TODAY, THE RIVIERA CLUB, or Rivi as it’s often called, is a beloved summer retreat for Indy’s north siders, granting its members a country club–like experience where several quiet neighborhoods converge. The club boasts an Olympic-sized pool, an elegant restaurant, fitness facilities, and even pickleball courts. The Riviera Club’s enticing amenities prompt local residents to send membership applications year-round. Anyone can join Rivi’s ranks, assuming they are able to pay the membership fee. “Rivi welcomes everyone … We embrace diversity,” says current club president Barb Fasbinder. “Our foundation has partnered with Indianapolis Public Schools, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana, Fay Biccard Glick Neighborhood Center, and others to bring our learn-to-swim, water safety, and wellness programming to the members of our community with the highest need.” However, this welcoming attitude was not always the club standard. Fifty years ago, The Riviera Club was sued over its discriminatory membership and guest policies.

When people conjure up images of racial segregation in the United States, they think in black and white. Not only the Black and white of different races, but the black-and-white photos and grainy video footage taken during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. But in reality, racial segregation was viciously protected far past the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Such was the case in Indianapolis, exemplified in Bates v. Riviera Club, Inc., the 1980 lawsuit that ended the decades-long policy of racial discrimination at the swim club.

The tension between public accommodations and private clubs became the crux of Bates v. Riviera Club, Inc. The Civil Rights Act specified that only “public accommodations” were subject to its anti-segregation measures. This meant that “private clubs,” like The Riviera Club, had a legal loophole to limit their membership for any reason.

Nestled along the banks of the White River, The Riviera Club quickly became a popular recreation destination after opening on January 12, 1933. With its Olympic-sized pool and well-trained swimming coaches, the club founded by James Makin drew in crowds of both casual and competitive swimmers. Despite the low cost of membership bolstering its rolls, The Riviera Club was still inaccessible to many residents of the Indianapolis community. Like many other country clubs of the era, Rivi’s leadership was not at all subtle about who they wanted to join and who they wanted to keep out. A sign on the club’s property read “No Blacks, no Jews” as late as the 1950s.

Recognizing that change would not come from within the club, in 1971, a group of concerned citizens associated with the Indianapolis Urban League formed The Riviera Club Task Force, investigating legal ways to end Rivi’s segregation policy. Legal consultations revealed that among the limited options available, the most expensive and highest-risk way forward would be to file a lawsuit under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So the task force started work on its other options, leaving the lawsuit as a last resort.

As efforts to desegregate the membership were underway, The Riviera Club doubled down on its policy of exclusion. In 1972, the organization instituted a new rule mandating that all new applicants must appear for an in-person interview. The impetus for this policy was a white member submitting an application for their newly adopted non-white child; the club promptly denied the application and refused to renew the parents’ membership. This move not only reinforced the policy of excluding Black applicants; it also effectively forbade interracial families from using the club’s facilities.

Members of the task force struggled and failed to address Rivi’s discriminatory policies for several years before they were forced to take more aggressive measures. In October of 1974, a white man, the Rev. Robert Bates, who was both a Riviera Club and task force member, brought his Black colleague, Michael Woodard, to the club for a friendly game of tennis. The staff deployed its standard tactic whenever a white member brought a guest of color: The employee manning the front desk sent the guest away after setting out a sign reading, “Sorry, we’re at capacity,” irrespective of how many people were, in fact, there.

By the end of the year, Bates and Woodard filed a lawsuit against The Riviera Club for illegal discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a result, Lawrence Reuben, a Jewish attorney who himself was not accepted at the club, was hired as the plaintiffs’ lawyer. Reuben then brought his colleague, Edward DeLaney, onto the legal team. Together, they took the legal question central to the case against Rivi forward: Was the club actually private?

Despite filing the suit in 1974, the case languished in legal limbo for years without being heard and was eventually passed over by four federal judges who recused themselves for various reasons. This delay turned out to have tragic consequences.

On Memorial Day, 1979, a trio of Immaculate Heart of Mary students decided a swim was the perfect antidote to the day’s oppressive heat. Two of the boys were Rivi members and tried to bring their Black friend, Dwight Eugene Jones, along as a guest, not realizing the consequences of this decision. Unsurprisingly, when the front desk staff saw Dwight, they immediately turned him away. And so, the group turned to the next best option: the White River, which runs along The Riviera Club’s property. The boys began swimming near the river’s edge, clinging to a log that anchored them to the riverbank. The log dislodged and floated into the center of the river, taking the boys with it. A desperate battle against the current ensued as each boy struggled back to the safety of the water’s edge. It was then that Dwight noticed his favorite hat floating downstream. He left the shore to retrieve his hat and was quickly pulled underwater by the current. Despite his friends’ efforts to save him, Dwight Jones drowned at age 15.

Enraged by this preventable tragedy, the movement to change The Riviera Club’s racist membership policy gained a renewed sense of urgency as the court case loomed. If one child drowned after being denied access to lifeguard attended pools, it could happen again.

Finally, on October 6, 1980, Bates v. Riviera Club, Inc. began its first day in court. The plaintiffs’ lawyers revealed that The Riviera Club accepted over 95 percent of all membership applications, resulting in roughly 10,000 members. Reuben and DeLaney asserted that this, paired with the low cost of membership, meant the organization was not truly operating as a private club. As a public accommodation, they argued, The Riviera Club could not maintain its segregation policy.

One of the defense’s primary arguments was that Black applicants’ intent was malicious and that they wanted to make a political statement by integrating the club, rather than truly wishing to avail themselves of The Riviera Club’s facilities. But this argument failed to hold up against the testimony of roughly a dozen witnesses who recounted the racism on full display at Rivi. The most striking testimony came from Maj. Gil Holmes, who came to court dressed in his Army attire, his chest gleaming with medals awarded for his service in Vietnam. Holmes left a powerful impression on Judge Gene Brooks, demonstrating that the club’s management was so concerned with maintaining an all-white member base that even a decorated war hero was considered unworthy of club membership because he was Black.

After the plaintiffs had called their witnesses, the judge summoned all the lawyers forward. In an unorthodox move, he read a prepared statement. Though Judge Brooks had yet to make any legal decision, he warned the club’s lawyer that based on the evidence provided by Reuben and DeLaney, the club would lose big time should the proceedings continue.

In the end, it wasn’t the years of petitions, sermons, pickets, or even a child’s death that changed the hearts of The Riviera Club’s management. It was Judge Brooks’ stern words that forced their hands.

Terms for a settlement that satisfied both parties were quickly drawn up. Among the immediate changes was the ousting of several members of the club’s membership committee and board of directors. Many people who were previously denied membership joined the club, and some, like Holmes, filled the newly open spots on its various boards. In exchange, Rivi was allowed to keep its status as a private club.

“Learning from past racial and cultural inequalities is the only way to move forward,” insists Jimm Moody, current club general manager. “It’s because of this that Rivi members elected a more diverse board this past February, bringing on Bryan Bradford and retaining Barb Fasbinder and Kat Moynihan Gray, each longtime female members and volunteers who continue to serve Rivi.”

Bates v. Riviera Club, Inc. is a testament to the power of community. No single person can be credited with dismantling the unjust membership policy. The collective efforts of The Riviera Club Task Force, those who picketed, the witnesses who testified in court, the lawyers who demanded justice, and many other supportive community members who refused to allow discrimination to thrive in their neighborhood bear that honor. Although the hard-won victories of Bates v. Riviera Club, Inc. couldn’t erase the damage done by decades of antisemitism and racism, they paved the way for the more just future that The Riviera Club embodies today.

Editor’s note: Lawrence Reuben was the author’s father.

The post Diving Into Equality appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Chris Jensen, Mayor of Noblesville
IN TOWN: What better place to spend the duration of the historic solar event than under the stars at Noblesville’s Ruoff Music Center? The Total Eclipse Tailgate will include live entertainment, food trucks, and a NASA expert speaking about the solar eclipse.

Joe Yochum, Mayor of Vincennes
“If you stand here on the bridge that connects Illinois and Indiana, you can see the eclipse from two different time zones and in two different states. We’ve been told to expect maybe 100,000 people.”

Mark Myers, Mayor of Greenwood
“We’re planning our festivities through the Parks Department on Sunday, the day before. We know that Monday is when visitors are going to be coming into town. And that will be my ride-my-bike-to-work day.”

Steve Barnett, Mayor of Franklin
“We’re expecting a huge influx of people, but we have been planning this for way over a year. I just know that for the Fourth of July last year, we had 19,500 people, and traffic was pretty slow for a couple hours.”

Scott Fadness, Mayor of Fishers
IN TOWN: Fishers sky-gazers will välkommen the eclipse by gathering in the IKEA parking lot to celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime event. Pre-register through the store’s website (and show proof of IKEA family membership) to join the festivities from noon to 4 p.m.

Thomas Estabrook, Mayor of Bicknell
“The last time a solar eclipse came through here was 1869, which was the same year that our city was founded. The eclipse happened in August, and John Bicknell submitted his plat for the town in October. So we’re pretty confident he was here.”

Scott Willis, Mayor of Westfield
“As a young man, I thought I wanted to be an astronaut—until I got a little bit older and realized that I don’t like roller coasters. I am a bit of a geek when it comes to this. Would I drive hours and hours to see it? Probably not. But it’s in my backyard!”

Greg York, Mayor of New Castle
“We’re a community of 19,000 people, and they say 20,000 people will be coming here. Our airport is already full of reservations from people who want to fly in to the New Castle airport to watch the eclipse from the airport. They will just fly in and fly out afterwards.”

The post Mayors On The Map appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

So, how is “Mayor Stehr” sounding?
My daughter Meredith’s nickname is Marestehr, so now the joke is we have two “Mayor Stehrs” in the family. Some people have been calling me mayor since right after the primary. It’s different, but yeah, I’m getting used to it.

At 65, you could be traveling and taking up hobbies. Instead, you jump into what some would call a thankless job. Why?
When I retired, I wanted to do something for the community. When I became president of the park board, I could see what I thought was really dysfunctional inside of town government. The many roadblocks in the way of progress just frustrated me. I thought we could do a lot better. What it takes more than anything is good communication skills, and I’ve honed those over a long period.

Was running for office one day always in the back of your mind?
I was a political science major.

Do you see any parallels to your broadcast career?
When I first got into media 40 years ago, I felt it was an important service, facilitating the free exchange of information. But it’s changed so much. There are so many other sources of information now. I felt a lot of that service component was lost, and it became more about attracting enough eyeballs to sell cars for advertisers. So I see this as a return to serving people and moving the community forward in a positive way.

You ran on the GOP ticket. Are you a lifelong Republican?
I’ve voted in every election since I was 18, for Republicans in the vast majority. But I really don’t think this needs to be partisan. The people who pay the taxes, who need the services, they should be at the center of everything, not a political ideology.

What’s your top priority?
It comes back to communication. Job one is going to be lowering the temperature on the politics here, because it’s been a very political, very divisive situation the last few years.

You’re referring to the administration of outgoing Democratic mayor
Emily Styron … ?
Yes. She won in 2019 by a thin margin and had a rancorous relationship with the all-Republican council. As for what happened … you can’t lay blame squarely on one person. It takes both sides. For multiple reasons, communication completely broke down between the mayor and the council. For one, the mayor let the fire chief go, even though the council didn’t want her to. The ensuing court battle and appeal cost a lot of money. The chief kept his job in the end; her relationship with the council never recovered. But she’s been nothing but open and collegial with me.

What else is a pressing matter?
Zionsville hasn’t done a comprehensive plan in 20 years. Obviously, Zionsville has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, with the population nearly tripling to more than 33,000. The town council and former mayor recognized this, so we have money in the 2024 budget to create a comprehensive plan. Once that’s done, we can consider zoning changes, adjustments to the transportation plan, and a new fiscal plan. The comprehensive plan will inform all of that. It’s the way forward for the next generation.

Your new job includes overseeing eight departments and 250 employees. That’s a big responsibility.
The buck stops with me. I’m committed to sitting down and talking with every single town employee and trying to chart a new way forward, hopefully helping them feel better about where we are and where we’re going. I think morale is not what we would like it to be among our town employees. I take the role of being the chief cheerleader of the town very seriously, so I plan to be as visible and involved as possible.

How has your career prepared you?
When you’re in a public enterprise like TV news, there are always going to be people who are critical of you, and they’re not shy about it. That’s given me an understanding that not everyone is going to love everything I do all the time. I joke with my wife that after a year or so, residents are going to be mad at me. She said that would only mean I’m doing something right.

Did she support this move?
Very much so. I’ve learned when you run for office, it becomes personal. Amy has been uber encouraging. I don’t know how anyone could do this without support from their partner.

What bugged you about politicians as a member of the media?
Probably a lack of accessibility. If you’re an elected official, you owe it to your constituents to answer questions. You should never duck reporters.

So then you’re ready to address a gaggle of reporters when big news, or perhaps even a scandal, breaks in Zionsville?
I am. We do have a crisis communication plan here, and we’re talking about refining it even further. The number one rule is to share the information you have. Avoiding questions or holding back the truth is never productive in any way.

Is it true that reporters will have your cell phone number and can call you 24-7?
Yes! I will always take calls and try to give an answer, even if it’s only, “I don’t know,” or, “We haven’t decided yet.”

I can’t resist: Are you going to wear makeup and use a teleprompter for news conferences?
No, and no! Absolutely not!

Did you reach out to any former candidates who helped you decide whether to run?
Yes, it was someone who’s held a significant office and whose advice I embrace. He said, “OK, if you’re going to do this, you need to give me a 10-word reason why.” My answer came pretty instantly. Holding up my fingers one at a time, I said, “Because I want the town we love to do better.” He then said, “Now give me 10 words on why you’re the guy to make it better.” That answer was, “Because I have the communication skills to do the job.” Finally, he said, “OK, you’re ready.”

I filed the paperwork the next day.

Have you connected with your counterparts in Indianapolis suburbs?
I’ve talked with all of them. I think it’s important we engage, because we’re not just competing against each other for economic opportunities. We’re competing against Nashville, Tennessee; Columbus and Cincinnati in Ohio; and Chicago. So we need to cooperate. I was pleased that all the mayors signaled the same idea.

What’s the biggest challenge Zionsville faces?
Most of our tax base is residential. We need a larger commercial tax base, so a focus will be developing the South Village south of Sycamore Street.

Do you anticipate competing interests in how Zionsville grows?
Everyone recognizes it’s only going to grow. But they want it to grow in a way that’s complementary to what’s already here, not damaging to our brand. And our brand, so to speak, is our brick Main Street. I recognize that it really is the heart and soul of Zionsville. But the best way to protect it is by encouraging those in proximity to Zionsville to go to the restaurants and shops and enjoy it. You don’t protect it by putting up a wall, not changing anything, not moving forward. I want to energize Main Street further so that even more people will use it. And to the folks farther north, their rural and historical heritage is really important, so we need to protect that, as well.

What do you hope to accomplish in the next four years?
I hope to have calmed down the rhetoric and animosity between the players involved and to have moved ahead on a comprehensive development plan that builds on the town that we love, while being supportive of our Main Street business district, our school system, and of all our constituents.

The post Ask Me Anything: John Stehr, Mayor appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

How do you feel about stepping down as mayor? You’re in the final stretch.

I’m excited about all the things I’ll have time to do. Twenty-eight years is a long time. It’s an intense job, particularly as we’ve taken on big challenges. The city’s grown from 25,000 residents to more than 100,000 during our administration’s tenure.

When you first ran for mayor did you ever envision seven terms?

I wanted to do two terms. Carmel didn’t have a mayor until 1976. They had a town board government. It became a city and elected its first mayor in 1976. Only Jane Reiman had two terms. I wanted to be successful enough to have at least two. But then you find out we’re in the middle of some really exciting things. We’re attracting some brilliant people from the private sector who gave up higher-paying jobs to work in city government. You’re always in the middle of a project you want to see completed.

So, it sounds like you got hooked.

Yeah, I got hooked, and I loved it. And I had a lot of pressure from friends and others who liked the direction Carmel was moving in to run again.

What was the biggest issue you faced when you first took office?

Getting the city positioned for the growth I knew was coming. I wanted to be more efficient so that we would have the money to build a beautiful city. That involved doing 56 annexations. Some were small, like the farmer who sells 300 acres. But we did about eight really large, multi-square-mile annexations, and those were really tough. I remember someone wrote a letter to the editor that compared me to Hitler marching into Austria. I don’t think so. It was about getting the roads in so people could get in and out quickly and keeping a good tax climate. We have one of the lowest tax rates in the state.

What is your proudest achievement?

The Palladium. That was a big reach for a city of 60,000 people at the time. You know, it’s a true concert hall, not a theater. There aren’t many of those.

As I recall, you didn’t skimp, did you?

Lucas Oil Stadium, built three years earlier, cost $720 million. We spent $125 million on two small theaters, a concert hall, and a parking structure.

Many communities rely on sports, but not Carmel.

We wanted to do something to anchor our downtown. People wanted restaurants and small shops. We had to draw people in and make the area a true center where folks of different backgrounds could come together, feel some ownership, and get to know one other. Indianapolis did that back in the Bill Hudnut days with amateur sports. Actually, a lot of people said what we were doing was hurting downtown Indianapolis. I said no, it’s not. If we do it well, it’s a better package. The city was under-invested in the arts. We can fill the gap without directly competing.

Yet, critics worry about the money Carmel’s poured into City Center.

Yes, it’s cost us, but we’ve had billions invested in the area. There are townhomes across from the Palladium that the developer thought three years ago he’d sell for $400,000. One of the last ones just sold for $2.1 million. Another on Main Street was built for around $850,000 and sold a year ago for $2.4 million because people want to be here. So, yes, the initial investment in public facilities was a lot of money, but it’s paid off for us.

Carmel is synonymous with roundabouts. How many now? And how many stoplights are left?

We have 151 roundabouts today and are down to seven stoplights.

Why roundabouts?

I saw them when I was in grad school in England. I asked a lot of questions and learned how efficient they were compared to stoplights. If you’re sitting at a red light, say, at 9 p.m. and you’re the only car around, you’re burning gas. You’re wasting time and money, and it’s bad for the environment. They seemed a lot more logical. We made mistakes with the first one, so we hired a British engineer. He showed us how to make some inexpensive adjustments. It got a lot better. We have six more going in. Four are funded.

So Carmel will have one stoplight left?

Yes, and, ironically, that stoplight—at Main and Rangeline—was one of the first in the country. There’s a plaque there. That one is safe because there’s just not enough space to put in a circle.

Do you have a political role model?

Yes, Indianapolis mayors Dick Lugar and Bill Hudnut. I worked for both of them. They were great public servants and political moderates focused on representing taxpayers.

You’ve butted heads with members of your own party. Some might say you’ve ruled with an iron fist, somewhat reminiscent of Chicago’s Richard Daley. Is that fair?

That’s fair. A lot of people in Carmel didn’t want change. There was a lot of pushback at first. The only question in my mind was, Will change be good or bad? We had to get ahead of it with infrastructure and good planning. Otherwise, Carmel would have been like any other suburb of Atlanta, Los Angeles, or Detroit. Sometimes you had to be a bit of a bully to push things through. The staff would want to try to get consensus from the council. I’d say, “I don’t care about consensus. I care about one more vote than 50 percent.”

President Biden won Carmel by four percent. Is it turning blue?

I don’t know if it’s more Democrats—or the change in the Republican party, now dominated by what used to be considered the fringe or crazy people. You may quote me on that. It’s the Republican party changing more than Carmel becoming more liberal.

Do you plan to stay in Carmel?

Yep.

What will you do with your free time?

IU Press has asked me to do another book, so I’ll get to work on it. I’m on several boards. The national Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is fun because they’re building a trail from Seattle to Washington, D.C. It’s going to be the Appalachian Trail on steroids.

And what about your leisure time?

I’m not going to lie around and watch TV. I like to bicycle. I’m trying to get my embouchure [lip technique] back in shape for the French horn. I also play my piano a little bit every morning. My other big thing is snow-skiing. I learned as an adult, so I’m not great, but I’m good enough. I look forward to doing that a lot more.

Do you ever read for pleasure?

The only time I allow myself the opportunity to read a novel is when I’m on a plane, because I don’t like doing serious work on a plane.

What’s the last novel you read?

I’m in the middle of one now, waiting for my next plane trip to finish it. It’s a great whodunit. They’re all trapped in a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, and someone winds up dead every few hours. But right now, I’m reading books on architecture, city planning, homelessness, and how to pave streets in different climates.

Any regrets?

Oh yeah, lots of things. I’d be more aggressive on the annexations early on because some projects were introduced just a bit too late.

Such as?

Some engineers suggested that instead of having all these developers build retention ponds, which are dangerous—[their water level rises and falls] depending on the rainfall—we do a big lake or reservoir and have the developers pay to pipe [water runoff] into that. But water runs from north to south, and there just wasn’t enough room on the south side. It was already built up. If we’d gotten on it a little faster, we might have been able to build a big Eagle Creek–like park of 1,000-plus acres. It would have been nice, with sailboats and swimming.

What will you not miss about the job?

The late-night calls. Carmel is one of the safest cities in the country, yet you still worry about crime, someone with a gun attacking people. But that will no longer be my responsibility.

Will it be hard to let go?

As I was analyzing whether to run again, I thought of the projects that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to get done. Then I thought, Wait a minute. I’ll be 98 years old! If I get to 98, I’ll still have a list of projects to do. So it becomes, Have we accomplished what we set out to do? We have—many, many times over.

The post Ask Me Anything: Jim Brainard, Mayor appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

One morning when she was around five years old, Suzanne Crouch woke up in a tiny panic.

“Where’s mom?” she asked her dad.

“She went to see the doctor for her nerve medicine,” he replied matter-of-factly.

Though the little girl had no clue what that meant, her father didn’t seem worried. And so, neither was she. Crouch assumed her mother was sick and the medicine would make her feel better. To that point, when her mother returned home later that day, she seemed fine. Nothing more was said about the event, but Mary Crouch would return to the doctor’s office again and again. It is unclear what “nerve medicine” the doctor prescribed. But we can guess it was probably something like the mild tranquilizer Miltown, which was widely prescribed to patients with anxiety disorders during the 1950s. A popular precursor to Valium, it was said to “calm the nerves.”

Nerve medicine, if you will.

For Crouch, the incident held little significance back then. “When you’re very young, you think every family is like yours,” she says. “It wasn’t until I was older that I realized my family was different than other families. Not bad, necessarily, but different.”

Fast forward through the decades, and Crouch is now the 71-year-old two-term lieutenant governor of Indiana, and she’s in the running to become the Republican nominee for governor in 2024. Over a political career spanning nearly 30 years, she served as a county auditor, county commissioner, state representative, and state auditor before taking office as Governor Eric Holcomb’s running mate.

In the past few months, she has crisscrossed the state, visiting county fairs, marching in parades, and attending GOP picnics and dinners. Her campaign includes a strong focus on Indiana’s mental health crisis, an epidemic that impacts Hoosiers at every socioeconomic level. Earlier this year, she took the unusual step of testifying before both the Senate Appropriations Committee and the House Public Health Committee to speak in support of legislation that would provide more resources for community mental health centers and expand the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline to include mobile crisis response teams. She believes treatment must be accessible and affordable and that there must be a sustainable funding source, along with continuing efforts to reduce the stigma that keeps people from seeking treatment. “We’ve got to get people help. We can’t afford not to,” she says.

I caught up with Crouch in May at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where the inaugural Indiana Roundtable on Mental Health Summit was underway. Crouch helped spearhead the daylong event, which hosted nearly 500 attendees, including mental and behavioral health professionals and business, community, and faith leaders from across Indiana. Crouch moved between meetings, jotting down notes and talking with other attendees between breakout sessions that covered topics from school-based prevention and early intervention, to employee-retention strategies that support mental health, to the role faith communities can play.

When Crouch discusses mental illness, she speaks with urgency. She has her talking points, of course. One in five Hoosiers is living with a mental illness or substance use disorder, she often states. It’s a crisis costing Indiana more than $4 billion a year.

The numbers are eye-opening on their own, but when Crouch puts names and faces to the statistics, it gets personal. She often drives her point home with the phrase, “No family is immune from the disease, including my own.” Indeed, it wasn’t just Crouch’s mother who experienced bouts of anxiety and depression. One of her sisters, her older brother, and her daughter also struggled with mental illness or substance use disorder to varying degrees, with her sister’s struggle leading to her dying by suicide in her early 20s.

Crouch didn’t talk about this publicly until the Covid-19 pandemic drove those issues to the forefront with an unprecedented number of people suddenly grappling with feelings of isolation, loneliness, and loss of control. “We all went through a mental health challenge. It might have been fear, anxiety, or depression,” she says. “But now there’s more awareness and acceptance [of mental health issues].”

Despite the reassurance of shared experience, revealing her family history was initially difficult and uncomfortable. “You’re making public a private part of your life,” she says. At first, she shared bits and pieces of her family history in speeches and news stories, including an extensive interview with thestatehousefile.com in January. Crouch briefly referenced her mother’s depression, her sister’s death, and her brother’s chronic alcoholism. “I have grown up with family members that have suffered with mental illness and addiction, and that is what drove me to be an advocate.”

Here was someone in the public eye—an elected official—revealing private, sensitive information about her life. I wanted to know more. What was it like growing up amid that backdrop? How had it impacted her life and, ultimately, her decision to begin sharing her family story? I asked if she would share more of her personal journey, and she agreed. A month later, I drove to her address in Evansville for what I was sure would be a heavily guarded interview, probably with some public-relations presence in the room.

At her home, I was greeted by her husband, Larry, a retired labor attorney, and their Norfolk terrier, Bubby. But both quickly retreated to a back room while the lieutenant governor and I sat down at the dining room table. Surprisingly, there were no aides nearby to keep tabs on our conversation or “clarify” anything she might say. Over the next three hours, it was just the two of us as she shared the stories from her past—deeply personal and often painful—that explain why she chose to get so involved in mental health and substance abuse issues.

Suzanne Crouch was born in Evansville to Mary and Lawrence “Edgar” Crouch Jr., the second of five children. When she was four years old, her father, a mechanical engineer with International Harvester, transferred to the Chicago plant. Eight years later, he moved his growing family back to Evansville to start his own business, Consumer Concrete Block Products. They lived on the west side of Evansville, an old, working-class area where waves of German immigrants settled in the mid- to late 1800s.

During a driving tour of sites from her Evansville childhood, Crouch showed me three homes where the family had lived. The one they moved into after returning from Chicago was a small four-room house her parents rented so they’d have more money to invest in the new business. Crouch says her parents slept in one bedroom and the four girls in another. Her brother Larry, the eldest sibling and only boy, was in the basement. Though money was tight, the kids attended 12 years of Catholic school. Crouch remembers her mom sewing clothes and stretching meals to squirrel away every penny she could.

She recalls her childhood as normal but not always easy. “I was really tall—5-foot-8—in grade school,” she says. “It was painful because you want to fit in, and I didn’t.” Her classmates made fun of her, calling her the Jolly Green Giant. When she told her dad about the razzing, he instructed her to turn it into a joke. “Don’t let them know it bothers you,” he said. So she began responding to the taunts with a hearty, “Ho, ho, ho!” mimicking the canned vegetable brand’s mascot’s catchphrase, and the teasing stopped.

Her brother looked out for her, as well, but Crouch says he could also “be a bit of a bully.” Once when she was around six years old, he began picking on her. She warned him, “If you don’t stop, I’m going to cold-cock you.” He stuck out his chin and told her to go ahead and try. “So I hauled off and cold-cocked him, knocked him to the ground, and ran like heck,” she laughs. “He quit bothering me after that.” Crouch says those experiences taught her not only to stand up for herself but also to be more accepting of people who are different.

After graduating from Mater Dei High School in 1970, Crouch attended the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville because her dad had insisted his college-bound children spend their first year of school in town. Crouch transferred to Purdue University the following year and majored in political science. Her sister Nancy, 18 months younger, joined her in West Lafayette two years later to pursue a degree in English. Crouch describes Nancy as a quiet, kind, and gentle soul who was artistic and loved to write. But the family soon discovered Nancy had been silently struggling with depression. During her first year at Purdue, she attempted to take her own life and was admitted to a mental health hospital for a few weeks.

No one saw it coming, but her parents thought the incident could have been prompted by a recent head injury stemming from a car wreck that happened as she and Crouch were driving to West Lafayette. The driver in front of them slammed on the brakes, and the cars collided. Nancy smacked her head on the dashboard and broke a cheekbone.

Nancy’s doctors, however, diagnosed her as manic-depressive, which is now referred to as bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes mood swings ranging from mania to depression and that can be managed with medication and counseling. The family attended one counseling session to help them understand Nancy’s condition. After that, there was no further discussion of it. “We just kind of blamed it on the car wreck and had no real knowledge of mental illness at that time,” Crouch says. “We just assumed she’d get better.”

She didn’t. Upon returning to Purdue that fall, Nancy attempted suicide a second time—and then a third time, which resulted in her death. When Crouch later read Nancy’s journals, she saw “what a dark place” her sister was in. But the family didn’t talk about it back then, which was not unusual for that era. It was years before Crouch began delving into Nancy’s death and other life-altering events. Tragedy would strike the family several more times. Crouch’s sister Shannon, who had been living with Crouch and her husband, died in a car wreck in December of 1980 at the age of 22. In October 2022, Crouch also lost her brother Larry to alcohol-related illness. He was 72, divorced, and estranged from his family. While he was “off-the-charts smart,” according to Crouch, he essentially “drank himself to death. He had the gene.”

Yet, the lowest point in Crouch’s life involved her daughter, Courtney. A good student throughout high school, she was accepted at a prestigious northeastern university. She dropped out less than two months later, the result of heavy drinking and skipping class. (Now 36, Courtney says she can trace her troubles back to a time in high school, when she lost someone close to her to cancer and began drinking to numb the pain.)

Courtney returned home after dropping out and began seeing a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. Intent on returning to school, she got a scholarship to a university in New Orleans. But once there, she began binge drinking again. Her parents pulled her out of school and got her into a series of facilities and treatment centers to help her overcome what was determined to be Stage 4 alcoholism—the point at which a person loses control over drinking and their body needs alcohol to function, according to a widely used measure called the Jellinek Curve. Her mom (a state legislator at the time) recalls attending a parents’ weekend at a residential treatment center in Florida, during which parents were asked to share how they felt. “I said I felt hopeless,” Crouch says. “I just remember feeling that way.”

But today, Courtney is 16 years sober. Having quit before she turned 21, she’s happy to say that she has “never had a legal drink.” She credits her parents for being so supportive and is proud that her mom is “being vulnerable” in using her platform to give others the opportunity to seek help. “Mental illness does not discriminate. It’s not something you do to yourself. It’s inherited and can be managed,” Courtney says. “If you’re a diabetic, you take insulin. If you’re bipolar, you take medicine, as well.”

While Crouch escaped the afflictions and demons that haunted several members of her family, her life was profoundly affected by a traumatic brush with death in the 1970s. A newly married realtor in her mid-20s, she received a call late one Friday afternoon from a man who said he was an executive with a large local company who was considering a move to Evansville. He wanted to see some homes but had to fly out early the next morning. Did she have time that evening to give a new client the lay of the land?

Excited by the opportunity, Crouch said sure. She picked him up in front of a hotel on that rainy night and showed him several properties. But as they drove down one country road, the situation suddenly turned terrifying. “He pulled out a gun,” Crouch recalls. “He put it to my head, cocked it, and said, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way.’ My life literally flashed before my eyes.”

Filled with panic, Crouch knew she had only one chance to get away. She asked if he would put his gun down on the floorboard and help her remove her raincoat. When he did so, Crouch threw the coat over his head and bolted out of the car. As she ran down a gravel road in high heels, the man gave chase but stopped after she tried to kick him in the groin. She kept running up an embankment and across a corn field to a house with its lights on—the home of a deputy sheriff. She was out of breath but safe. Her assailant took off in her car and got away.

Many months later while thumbing through mug shots of suspects picked up for similar crimes elsewhere, Crouch recognized her attacker. He was being held in another city on multiple charges of rape and at least two murders in several states. His M.O. sounded chillingly familiar. “He would pick a city, go there, and get the realtor book,” Crouch says.

The assault shattered Crouch’s sense of safety. When her husband was away on business, she would place dinner knives in the narrow space between the door jamb and the top of the front door. If someone tried to break into her apartment, the knives would fall to the floor, and she’d hear the commotion and grab the large butcher knife stowed beneath her mattress. She never learned what happened to the man who attacked her (though she hopes and presumes he was convicted and sentenced). Eventually, the incident became a distant memory.

When Crouch looks back on the things that have happened in her life—from the early loss of a loved one, to her family’s struggles with addiction, to her own horrifying near-miss—she doesn’t ask, “Why me?” Instead, she figures, “Why not me?”

Her mother lived to be 91, long enough to see Crouch sworn in as lieutenant governor in 2017. It was a few more years before Crouch found her voice and decided to share her family story. Now, people come up to her with their own stories about loved ones lost to addiction or mental illness. “Even legislators have started to share part of their stories,” she says. “I think that’s how we start on this journey of recovery, by just talking about it and normalizing it.”

The post Out Of Darkness appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Photo by Tony Valainis

Like many Carmelites, you’re not native to the area. What attracted you to the community when you moved here in 2007?

I was working on a project at IU Health North while living in the Lawrence and Geist area, and my son was getting ready to go to kindergarten. I was impressed with the Carmel community and just wanted him to grow up here. It reminded me a lot of home. I grew up in a tiny town in Michigan. One town. One school. A lot of community pride.

What has outgoing Mayor Jim Brainard gotten right? What has he gotten wrong?

He’s done a phenomenal job growing a community that has so much vitality to it, and has been a magnet for people to move, both businesses and residents. I don’t think he’s done anything wrong, per se, but I think there’s just a lot of opportunity. In local government, you don’t have the resources to do everything you want all at one time. You have to make choices. There’s an opportunity to engage residents in a different conversation with local leaders. There’s an opportunity to invest inside the walls of City Hall.

What are some of those opportunities?

It’s always referred to as “Jim’s vision.” It should be referred to as the community’s vision. People want to be more engaged. They want to be more engaged in restaurants and street life, and have a say in where their kids grow up and what kind of experience they have. That’s a key initiative for sure. And we want to use data for more informed decision-making.

Does Carmel have enough affordable housing stock, particularly as more and more service workers flock to an increasingly service-based economy?

Currently, they have a wide variety of housing options for everybody who wants to call Carmel home. And that’s just one segment of what we need to provide the community.

But do we have enough?

I think we have opportunities to expand that more. There’s a 99-unit building [in Midtown] going in, and 20 percent of that is going to be affordable housing.

Are you concerned about the national trend that’s playing out in Carmel of investors buying single-family homes?

I think what is so special about Carmel is we have really strong neighborhoods, something I’d like to make sure we keep that way. And so when you get a neighborhood with 30 percent corporate rentals, and you don’t know your neighbors because they might be an out-of-state, individual renter or corporate owner, they’re not here to see that. The grass is six inches tall or there are shingles missing on the house. And so there’s just not as great of property maintenance. And some neighbors have little kids and don’t want an Airbnb next to them when people come and go. I want neighbors to be in love with their community.

Do you think the social media service Nextdoor has made neighborhoods closer together or driven them further apart?

I would say a little bit of both. It’s provided transparency about your neighbors, that’s for sure. I think the good thing about Nextdoor is it’s not quite as anonymous as Twitter where it’s some nameless, faceless [entity].

In the parlance of Parks & Recreation, has Carmel earned its reputation as a kind of “Eagleton,” the hoity-toity suburb that sees itself as better than an inferior Pawnee?

I think it’s probably slightly unfair, because it’s a caricature. And it doesn’t do justice to people who live here and care about the community. Carmel is a city built on excellence, and that should attract a wide swath of people.

Do you identify with Leslie Knope?

No. I think I’m more of a wonk.

Why are you a better candidate than your Republican opponent, Kevin “Woody” Rider?

Compared to nobody, just in general, I’m prepared. I spent the last several years working on my executive resume. I have marketing and management experience, operations, and HR. So, whenever an opportunity came up like this, I’d be prepared. I’m proven. I’ve spent 11 years performing at a high level on the city council, learning the finance side of things inside and out, and serving my residents to the best of my ability. No one who’s going to enter this race will have that combination of real-world experience with city council experience.

Carmel is increasingly becoming a blue island in still-red Hamilton County. As a Republican, how do you govern a city that is becoming increasingly dominated by voters who may be of a different party? 

You listen a lot. I think that’s key and paramount to being a good leader. And I also think that, again, you stay in your lane. That lane is delivering really high-quality services to residents.

Who are some mayors—here in Indiana or elsewhere—who you would seek to emulate if elected?

I think from a pragmatic standpoint, I really respect what [Fishers] Mayor [Scott] Fadness has done next door, because he’s tried to stay out of the politics and focused more on the operations, and I respect that highly.

Mayor Brainard spent a lot of time trying to make Carmel a walkable city. Is there room to improve when it comes to mass transit as you think about potentially linking the city to Indianapolis?

It’s something I get asked regularly about. I think we have to evaluate all the opportunities and look at a cost-benefit ratio. I think my big concern is any kind of large capital investment, especially right now when transit is changing so much. I look at the investments Indianapolis and the state of Indiana and the federal government have made in Indianapolis, and I worry that in five or six years it can be completely undone by driverless cars.

Does Carmel have too much debt?

No. As a city councilor who’s looked closely at the finances, it’s all scheduled debt. There are not things out there or a time—as some residents like to say—“when the chickens come home to roost.” I don’t know what the “chickens” are, but we’re not gonna have any surprises.

Carmel, in some circles, has a negative reputation when it comes to race relations. Is Carmel diverse enough?

I think what’s really interesting about Carmel is that we look at the kids that are in our schools, there are about 50 different languages spoken at home. I think that’s incredible. And we are quickly becoming more of an international city. I look forward to seeing that diversity grow.

Carmel is somewhat famous—infamous?—for how its citizens stake out spots for the Fourth of July Parade days before the actual event. What is the optimal number of days to save your spot prior to the morning of the parade?

I don’t think there’s a limit. Go for it.

The answer to this next question could be the end of your mayoral quest. What are some of your favorite Carmel restaurants?

Anything with a good wine list. 

The post Q&A With Carmel Mayoral Candidate Sue Finkam appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Photo by Jay Goldz

As a Democrat, you’ll be severely outnumbered in the Indiana Senate if you’re elected. What do you hope your role will be?

My roles as a teacher, principal, and parent have prepared me well to be in situations where I’m with folks who I don’t always agree with. At the end of the day, we have to come to a consensus to get anything done. So I feel like the work I’ve done in the past has prepared me for that. The other thing is that the majority of the Republicans come from smaller cities and rural communities. Well, I’m originally from Fort Wayne, and I have family who live in smaller towns nearby. I also did student teaching in Martinsville and Columbus, so I feel like I’m confident in my ability to build relationships in those areas. We want a lot of the same things. We want our women and babies to be healthy. We want strong schools and well-paying jobs. I’ll make it my job to build relationships and find common ground.

What specific sorts of legislation would you like to work toward, both long and short term?

Let’s talk about long term first, because I’m planning on being there for a while. I see my role as one that Black women in politics do well, which is building consensus and shaking up stagnant systems. That, and turning out voters. But it takes time to pull out voters in places where turnout is low. I see my long-term goal as being one that supports Democrats winning at the top of the ticket again. I’m doing the work to pull out voters here on the ground in Marion County and across the state.

So that’s your long game. What about the short term?

I would like to get some work done around the issue of pedestrian deaths. That’s something I’m very passionate about. Here in Marion County, we have had more pedestrian deaths so far this year than we did in all of last year. It’s a major issue. I’ve been researching what other states and municipalities do to decrease the number of pedestrian deaths at intersections. Also, making sure we have well-funded schools is important to me. The legislation we put forth about education needs to help us recruit and retain teachers.

I understand that, if you’re elected, you’ll keep working for Indianapolis Public Schools?

I’m not a principal anymore, but I still plan on working for IPS in more of a strategic-planning role. During the legislative session, I’ll have the opportunity to go part time with the school district.

How will being a legislator differ from watching over a bunch of schoolkids?

If you’re trying to get me to say that some of my colleagues might act like kindergartners, I’m not going to say that. What I will say is that there’s a lot of overlap between what I’ve done in my prior role and building community and consensus.

Do you see a way for Democrats to win back a legislative majority in this polarized political climate?

I certainly see a path for Democrats to have a stronger voice in the state legislature. I think we’re on that path right now, because folks want to make sure that the issues they care about, like women’s health and strong schools, are protected and not taken away. And they’re seeing that the party that’s supporting them is the Democratic Party. When elected officials are not voting the will of the people, voters notice and will start to vote differently.

Do you think support for abortion rights might increase the Democratic Party’s power in Indiana?

I think it has been noticed that our Indiana Legislature has proven they are more willing to create legislation that takes away freedoms rather than protects them. The women’s healthcare issue—and abortion is healthcare—is definitely a wakeup call for the people of Indiana.

Was there a particular moment when the idea of a political career clicked for you?

I think it has always been in my DNA. In high school, I was voted most likely to become the first woman president. I’ve always wanted to help make laws. Then life intervened, and I had my school job and family. But politics was always in the back of my mind. At a conference I attended, the speaker asked every woman in the audience to run, and it was really powerful. At that moment, I thought, I need to get serious about this. I started working on other campaigns and volunteering, then I reached out to other elected officials and asked them to mentor me. When the newly redistricted maps came out, I knew that was the moment to jump in. Because when I saw the map, I saw that these were my people—these were the families I’d been serving.

Usually, a Democratic Party candidate is endorsed for each district, and then the other competitors bow out. But when you weren’t selected, neither you nor three other candidates for this district left the field. Why?

Isn’t it wonderful when our democratic process is truly democratic? I was principal of an international school where we talked about civic engagement, and I thought, How could I say that I’m going to drop out of a race and not give the people an opportunity to vote, and then go to work the next day and talk to kids about the importance of civic engagement and voting—especially if I didn’t agree with the way it was being done? The other candidates and I just felt that it was important to allow the will of the people to be heard. And the people spoke.

Anything in particular about your campaign strategy that set you apart?

I could get very nerdy, running into the weeds and talking all day about our strategy. In a nutshell, we targeted specific voters in various specific precincts. We had, say, our top 150 voters in each precinct, and we wanted to make sure we had seven “touches” with each one, through mail, phone calls, targeted social media ads, personalized postcards, and knocking on their doors.

I understand you pounded on a lot of doors yourself. Was there ever a point when you wondered if it might be easier just to go home?

I had quotas of how many doors I wanted to hit each day. I would go out with a partner during the day, and whatever doors I didn’t get to during the day, I would go back after dinner and visit. One evening, my 13-year-old daughter came along. I had like 40 more doors to knock on, and the rain started to pour. I could tell my daughter was miserable, and I just wanted to get in the car and go home. I looked at her, and she said, “We can do it. We can do hard things.” And we hit those last doors. I think that only three people were home, but we had some really good conversations with people on their porches. But my 13-year-old kept me going that day. My goodness, it was hard.

You’ve been called the future of the Democratic Party. How does that sit with you?

It’s kind, but also just too much. Every single day I’m with the children and the families who are the future of the Democratic Party. I’m just one person who has an army of people behind her. The future of the Democratic Party in Indiana is every single person coming out and working together.

Do you have any aspirations to be more than a state legislator?

I feel really blessed that the first office that I’m running for is the office that I aspire to be in. I’ve always said that I want to be in the Statehouse because the issues I care the most about are state issues. I think this is the job for me. Now, if President Obama had called and asked me to be Secretary of Education, I would have taken that. But that’s the only other job I would have accepted.  

The post Q&A With State Senate Candidate Andrea Hunley appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Executive Summary. “President Mitch Daniels” was a title no small portion of establishment Republicans imagined for the former Indiana governor in 2011. It just so happened they expected him to be working from the West Wing—not Westwood, the 1932 English Tudor where the president of Purdue University traditionally lives. In the decade that passed at Purdue, Daniels—nicknamed “the Blade” by George W. Bush while serving as his budget director—famously froze tuition every academic year, set fundraising records, and oversaw a massive expansion on the main campus at West Lafayette.

Power Player. Daniels’s announced departure shocked the campus. Adored by many students but sometimes criticized by the faculty, Daniels revealed in June that Mung Chiang, who currently serves as dean of engineering and executive vice president for strategic initiatives, would succeed him after an internal search process and no public or faculty input.

Golden Rule. Daniels governed Purdue like a candidate running for office. While campaigning for governor, Daniels filmed a reality show that showed him doing folksy things and sleeping in people’s guest bedrooms across the state. As president, he took a similar tack: He mingled with students, worked out in the campus recreation and wellness center, and rode the school’s “couch cart”—literally a motorized sofa—into Ross-Ade Stadium for the campus’s 2021 graduation.

Photo by Darron Cummings/AP Photo

He’s Running. Maybe. Almost the minute Daniels announced his retirement, speculation about what he would do next began. Allies such as former Angie’s List CEO, Daniels’s campaign manager Bill Oesterle, and close personal adviser Mark Lubbers floated his political return. Cheri Daniels, who urged her husband not to mount a 2012 presidential run, is said to have warmed to the idea of a political comeback.

Watch the Ball. If he doesn’t reconsider politics, Daniels could find a home in sports. At Purdue, he wrote a secret letter to keep football coach Jeff Brohm from leaving for Louisville. He advocated for banning “IU sucks” chants and argued that the Old Oaken Bucket game should be moved to Lucas Oil Stadium. A Dodgers fan—he picked them as his team when he was 5 for no apparent reason—Daniels has been bandied about as a future commissioner of Major League Baseball. Bush, the former owner of the Texas Rangers and connected to the league, once broached the idea with him, but nothing came of it at the time. Daniels has also been mentioned as the head of the NCAA when Mark Emmert steps down next year, following in the footsteps of Myles Brand, who went to the NCAA after leaving the presidency of Indiana University. “Whoever takes that job, and I’m not sure anyone could deliver this, should say, ‘I’ve got to have the following authority that doesn’t exist today and never has,’” Daniels told Howey Politics Indiana. “‘I’ve got to have this broad remit here.’ Otherwise, I don’t think anyone could.”

Mayor Mitch? Among the next acts mentioned by Daniels’s allies: mayor of Indianapolis. Daniels, who owns a home in Carmel, would have to establish residency one year before he would take office. In the same way, he saw helming Purdue as an opportunity to reform the troubled American research university as an institution, Lubbers says he thinks Daniels could turn around the American city. It would also provide a storybook ending to Daniels’s career—he began government service as an intern and administrative assistant to then-Mayor Richard Lugar in 1971. His Princeton University thesis? It was titled “The Politics of Metropolitanization: City-County Consolidation in Indianapolis, Indiana.” 

The post What Comes Next For Mitch Daniels? appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Photo courtesy Amanda Vera

EMILY STYRON had herself a week. The Democratic first-term mayor of Zionsville, who won her November 2019 election in the ruby-red suburb by a mere 88 votes, went on an expletive-laden Facebook tear in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers last week.

“Fuck you,” she told a commenter. “I am so sick and tired of the stupid, useless rhetoric by jack asses like you when it comes to gun regulation. Fucking sick and tired of mass murders if (sic) OUR OUR FUCKING CHILDREN, It’s time for the majority who know that gun permits and banning automatic weapons is COMMON FUCKING SENSE.”

When the commenter asked whether she was an English major in college, Styron replied: “english and political science. And the fucking mayor of this town.”

Guy Relford, a right-wing gun advocate and Zionsville resident, himself no stranger to F-bombs, took a dig at the mayor’s language.

What happened next: People reflexively took to their partisan corners. Indiana GOPers tried to make hay of her comments, finding a political target ahead of her re-election bid next year, pointing out they violated the town’s own social media policy. “The comments from the mayor are disgusting and beneath the office she holds,” Luke Thomas, a spokesperson for the Indiana Republican Party, told The Indianapolis Star. (This, after years of never similarly calling out former President Donald Trump for his language.)

Local reporters at nearly every outlet swarmed Styron for interviews. Then the nationals called: The Washington Post and The New York Times. One influential Indiana Democrat told me they wanted Styron’s words printed on a T-shirt.

On Wednesday, running 20 minutes behind schedule because of media interviews, Styron sat down with me to talk about the imbroglio that followed, whether there’s a double standard when it comes to women cursing in political speech, and whether Democrats nationally have a so-called “wokeness problem,” as James Carville has said. The Democratic strategist is headlining Hoosier Democrats’ biennial Big Dem Weekend on June 17–18 at the Indiana Convention Center.

Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you and what were you doing when you posted these comments? 

I woke up. I really didn’t sleep well the night before, to be honest, and I just woke up raging mad—just at everything.

My oldest child was just getting out of elementary school when Sandy Hook happened. My youngest child is just getting out of fourth grade.

Fundamentally, I feel like our country has got to fix this long-standing issue with what does it mean to have sensible, safe gun ownership in our communities.

I’m a mom. I’m a mayor. I think about the community that I serve. And I think about that mayor of that latest community in Texas and how horrific it is to not have more tools in our toolbox to prevent senseless tragedies like that from happening.

I’m a passionate person. I’m not a demure wallflower kind of person. And I came to work just really, really, really mad. And all I could think of was: How do we make this the last time? How do we make their lives mean something in terms of actionable policies and legislation that introduce more sensible requirements for gun ownership and help make everyone in our churches, our schools, and everywhere safer? And I had posted some things on my personal Facebook account.

I had a local business owner who was also posting similar kinds of things and I just reacted to that. And then, you know, posts from another person with that narrative that I can’t tolerate much anymore: It’s mental illness that kills them. It’s not guns and blah, blah, blah, blah.

I responded with all of that anger, rage, and frustration, at that moment. I responded like a mom, like a mayor, like a human who is just completely at the end of listening to these old tired excuses for why we don’t protect our communities better from gun violence.

Where were you? 

I was in Zionsville in my office. 

Had you had any interactions with the commenter before? Is there some backstory?

No idea who he was. 

And what was your first reaction when you saw Guy Relford’s Twitter post? 

I don’t know that I ever saw that. And I don’t know who that guy is. What does he do? 

He’s a Zionsville resident and radio host and gun advocate. 

But on which station?

He’s the Gun Guy at Emmis-owned WIBC on Saturdays from 5–7 p.m. He’s used language similar to yours on social media before. Do you think that there’s a double standard about what a woman can’t say in political speech that a man can? 

There are perceptions of what women should be in all ways that are different from perceptions of what men should be. I think that is probably ingrained in our DNA. I don’t really fault folks too much for it.

I grew up in North Carolina. I had the best dad in the world. I’ve worked in police departments and fire departments. I’ve worked in a lot of places with men. I was in an IT company where, for a long time, I was the only woman on staff. I don’t have any trouble having good conversations with a lot of different men and a lot of different positions that are more tailored toward men in general.

I think that I want to be really clear. For me, my strong reaction that day is all surrounded by what happened in Texas and what has happened for years and years and years and years and years. I reacted from a point of just extreme anger at our inability to elect politicians and legislators who are going to implement sensible gun sense laws across our country.

I want to read you the statement of an Indiana Republican, Mark Warner, a former staffer for Mike Pence. On Twitter, he wrote: “I promise you if this was an Indiana Republican Mayor, the Dems and the media would be calling for his/her resignation, but so far I’ve seen them celebrate and encourage it. It’s disgusting and isn’t needed, especially from our local leaders.” What’s your reaction to that? 

Well, my reaction is: How did he feel about President Trump’s language? What I suspect is, they see the enormous outcry of support for what I said, and that makes them nervous. So they’re working to try to create divisiveness in our community and further inflame emotions. And that’s unfortunate, but they’re politicians. What if this had been at Eagle Elementary here in Zionsville, right up the road? What would the appropriate response have been?

Now I’ll read you a text that I got from a fellow prominent Indiana Democrat about your comments: “She’s a good person, she probably went too far. But the other side are bullies. So, it was about time someone smack them.” I also heard from another Indiana Democrat who said that they want what you said on a T-shirt.

There has been such a widespread concurrence to the sentiment, not necessarily the language, but the sentiment.

Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, a fellow Democratic mayor who is running against Republican Sen. Todd Young for the U.S. Senate in 2022, is a former Navy submariner. I asked him this week who could win in a swear-off between you and him.

I actually kind of love you. That’s fantastic.

He told me he thought, given his Navy background, he could win.

I concede to the statesman from the North.

Closer to home in Zionsville, you have a tough re-election fight next year. You’ve butted heads with the Republican City Council there. Does this Facebook post put you at risk in a Republican-leaning town?

I want to say that I am a human being and a mom before I’m a politician. I’m also a damn good mayor. And you can quote me on that. I am going to let the voters of this fine town decide which direction they want to move.

In Indiana, local officials like you are preempted from instituting firearm restrictions. Should that change?

I think it’s tricky to have the type of real substantive legislation that would bring a safer community at a community level, at a local level. I think if there’s change, it has to happen at a higher level than the municipal level. What I have called out for is that we elect policymakers at the state and federal levels who can actually create potentially meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence in our country.

In July, a new Indiana law allows most people over the age of 18 to carry a handgun in public without a permit. What’s your position on that?

I agree with the state police chief, and it’s ridiculous. It makes our local public safety officers’ jobs more dangerous and more complicated. It is—I won’t say any expletive—but it is a really dumb thing that the state has done.

You’re a blue mayor in a red county in a red state. Some national Democrats believe your party has a wokeness problem, taking politically correct positions to a degree that alienates the average voter, even sympathetic ones. Is the party doing a good enough job meeting voters where they’re at?

I am going to say I think both parties are always vulnerable to drinking their own Kool-Aid. And that any public servant, any politician who serves their constituents, their constituents are all the people in their district—not just the ones that voted for them. I believe that mayors are much better at serving in that capacity because we deal with the nuts and bolts of government service.

I have great rapport with the Republican mayors who are here in Central Indiana. I’ve learned a lot from them. We need people willing to make compromises and reach across the aisle. I think of [the late Indiana Republican] Sen. Lugar and his peer [former Rep. Lee Hamilton]. They were amazing statesmen who represented our state so remarkably, and they were friends. Why can’t we have more of that?

I worked for a Republican mayor in the ’90s—former Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith—as deputy director of Indy Parks. He was a wonderful leader. He didn’t ask, “What party are you in?” or “How do you vote?” He just said, “Are you ready to do the work?”

Let’s talk about Zionsville. There’s speculation that Carmel, its neighbor to the east, is the real-world equivalent of the fictional Eagleton from NBC’s Parks and Rec—the snootily wealthy town to more blue-collar Pawnee. But isn’t that more Zionsville than Carmel?

No, Zionsville is 100 percent Pawnee. I mean, for God sakes, I just told you I was deputy director of Indy Parks. I am Leslie Knope.

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SEVENTH DISTRICT Rep. André Carson makes history this week when, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee’s subcommittee on counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and counter proliferation, he presides over only the second public hearing in U.S. history about the origins and nature of Unidentified Flying Objects—or, as they’re referred to in government circles these days, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs. Part of the reason for the renewed interest is recent video footage of Tic Tac–shaped objects playing high-speed games of chicken with U.S. Navy fighter jets. Carson, who’s been interested in UFOs/UAPs since childhood, has quite a few questions he’d like answered. And so do we.

What do you hope the hearing accomplishes?

This is something I’ve been working towards for a long time, and something many other people have wanted as well. For a very long time, this subject was relegated to science fiction. But I believe UAPs present a very real risk and the Intelligence Committee has a responsibility to investigate it. As chairman of the C3 committee (counterintelligence, counter proliferation, and counterterrorism), I think conducting this hearing will give us a chance to share some information with the public.

What got you interested in the topic?

I’ve always been fascinated by it. When I was 16, Time-Life Books had a series called “Mysteries of the Unknown.” I couldn’t afford the whole series, but the first book was free. So I ordered it, and the first book was about UFOs. From there, I tried to learn more. And of course I was an ’80s baby and watched a lot of science-fiction movies. But coming from a military family, I know there have been questions about this from activists throughout the years. I want to be able to present an open hearing—the first one in 50 years, since Project Blue Book. But not in a way that gives our enemies any clues or cues into what we’re doing personally as a country.    

How would our enemies glean anything useful from this?

I think that UAPs have captured the imagination and the interest of the American public. They expect and deserve to know that the government and the intel community are seriously evaluating and responding to these potential security risks. Especially those we don’t fully understand. And there are about 2 to maybe 6 percent of these sighting that cannot be explained. They aren’t drones or aircraft or balloons or weather phenomena. That percentage of unexplained sightings must be addressed publicly.

So probably less talk about cattle mutilations and possible abductions, and more about recent encounters between UAPs and, say, U.S. fighter jets?

After the public hearing, we will follow up a few hours later with a secret hearing. But from what I’m understanding, a lot of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle want to raise points about reports they’ve heard from their own constituents. So we could go anywhere. I want us to go different places in our allotted timeframe, while also retaining the credibility of the subcommittee.

Twenty or 30 years ago, chairing a hearing like this might have been more problematic, because whoever got the job would be afraid he or she would be laughed at. Has that thinking changed?

Yes, and I think in a positive way. We have people in the media and in the state who are willing to report these things. There’s been a stigma attached to it, but we’re talking about witnesses who are commercial and military pilots. Folks in the military and law enforcement who have been ridiculed and prevented from advancing in organizations because of what they’ve reported.

Popular opinion says that UAPs could be anything from secret aircraft operated by the U.S. or an adversary, all the way to extraterrestrials. What’s your view?

Look, I don’t think we’re alone in the universe. The laws of probability suggest we aren’t, but we just don’t know. It’s worth noting that the majority of these sightings happen around military installations. Many of us have seen YouTube videos, and obviously many of those are not credible. But there are others that seem far more credible, with real audio attached to them. What might we be looking at? These are questions we want to ask, and as chair of the committee, I’m going to give my colleagues the ability and opportunity to ask them.

Have you ever seen a possible UAP?

I’ve seen things in the sky on a couple of occasions, but it could be explained as a shooting star or even an aircraft traveling at high speed. However, I’m open to the idea that it might, in some cases, be something else.

Your committee already had a secret meeting last year on this topic. Can we assume, because of this public meeting and the secret one that will follow it, that you didn’t get all the information you hoped for that first time?

Yes.

Is the interest in UAPs bipartisan?

There’s been so much interest among both Republicans and Democrats that I think this hearing will be bipartisan. That doesn’t mean that when the cameras come out, there might not be some pageantry or posturing. But that comes with the territory. What I’ve found is that Republicans have a genuine interest in this, and they’re asking the tough questions just like we are. I hope to have the spirit of bipartisanship, at least for an hour or two while this hearing takes place. They have questions too, so here we are.

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