Candidate Q&A

What makes you the right person to represent Indianapolis in Congress?

For the past two years, our team has spent countless hours listening and meeting with members of the 7th District from all corners of the district. We have met with people in housing, community organizing, violence prevention, workforce development, and non-profit work addressing homelessness. These conversations have prepared us to understand our district’s current needs and the change people want to see in the city and surrounding communities. Our conversation has focused on putting people first and staying away from national headlines that take the focus off healing and building up the communities of the 7th District and other urban districts facing the same problems. Bottom line – we know the issues, we have a team ready to go, and, most of all, we are excited.

What are the top three issues you hear from constituents?

The top three issues we have heard are housing, jobs, and public safety. This is true in every major city right now. People are struggling to put food on the table, young people do not feel they have access to credible careers, youth gun violence has increased, and we have more people renting than owning homes. We have hit a stopping point in progress. This feedback is not meant to be negative, but to explain directly what we have heard from voters.

What is at least one federal policy you’d propose to address those constituent concerns?

We have so many great ideas, and that is why we are so excited for this opportunity. The #1 issue right now is jobs. There are over 7,000 jobs available at any time in this district, ranging from construction and electrical work to HVAC maintenance and nursing. The list goes on. We propose a 10-15% increase in federally allocated resources for registered apprenticeships in the skilled trades. This change would make it possible to fill 5,000 of these jobs in just one year of being in office. It’s actually pretty incredible the opportunity we have in front of us right now to make this happen.

What have you heard from people in your district about data centers? How would you address the data center issue in Congress?

Look, we have to be honest about where we are with this technology right now. More than 18% of the global population uses technology connected to data centers. That is 1.4 billion people, and 83% of those people live in cities. We have to think about that. At the same time, a U.S. Representative’s role is to represent the voices of the people. That is the legacy our founding fathers left. In these data center projects, voters and grassroots organizations have been left out of the conversation in most cases. I am fully against that. People who live in these communities want to play an active role, and they have been stripped of that opportunity. As your U.S. Congressman, I would fully support creating a caucus in our nation’s capital focused on communicating decision-making to the public and exploring new ways to adapt this technology around citizen feedback from across the country. If we’re going to be about it, we need to talk about it.

Indianapolis has long struggled with road funding. How would you leverage federal infrastructure funding to improve Marion County’s streets and roads?

Indiana lost more than $700 million in direct federal funding last year, and most of that funding shifted to internet increases across the state. If we want to improve our roads, we need a federal leader who consistently advocates for these resources and surrounds themselves with the right people to make this happen across all areas of government and, frankly, on both sides of the aisle. Our focus would be to prioritize restoring this federal funding and fully advocate for for putting it back into urban districts across the state for roads and other critical infrastructure. That won’t happen without focused, determined, hands-on, and consistent energetic leadership.