Coming to terms with end of terms – we portend a change in change
We’ve reached a delicate point not only in the Holcomb Administration but in the general life cycle of state government. We’re not only approaching the end of a governor’s two-term limit, but Indiana has now seen Republican control of the executive branch for 20 years now.
Back in 1988, Indiana Democrats, led by a 32-year-old Evan Bayh (D) looking to succeed a 71-year-old term-limited incumbent, campaigned on a theme of ending “20 years of Republican neglect.” While that may have been a simple mantra for Hoosier voters to comprehend, the reality was a bit more complex.
Voters seemed largely content with the policies of the Bowen and Orr administrations and how the men at the top had led the state through difficult times, from a national energy crisis complicated by the coal strike and record blizzard of 1978 during the Bowen days through a devastating national economic crisis in the early 1980s that decimated the state’s manufacturing industry in a state that had built its economic engine on the traditional factory model.
What Hoosiers did sense back then, however, was that it was time for a change. They could see it in their license branches (the one state entity with which virtually all adult Hoosiers were forced to interact in person, and a key issue for Democrats in the 1984 and 1988 campaigns), and in other state agencies when they were forced to deal with them.
Ranks and file state workers were aging, generally not interested in customer service as we expect it today, and counting the days until they were vested in the state retirement fund. At the executive level, effectively a full generation of Republicans had enjoyed the opportunity to serve in state government, and most had moved on, leaving not much of a bench for John Mutz (R) to staff his potential administration. The best and brightest had served and moved on, unlikely to be enticed back.
On a lesser level, the Orr Administration suffered as well. As top officials left their agency posts, there was a dearth of strong replacements willing to step up and be a top-level agency staffer for just a few months, particularly given the strong gubernatorial run and enthusiasm for the Bayh candidacy. That made it difficult to continue to run state government as it had been for the prior decade, and service suffered, further benefiting the opposition.
Not long afterward, Indianapolis Republicans experienced that phenomenon at the city level.
The streak of Lugar-to-Hudnut-to-Goldsmith beginning in 1967 that generated a golden era of government leaders who migrated to the legal, corporate, and civic arena was at a close, and voters sensed the same degree of ennui among city workers at the ground level, while the top Goldsmith officials moved out of the City-County Building into new adventures. Bart Peterson (D) won his first election in large part because voters believed it was time for a change, even though they had been entirely in line with the changes wrought since the 1970 advent of Unigov (and Market Square Arena, the Hoosier Dome, Victory Field, Union Station, and Circle Centre Mall).
As we saw at the state level in 1988, it was simply time for new blood in Indianapolis about a decade later.
Indiana Democrats, beneficiaries of the 1988 state wave and the 1999 city upheaval, found themselves largely on the flip side of the same equation in 2004, as Republicans accused them of “16 years of Democratic neglect.” Things were a bit more complicated, in that the unexpected late 2003 death of then-Gov. Frank O’Bannon (D) forced changes in state government leadership that would not have occurred if he had lived, and when Joe Kernan (D) succeeded him, it was initially as a lame duck governor, because he was not running for the office. That meant those he called upon to help had to at first consider any state job as temporary, and even when he decided to run for election on his own, Mitch Daniels (R) and his campaign of ideas had begun to capture the minds of Hoosiers (the hearts may have been later to fall in line).
Still, the bottom line remained clear: Gov. Kernan found it tough to staff his 15-month administration with those he might have been able to tap three years earlier . . . and this situation was compounded by the fact that Democrats in 2004 were largely in the same situation as Republicans in 1998: a full generation of Democrats who had been shut out from the 1968-1988 GOP domination had now rotated through state government and were in the private sector, reaping the rewards of their government service at a time when it appeared Democrats had only a tenuous chance of retaining the reins of government.
Today, Governor Eric Holcomb (R) not only faces the imminent (term-limited) end of his tenure and the difficulty that causes in recruiting people to fill vacancies and remain motivated, but Republicans are also at the end of the 20-year cycle that tripped them up in 1988. He also may be up against another factor: An ideologically different Republican candidate and party, which may also render it tougher for him to find those who want to join his team in the event of late-administration vacancies.
Add in the changes dictated by the General Assembly which have provided a disincentive for policymakers – it is more challenging now for agencies to promulgate and defend regulatory policies, and to pursue and prosecute violations – and you could see significant vacancies unfilled in the coming months, as well as more change in both numbers and philosophy than might be expected in an intraparty transfer of power.
What’s changed? Well, how people interact with their state government has radically changed, with customer service a top priority of every agency chief, and little need for in-person interaction between taxpayers and their state government. Whereas “state government” in 1988 was largely equated with the State Office Building (and there was only one such building at the time) and voter impressions were shaped by how poorly the day taken off work to renew license plates in a dingy house or storefront worked out . . . state government today is largely on everyone’s smartphone and the experience is much more patron-friendly.
An argument could also be made that many Hoosiers are also perhaps less interested in government functions than in government getting out of their way and simply enacting policy initiatives they favor.
So, while the period of what the Democrats might again start to refer to as “20 years of Republican neglect” would likely have some traction Back in the Day, we may have finally moved beyond that perspective, and it may no longer be an election day factor.