Candidate Q&A

What would be your top priority as Indiana secretary of state?

If elected, my top priority will be to clean up the corruption, waste, and insider dealing that has consumed the Secretary of State’s office during the last four years. Hoosiers are tired of no-bid state contracts being handed out to campaign donors, $92k luxury SUV’s purchased with our taxpayer money, and hiring family members to newly created positions and paying them six-figure salaries. On my first day in office, I will commission an independent audit to determine how far this corruption goes, who else is complicit, and who needs to be held accountable.

Rooting out this corruption, waste, and insider dealing is critical to regaining the public trust in this office. If the public fundamentally doesn’t trust this office, we won’t be able to accomplish any of our other goals.

The current secretary of state, Diego Morales, has been scrutinized for awarding millions of dollars in no-bid contracts. What would your approach be to awarding contracts?

To restore trust and transparency in the Secretary of State’s office, I have made the following pledge: If elected, I will not award contracts to anyone who has donated to my campaign. I urge the other candidates in this race to pledge the same. I will also competitively bid every contract.

Additionally, I will independently audit this office and make the results of that audit publicly available. Hoosiers deserve transparency and I plan to provide it.

Since part of your job as secretary of state would include election security, do you think Indiana’s elections are already safe enough, or is there something different you would do to keep elections safe and secure?

Indiana’s elections are safe and secure. Our laws, like Indiana’s voter ID law, have helped to ensure that Hoosiers can have faith in our elections. That doesn’t mean we should become complacent. There’s no place for illegal voting in our state and every instance of fraud that is uncovered should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The bipartisan staff at the election division and the bipartisan appointees throughout our counties all work hand in hand to ensure that our elections are run smoothly and are above reproach. We must continue to empower them to do their jobs and deliver for Hoosiers.

With the negative attention the secretary of state office has been getting — including for no-bid contracts and salary increases — how would you go about repairing the office’s public perception?

The best way to improve the public perception of this office is by cleaning up the corruption that caused trust to erode in the first place. Hoosiers are fed up with it, and I will end it on day one. I’ve proposed bold actions to do so, including an independent audit of the Secretary of State’s office, no Secretary of State contracts for my campaign donors, and no trading of individual stocks for myself or top staff. That should be a requirement for statewide officials.

What is your position on President Donald Trump’s efforts to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and implement restrictions on mail-in voting?

Indiana already has strong laws governing voter eligibility, registration and absentee voting. I support common sense measures like Indiana’s voter ID law, and I believe those measures have done a good job keeping our elections secure.

The constitution delegates the authority to run elections to the states, and for good reason. It’s much harder to corrupt 50 individual systems, than one national system. I trust Indiana, and the Hoosiers here, to make rules for our elections more than bureaucrats in Washington, DC.

Protecting mail in voting is important. While I was in the Marine Corps, I didn’t have another option but to vote by mail. The same is true of many of our seniors, folks with disabilities who have trouble getting to their polling locations, and students who are studying out of state.