The updated inaugural 2024 IN Democratic gubernatorial power rankings
Going into 2022, how do possible candidates like Pete Buttigieg, Joe Donnelly and Jennifer McCormick rank?
In Indiana politics, sports metaphors are tossed around more frequently than the phrases “local control” and “Hoosier common sense,” which themselves are phrases that are as abundant here as fried pork tenderloin sandos.
Maybe it’s that our state is the setting for some of the great sports flicks of all time: “Hoosiers,” “Breaking Away,” “Rudy.”1Maybe it’s that Indianapolis sees itself as the Amateur Sports Capital of the World. Maybe it’s because we’re basketball-crazed Indianoplace or because we grow basketball here or because in 49 other states it’s just basketball. Truth is, it’s probably all of those things.2
Whatever the reason behind the ubiquity of sports metaphors in our politics here, Indiana Democrats find themselves amid a rebuilding year. And they have been for a long time: By 2024, Indiana won’t have had a Democratic governor for 20 years—nearly a generation.
Hoosier Democrats’ bench to overcome that remarkable trendline—in the short term, at least—is sparse.
Pete Buttigieg’s former presidential campaign manager and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Mike Schmuhl has spent the better of his first year in the post alongside several members of that bench of candidates touring the state on a 55-county tour—each of its legs pegged to support a specific aspect of President Joe Biden’s agenda. At each stop, those candidates got a little bit more statewide visibility: former Sen. Joe Donnelly, Joe Biden’s nominee for a Vatican ambassadorship; State Sens. Shelli Yoder, Eddie Melton, and J.D. Ford among them; and former 5th Congressional Candidate and Biden administration appointee Christina Hale.
Here’s how one Democratic insider put it to me recently: “I do think it is accurate to say that our growing bench currently lacks anyone with sufficient geographic name ID to jump off the page as a candidate for governor,” this person said. “We do have a good roster of folks with a geographic and demographic balance that could fill out a ticket if a top-tier candidate were to get in at the top.”
As one Hoosier famously wrote: So it goes.
Welcome to the third edition of the IMPORTANTVILLE CAUCUS, a new semi-regular, unscientific feature in which I reach out to my top sources on background to divine what’s really happening in Indiana politics. In this edition, I asked nearly a dozen well-wired Indiana Democrats—granted anonymity to speak freely about intra-party dynamics—how they rank the most bandied about names for the next open gubernatorial cycle.
Here’s how they ranked last time:
Some have dropped off the list: Josh Owens, the former tech exec and short-lived gubernatorial candidate, has all but abandoned the state as he works on a new business venture, and is not included in this ranking. Others have been added: Schmuhl, who is now the face and voice of the Indiana Democratic Party, for example.
Here, according to Hoosier Democratic insiders, are the potential candidates who have the most juice for a statewide bid.
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