water consumption
00:38:10 Viewer Question (Anonymous, web form): You suggested people use ChatGPT to vet candidates. Where do you stand on AI use and responsible guardrails?
- Peck says he recommended ChatGPT because voters are uninformed — he knocked on doors during early voting and met people who had already cast a ballot without knowing who they voted for in his race; any research tool is better than none, but he stressed using the cited references
- Peck says the incumbent, Erin Houchin, sits on tech and crypto policy committees while taking heavy money from Silicon Valley VCs and voting for maximum deregulation — he wants the opposite
- Peck argues AI should be treated like nuclear energy: even when driven by private industry, technologies that pose existential risks require public ownership of the decision-making process
- Peck says AI development needs to be slowed down and subjected to the same kind of public discourse and regulatory guardrails applied to other civilization-scale technologies
00:43:06 Viewer Question (Ruth, web form): The Fifth Circuit just ruled mifepristone cannot be sent by mail. Does this improve patient safety?
- Peck flatly says no — the “patient safety” rationale from the court is false; mifepristone is a very safe drug, and the program of telemedicine prescribing followed by mail delivery is one he helped build with Planned Parenthood
- Peck says what is actually unsafe is forcing patients to travel great distances, and describes the practical reality in his ER: when a pregnant patient faces a life-or-death situation, his first call legally has to go to a hospital lawyer before he can make a medical decision — that is the government in his exam room
- Peck notes an unusual political wrinkle: pharma companies want the mail program to continue and will spend money fighting the ruling — watch where that money goes
- Peck strongly supports restoring mifepristone access by mail and opposes government interference in medical decision-making
00:46:29 Can you name an issue where you’d vote with Republicans over most Democrats, or with the party over a majority of your constituents?
- Peck says his commitment on rights issues — abortion, LGBTQ — is grounded in the First Amendment and will not waver regardless of constituent polling; those are not negotiating positions
- Peck says working with Republicans is about the pre-floor process: finding issues with genuine bipartisan alignment, doing the work to get a bill to the floor, and then voting on whatever imperfect bill emerges in the best interest of his constituents
- Peck points to universal pre-K as an example of surprising Republican support, including GOP-authored proposals to extend the CBO scoring window to 30 years so the long-term economic benefits become visible
- Peck reiterates the mifepristone situation as a live example: sometimes pharma and the right align with the right outcome, and you take the win
00:51:13 Is there a position you’ve evolved on over the years?
- Peck says his biggest evolution is his view of corporations: he used to think more highly of them, until he personally experienced and came to fully understand that every corporate board charter legally places the shareholder first — above employees, patients, and customers
- Peck says that when push comes to shove, corporations will always revert to what the charter demands, which will not be in the interest of regular people
- Peck agrees with Scott’s framing that government’s role is to set the conditions so that doing the right thing and doing the profitable thing are the same thing — rather than assuming corporations will self-regulate
- Peck credits thousands of one-on-one voter conversations over three and a half years as the source of this evolution
00:54:41 What’s different this time vs. 2024?
- Peck says Houchin beat him by 20+ points in 2024, but frames it as Donald Trump and straight-ticket voting beating him — Houchin’s own name recognition was still only in the 30s–40% range in internal polling
- Peck points to unprecedented Democratic engagement: Jeffersonville drew 2,000 to its last No Kings rally, Corydon drew 700 in a town of 3,000, and similar energy is showing up in Madison, Seymour, and Bloomington
- Peck says soft Trump voters who stayed with him in 2024 — not the core MAGA 30-35% — have begun turning in the last six weeks, with gas prices serving as the final straw for people already stretched by childcare, housing, and healthcare costs
- Peck says the structural difference is the operation: 3.5 years of relationship-building has produced experienced staff, a large individual donor list, 3,000 postcards sent from the lower district to Bloomington voters, and canvassing in four cities simultaneously on the day of this town hall
01:02:07 How can people get involved?
- Peck directs viewers to www.timpeckforcongress.com and the “Join the Movement” tab, where they can sign up to write postcards, knock doors, or find a fellowship
- Door knocking for the primary has ended, but phone banking continues through Election Day Tuesday; Peck says if someone really wants to knock, the campaign will give them literature for their own neighborhood
- Peck gives his personal cell number on air: 812-287-9079, crediting former Congressman Lee Hamilton for the advice to put your real number on your card
- Peck pledges that win or lose on Tuesday, he will continue fighting — if he loses, he will join whatever Democratic movement is growing, because flipping the House is the goal
01:03:24 Closing Remarks
- Scott thanks Peck, wishes him luck Tuesday, and urges all viewers to vote regardless of candidate preference
Thanks again to Dr. Peck for joining us. For more information and to get involved, visit his campaign website at https://timpeckforcongress.com. You can also find him on Facebook and across most social media sites at timpeckforcongress.
Tune in Tuesday night for PIN’s Primary Election Night Special, beginning at 7pm ET | 6pm CT.
