Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man

On Tuesday, May 5, Buckeyes and Hoosiers alike will go to the primary ballot box. There are, as with all primaries, candidates from all levels of government. I hope you have been following how the incumbents and their challengers have helped, or said they will help, make your life better as you prepare to “pull” the lever in the ballot box. 

Questions I ask myself about an incumbent is how has my life gotten better with this person in charge? Are costs down? Do they support equality? Do they believe everyone has the right to vote? Are they supporters, not just in words, but in action, of the State and United States Constitutions? Have they been attacking, or supporting, those who lack voice in society? And really, for me in the current political climate, do they support the current president’s actions or are speaking out against this regime’s power grab?

I ask myself similar questions about incumbent challengers, but in terms of how they have stated they will improve lives, and also by looking at their history of actual actions in public life to improve lives.

In looking at some of the legislation passed in Ohio, here is what research has stated as some of the top five things your Ohio elected officials thought were important during the last two years:

1. Decided diversity, equity, and inclusion were not an Ohio norms in colleges and universities. They felt they needed to limit free speech on campus’s statewide. For good measure, the legislature and governor also decided to say faculty shouldn’t have the right to strike for things like better wages and working conditions.
2. Decided it wasn’t important to have schools be safe places for all students by requiring them to notify parents if a student tells a teacher in confidence they are gay, lesbians, or questioning. Thus making family retribution possible as we know not all parents are supportive of their children when faced with the truth about their child.
3. Decided they knew better than the voters of Ohio by overriding the will of the people by reducing the rights of home growers and public use rules (Note: I personally am not in favor of people smoking marijuana in public due to the smell and potential side effects similar to second-hand smoke). 
4. Decided to expand school powers to expel students that could permanently keep a student from returning to school. We do need safe schools, on this we can all agree, but to potentially block a student from an education has potential long-term negative effects on all of us in our neighborhoods, our public spaces, and our workplaces.
5. Decided to pass a law regarding grooming of minors for sexual activity. At face value, this is a law I would hope all of us would agree is a good law. However, the bill is so broad that it could mean a person or organization helping a student coming to terms with being gay or lesbian could be prosecuted, or that a person or organization discussing with a minor what grooming even means and how to recognize grooming could also be prosecuted (thus even a social worker trying to help a child in crisis could be arrested).

Indiana passed some things that also won’t make lives better, but more towards discriminating against certain people and gave more power to people who already have too much power and vastly wasting valuable yours and my tax dollars:

1. Decided to give the governor the power to appoint every single member of Indiana University’s board of trustees, the people who run the school. In doing so, they made the board even more political than it was with the appointees now “owing” allegiance to the person who put them on the board over what may be right for the university and its students.
2. Decided to pass a law that appears to apply to a single individual in Indiana out of approximately 2,500 athletes at the university level. Meaning this law was passed for 0.0004 percent of athletes in all of Indiana. The law banned transgender women from collegiate sports. The legislature spent valuable tax dollars on a law that applied to a single individual in all of Indiana (estimated population of just over seven million people). 
3. Decided diversity, equity, and inclusion was not an Indiana norm at all levels of government, in all schools, and in all universities.
4. Decided that all human-sexuality materials taught by schools must be published online. The legislature also added specific content and classroom rules to its being taught.
5. Decided to make it even harder for students and eligible voters to vote in elections—suppressing the vote, thus helping the legislature choose their voters rather than voters choosing their elected officials as should be done in a functioning democracy. Also remember they wasted valuable time and resources trying to fulfill Trump’s demand that Indiana redraw their electoral map to also ensure the outcome of an election.

Neither of the legislatures, nor many local government officials, in these states raised the minimum wage, expanded voter rights, increased funding for public education, limited funding to private schools with public dollars, raised taxes on the extremely wealthy, provided additional funding to local governments to meet the needs of its citizens, addressed healthcare in any meaningful way, worked to create a more equal society, or any other multitudes of ways they could have acted upon to improve the lives of the millions of people living in their states.

I encourage you to keep the questions I asked about improving lives, and the priorities of the legislatures and other elected officials in Ohio and Indiana, in mind when you decide upon your candidates. Please don’t pull a straight party lever. Take the time to choose your primary candidate one-by-one based on who would most likely make your day-to-day life better. Don’t vote for someone just because they are an incumbent nor because they happen to be a Republican or Democrat. 

Choose the person, just to say it again, that you feel will make your life better, and the places where you live, work, and play better. 

Elections have consequences. Choose wisely!