State treasurer race scoop–Pete Buttigieg gets his moment in the sun—Inside Schmuhl's rescue mission
Plus: Todd Young v. Xi Jinping.
SCOOP: Suzanne Jaworowski, the former Trump administration official, plans to bow out of the increasingly crowded Republican field for state treasurer and seek the open House District 32 seat, multiple people familiar with her decision told IMPORTANTVILLE. The seat encompasses the eastern portion of Fishers and the southern portion of Carmel, and will likely lean Democratic.
Jaworowski’s move would allow her to keep her nuclear consulting day job. More importantly, it would winnow the field to four candidates:
Grassroots favorite Daniel Elliott, chairman of the Morgan County Republican Party, the Morgan County Redevelopment Commission president, and the owner of a software company in Martinsville.
Fort Wayne City Clerk Lana Keesling, the most traditionally qualified candidate for the role.
President of Boone County Council and real estate businesswoman Elise Nieshalla.
Establishment favorite Pete Seat, the Bose Public Affairs Group vice president who has racked up statewide endorsements.
LET’S BE FRANK: MRVAN’S IN TROUBLE IN THE 1ST: “GOP internal polling finds fertile ground for expanding the House map,” by Elena Schneider in Politico: “Polling commissioned by GOP groups on four newly redistricted, Democratic-leaning House seats — Colorado’s 8th District, Indiana’s 1st District, Oregon’s 5th District and Texas’ 28th District — found President Joe Biden’s approval ratings underwater in areas he won by an average of 7 points in 2020. The generic ballot in those combined districts, pitting an unnamed Democratic candidate against an unnamed Republican candidate, was tied at 39 percent among registered voters….Rep. Frank Mrvan Jr. (D-Ind.) is in the northern Indiana seat, which includes metropolitan Chicago suburbs. Mrvan’s district is one of the longest continuously blue seats in the country, having not elected a Republican to Congress in 90 years.
President of the United States Joe Biden signs the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, H.R. 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law at the White House in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
PETE BUTTIGIEG GETS HIS MOMENT IN THE SUN: Pete Buttigieg got his first big White House bill signing moment Monday, in a moment that could mark a new phase of his political career.
Biden’s Transportation secretary now finds himself flush with approximately $210 billion over five years in discretionary grants. For the next few years, he'll be tasked with doling out those funds to largely popular projects in red and blue states across the country.
Buttigieg will effectively be controlling the purse strings of an amount of money that is "at least five or six times more than has existed under a previous secretary," one USDOT expert told me. In the recent past, such spending programs were more skewed to formula-based funding; now, Buttigieg's DOT will get to pick and choose which projects to back.
WHAT’S NEXT: Buttigieg is in Phoenix, Arizona today taking a victory lap with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Kelly.
QUESTIONS: When will Buttigieg make his first ribbon-cutting trip back to Indiana? Which Republican officials will join him?
Sen. Todd Young hinted recently at how he and other Republicans are likely to message the new law, saying he stood by his decision because of the infrastructure’s linkage to the human infrastructure Build Back Better bill, which passed the House earlier this morning. “I am very supportive of investment in core infrastructure,” Young said.
Good Friday morning, and welcome back to IMPORTANTVILLE. At 3:15 p.m. today, President Joe Biden pardons two Indiana turkeys, Peanut Butter and Jelly.
INSIDE MIKE SCHMUHL’S INDIANA RESCUE OPERATION
Mike Schmuhl stood at the front of the tiny town-hall meeting inside the municipal building, framed by American and Indiana flags. It was a recent dark Tuesday night, not long after daylight saving time ended. In front of a crowd of about two dozen people, in a town of a little more than 800, Schmuhl was serving as President Joe Biden's salesman in rural America, pitching the benefits of the administration's COVID-relief and infrastructure plans.
But first, Schmuhl had to acknowledge the elephant in the room: Biden lost this county to Donald Trump a year ago by 50 points, in a state Trump won by 16 points. A Democrat hasn't won a statewide seat in Indiana since 2012. By 2024, Indiana, which Barack Obama won in 2008, will have gone two decades without a Democratic governor.
"I don't think we can write off certain areas and say it's always red, or another area where it's always blue," Schmuhl, 38, told the audience in his soft-spoken, even-keeled way, answering the question that hung in the air but that nobody would ask: Why is this guy here? "Well, we can make it more blue, or we can make it less red."
Since Schmuhl became his state party's chairman earlier this year, he has embarked on four such statewide tours. They've mostly unfolded in out-of-the-way territory unfriendly to Democrats in recent history.
"For Indiana Democrats, it's a total rebuild," Mike O'Brien, the president of 1816 Public Affairs Group and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb's former campaign manager, told me. "Republicans have 88% of local offices, supermajorities in the Legislature, and Democrats' candidate for governor came in third place in over 30 counties. The conventional wisdom of purple suburbs didn't play out. It's catastrophically bad. So they have to go places they've never gone to try to find some base of support outside of a few urban cores that they hold."
“Mike is one of a handful of people I worked with during my time in Indiana politics who could both craft a plan and also execute it,” Joel Elliott, Joe Donnelly’s former chief of staff and senior director of federal affairs for Salesforce, told me. “So, he stands in contrast to those sometimes annoying folks who proudly present themselves as solely “ideas people.” He also has another attribute that, when added to his planning and execution skills, makes him an even rarer bird in politics: his even-keeled and thoughtful way allows him to work with anyone—if you have trouble working with Mike, you might want to start by looking yourself in the mirror. One can’t overstate that importance of that when it comes to a party leader because party politics is definitely a team sport.”
“If there’s one thing I know about Mike, it’s that he loves Indiana,” added George Hornedo, an attorney in Ice Miller's Public Affairs Group and national deputy political director and delegate director at Pete for America. “With him at the helm of the Indiana Democratic Party, we have a clear message to take across the state and a strategy to—over time—close the gap and better compete with Republicans.”
Where’s it all headed? One source speculated Schmuhl could run for governor, or possibly helm the Democratic National Committee amid a Buttigieg presidency.
IMPORTANTVILLE READS
“GOP Sen. Todd Young says Xi Jinping is 'scared' of his bill because it would invest in U.S. technologies,” by Houston Keene in Yahoo News
A senator from Indiana said that Chinese President Xi Jinping is afraid of his new bill that would invest in U.S. technologies, citing Xi's fear as the reason China is lobbying against it.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., torched Xi as being "scared" of his new bill in a Monday press release, saying Xi’s fear is the reason behind reports of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) "pressuring American business leaders to oppose" the United States Innovation and Competition Act.
The report also said that China threatened the market shares of companies if they didn’t sink Young’s bill.