2 weeks Ago
Well, ummm, uhhh, excrement. When Karen Tallian was elected chair of the Indiana Democratic Party earlier this month, she became the second woman in history and the first former legislator in modern times to assume the title. Tallian takes the helm with the party knee deep in .
.. excrement.
Its brand in rural Indiana is toxic, with some 20 counties voting for President Donald Trump between 75% and 80% after the party scheduled some 40 town halls in rural counties in 2023. Indiana Democrats hold no Statehouse constitutional offices while mired for seven consecutive cycles in General Assembly superminority status. It hasn't won a statewide race since 2012, and its hold on county courthouse offices has been decimated.
There were 350,000 fewer Democratic voters in Indiana in 2024 compared to 2020 when there were female nominees for president and governor. The party’s lack of success tormented the Ogden Dunes Democrat. When she resigned from the Indiana Senate on Nov.
1, 2021, she expressed frustration at being in the superminority. “After 16 years, I’ve had enough,” she told the NWI Times. “The process has become degraded.
” Tallian said the party must rebrand. "That’s a natural evolution of where people are," she told me on Tuesday. "Showing up is like a threshold activity.
You have to do that. But that’s not enough. We have to show people first of all what Democrats are doing.
There are two phases to this. There is the anti-Trump, anti-administration, anti-Republican sentiment, and then there is the 'What can we do that is positive?' We’re going to be helped on the first path by what is going on in Washington." Should the Indiana Democratic Party change its name, or broaden it like they do in Minnesota where it is the Democratic Farm Labor Party? "Well, I don’t know about that," Tallian responded.
"I don’t know if I have the ability to do that. But we certainly have the ability to focus on that — even if we don’t change our name, we have to be able to call ourselves the party of farmers, the party of labor. I always had a good relationship with labor when I was in the General Assembly, so they’re talking to me.
They want to be back at the table." Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts President Trump carried Indiana with 59% last November, up from 57% in 2020 and 2016. But Tallian sees the chaos enveloping Washington and NATO as potential openings to Trump fever abating.
In the 24 hours before writing this column, President Trump slapped 25% in tariffs on all autos and trucks with foreign parts, potentially roiling one of Indiana's flagship industries as well as trade with our biggest export nations Canada and Mexico. Trump is seeking to impose a new port fee on Chinese-built vessels. Mike Koehne of the American Soybean Association told Hoosier Ag Today, this will greatly benefit South American growers.
“We’re just not going to be competitive in the market anymore,” Koehne said. “It’s going to kind of knock us out.” Tallian said of Trump, "I hope it happens before he leaves the scene.
I hope it happens in 2026." How is Gov. Mike Braun doing in his first three months? "He's doing what's predictable.
The Republican reaction to most things is deregulate and cut taxes," Tallian said. "So from that standpoint, I don't think he's doing anything different. I was on the state Budget Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee for a decade.
I know how the money works. If you cut property taxes, there's not going to be any money left for city and county governments. Every Republican governor has wanted to do it.
" What's her take on Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, the self-described "Christian nationalist"? "I would really like to say I'm amused, but it's not funny," she said.
"To see somebody who is that far to the right sort of come into the Indiana Senate Republican caucus and think they're going to run things is kind of amusing. They are just not letting him.” On March 12, Secretary of State Diego Morales was paying tribute at an Indiana Statehouse ceremony to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is widely acknowledged as an autocratic strongman or a fascist.
Attorney General Todd Rokita also spoke glowingly of Orbán. These Republicans routinely describe Indiana Democrats as "socialists" and "Communists" who "don't love their country." Should Chairwoman Tallian flag this emerging fascist wing of the GOP? "I'm not going to throw around words like ‘fascist,’ but I will point out to people that when the President announced he was getting rid of the Department of Education, there were four governors in Washington with him and one of them was ours," she said.
The new chair stands in things, knee deep. Karen Tallian faces a myriad of challenges. "One of them is just to figure out why people stay home and don’t vote," she said.
"That is of tremendous importance to me. We fought wars to have that right, and when people don’t show up, that’s just an anathema to me. I can’t figure out why they don’t show up.
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