Bruce Borders, the incumbent for House District 45. (Clayton Baumgarth - WFIU/WTIU)
As part of WTIU/WFIU News’ 2024 election coverage, reporter Clayton Baumgarth invited the three candidates running for Indiana’s 45th House District to discuss their policy positions.
The three candidates are Republicans Bruce Borders, the incumbent, Jeff Ellington, who is running for the office a second time, and Kellie Streeter, a newcomer from northern Knox county.
Indiana’s 45th District consists of Greene and Sullivan counties, and portions of Daviess, Knox and Vigo counties in southwest Indiana.
The conversation with Jeff Ellington can be found here.
The conversation with Kellie Streeter can be found here.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Clayton Baumgarth: So tell us a little bit about your history and politics. What was your entry point into politics?
Bruce Borders: My entry point was way back when I was 28 years old. I was mayor of the City of Jasonville, first Republican actually elected there, I think in 48 years, and I believe I might have been the youngest mayor in the United States at that time. But with the Lord's help, we were able to pull the city out of huge quagmire of debt. With the Lord's help I was at the helm of the city at that time and did most of the work at home on my home computer. We ended up paying the city's debts off 27 years early. And when I left office after eight years, and it was by my choice, not by the voter’s choice, we had over a million dollars in the bank to help rebuild the utilities and so forth. So was it a major turnaround in the city.
CB: Why are you running for House District 45 again?
BB: The bottom line is, I would label myself a conservative in kind of in every sense of the word, both spiritually, or actually not just both, but maybe tri-fashion, spiritually and economically and socially. And the bottom line is, I know there were times that in the past where our party probably was more left leaning than what it is now. And I felt like I've been instrumental in at least, particularly on moral issues, helped steer the party to the right, quite frankly,
CB: What makes you the right candidate for House District 45?
BB: Number one, I show up to work, and when I say I show up to work, the bottom line is, to my knowledge, I've never missed a day the entire time that I've served in the General Assembly. I've never missed a day. I think it may show that there was one day that I missed and the bottom line was that was back when the numbers were real close and a lot of times the Democrats would walk out in order to deny us a quorum. And I was meeting with some constituents in the state house and when the speaker hit the gavel and called the roll call, I was actually meeting with constituents and so never got counted present that day. But that's to my knowledge, the only day that I've missed. It could be one other one. But I mean, I'm talking about all the time that I've served. So I do show up to work, I intently study the bills, and I look at a bill. The first thing is, you know, does it pass biblical muster? And number two, is it constitutional? And number three, is it fair and above board to the taxpayers of the state of Indiana? And, you know, and I'm willing to fight for all of those causes. And to make sure that the bottom line is that, you know, that the taxpayers are being treated fairly, and biblically, and constitutionally.
CB: What do you think are the largest issues facing constituents in District 45?
BB: Well, it's not just issues facing just 45, but…inflation is a huge issue for people and its massive, whether it be just their groceries, or whether it be on their you know, their home payments, whatever. I mean, it's just a big issue. Some of the issues that we're facing as a state which would also impact the people of District 45; We all use I-70, whether we like it or not, we all use it and I-70 is going to need to be rebuilt, there's no question about that. In fact, it needs to go on all the way down to the clay, we do need to add at least one lane in each direction, both east and west. And we're talking from the west side of the state to the east side of the state. And we've got to right now there's a study committee being led by Jeff Thompson, the chairman of Ways and Means that's looking at the way to be able to fund it and build it. And again, you know, all of us, as Hoosiers are impacted by that. In fact, I spoke with a friend of mine who owns farmland down in Sullivan County, she's a farmer there, she and her husband, and she said that, you know, it's gotten to the point where they avoid using I-70, you know, with their farm vehicles, just because of all the ruts and bumps and so forth, so, we know, that's a big issue.
Another major issue is helping our children to catch up on lost education. And what I mean by that, if you look back at the, you know, the COVID crisis that we had, the pandemic I mean, in essence, our children literally missed out on two years of education. And you know, yourself as an educated individual, myself as well, we know that in a general sense, you know, even though a lot of learning is becoming an online learning, there's still nothing that replaces being in that actual classroom structure. And so we're trying to make sure that our children are caught up on that. One of the things that we did is on the reading tests, we now give those in the second grade and if a child is struggling with their reading, the bottom line is we work on remediation to help them grow in their reading. And that's going to be an issue to make up for the lost learning that we've had, and to help children catch up.
And then another big issue, and it's kind of the 800-pound gorilla in the room, has to do with Medicaid. The bottom line is that due to medical inflation that's taking place due to a lot of people simply choosing Medicaid as their as their health insurance plan of choice, what will happen if we don't deal with the growth of Medicaid costs, it will end up consuming in essence all of our budget, or it’ll consume more and more and more of it anyhow to where we're struggling to fund education, struggling to fund law enforcement. You know, struggling to find basically all of the things that we do fund with state government, and then in Medicaid will end up chewing all those up. So that's going to be a major issue in the future as well. In fact, it's not going to be a major issue, it's a major issue today.
CB: How willing are you to we reach across the aisle to work with Democrats on issues faced by your constituents?
BB: Very willing, I mean, some of my best friends in the state house are Democrat colleagues that I work with, I have no problem with that at all. I mean we may have, you know, some differences on some issues, but if you look at most of the bills that passed, the bottom line is that the vast majority of the bills are actually, you know, that they may have an 80 or 90% large group of people, frequently it's 100% that actually vote for the bill. So that's not a difficult thing for me at all.
CB: If you're reelected, what single issue or topic is going to be top of your agenda?
BB: I would say the Medicaid issue…It's like Abraham Lincoln said; one time he made the comment, he said, ‘I confess plainly that I did not control issues, but rather that issues controlled me.’ And that's kind of where we're at sometimes, you know, it's not that we chose an issue that’s going to rise to the top of the food chain, so to speak, but we have to deal with it and Medicaid is most certainly going to be one of the major issues that we are dealing with now and that we will have to deal with in the future.
CB: You're running against Jeff Ellington for the second time now, as well as Kellie Streeter for the first time. What would you say sets you apart from those two candidates?
BB: Honest. I mean, it really is that. The bottom line is this, I'll just be frank with you; Jeff claims that he lives in Bloomfield. Well, my question to him and you can pull it up, in fact, I've got the paperwork right here, why is there no homestead deduction on the house that he claims to live in in Bloomfield, Indiana? I mean, I have my paperwork here as well. I mean, all you have to do is go to Greene County, Indiana property search, and you can pull up an individual's name, you can pull up my name and you can look right where I live. And you know, as a good steward of my own family's money, you know, just for myself and my wife, I would be foolish not to claim a legally allowed homestead exemption because we live there. What I would ask Jeff is, you know, I'm not denying that they're not doing some fixing up and some painting and so forth. But he also has a home here on that road in Bloomington. You know, why is there no homestead deduction on your home and Bloomfield? And to me, the proof is in the pudding.
And it's like I mentioned two years ago, what we discovered was that he was taking a state representative license plates, and he was taking them off of vehicles that were, I think one was the 1973 and the other one I want to say was in the 70s, I can't remember the exact year, but he was actually taking those state representative plates, and putting them, one on a Mercedes Benz and one on a Lexus, much newer vehicles. And by doing that he was avoiding paying, I don't believe he had paid the excise taxes on those vehicles, I guess they were most certainly not plated in the state of Indiana, and that's what they call false and fictitious registration. And so if he wants to argue about not taking a property tax exemption on the house in Bloomfield, if you want to argue that point, my point would be well, why were you not paying the proper taxes at that point in time on the vehicles, and why were you moving plates illegally from one vehicle to another to avoid paying the license plate fees, registration fees, and so forth? And so I think it's just a basic matter of honesty.
There was also a situation where, to my knowledge, it was the only time I ever remember this happening, he was forced to go to the podium and apologize, claiming to have met with elected officials in Monroe County about a bill that he was trying to push, and then they sent a letter to the Speaker of the House at that time, Brian Bosma, and said, ‘hey, this meeting never took place.’ And so he basically got to the mic and said, ‘I'm sorry, there was a misunderstanding,’ whatever. I don't ever remember another situation where an individual was forced to go to the mic and apologize about a meeting that supposedly took place that simply didn't take place, according to other elected officials in Monroe County. The bottom line is Jeff didn't want to run in Monroe County when the maps were redrawn. And so that's why he claimed to have moved to Bloomfield, Indiana. And, you know, again, he still has a very nice home on that road here in Bloomington. And I just, I think it's a matter of basic honesty.
And then on Kellie, she was doing a radio interview and had said that I had never written a bill that became language, or that became statute. That's simply a lie. I mean, there's no other way of saying it than it’s a lie. In fact, one year, I received an award by the Department of Defense for legislation that I introduced, that I wrote, basically, for members of our military. And one of them had to do with if a member of the military was going, for example, going on to active duty, and they had a court case coming up, it moved to the front of the line, so there wasn't any conflict between their active-duty service. And so, again, the Department of Defense named me as Legislator of the Year that year. This year alone I had one law that I actually wrote that became law, and then another one that became part of another bill. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is, if you can't get a hearing on a bill, is to look for a bill that you know, is germane, that has language that will work. And so what it had to deal with was medical workers and helping them with their jobs, and a lot of them who had lost their jobs unnecessarily. So the bottom line was, I worked with Chairman of the Committee who had a bill that that it worked in, and I worked very hard and very long on that language. And it became part of another bill. And so as a result of that, and a lot of medical workers are getting jobs back where they were unnecessarily let go from their jobs. And so, again, she lied about it and, and it's a shame that she chose to go that route.
And then another bill that I have written, that has not become law, it has to do with notifying women the truth about hysterectomies. So there are two sides of that issue. One has to do with hysterectomies, the other one has to do with an oophorectomy. The hysterectomy is the removal of the uterus, the oophorectomy is the removal of the ovaries. And basically what we have found is based on the medical community's own research, is that approximately 97 to 98% of them are unnecessary. There are other alternatives. And when a woman has a hysterectomy, and the removal of their ovaries as well, it's a radical change in their hormones. A lot of times it was loss of vision. Actually, if you want to go to YouTube, you'll see me speaking at an international conference in New York City where people came mostly from all over the nation, but there were people from other nations as well there, that's why I call it an international conference. But you'll see me speaking in New York City on that issue. And she said that I had written a bill that was designed to keep women from getting health treatment without their husband’s consent, and nothing could be a bigger lie than that. The bottom line was, what I actually said in describing it to a number of reporters, was that I wanted to protect women and those who love them, all right, whether it be their husbands, whether it be their fathers or grandfathers whatever, you know, to protect them from a condition that again, if you have a hysterectomy there's, I believe it's a 300% greater chance of having heart trouble. If you have also the removal of the ovaries, there's a 700% greater chance of heart trouble. There's loss of vision, thinning of the hair, loss of oil in the skin, and for her to lie about a condition that hits home, it's a very personal with me because my wife went through that. And then that's how I became an expert on that issue. Nora Coffey, who has the HERS Foundation, which stands for hysterectomy, educational resources and systems, she reached out to me and she and Rick flew in from Philadelphia, they came and met with me, brought me up to speed on it and that's where I learned a lot of what I learned. And these are brilliant people who care deeply about this issue. So for Kellie to lie about something like that, I find that as very disgusting.
And I think another thing that shows the lack of honesty is that she's Vice Chairman of the Knox County Republican Party, all right. Every time we go to a Knox County Republican event, the bottom line is that, like, the other night the meal was $50. You know, I don't know what it cost them for the meal. But regardless, it was $50. And there were a lot of candidates there. And Kellie chose to take a check from the county group that she's a vice chairman of for $2,500. So I called the chairman of the Knox County Republican Party, and I said, ‘I would like a check for $2,500 for my campaign, since she's in a primary, I'm in the same primary, so I would like a check for $2,500 as well.’ And he said, ‘well, we would have to meet on that and vote on that.’ I said, ‘alright, meet on it and vote on it.’ I knew the odds were slim to none that I was going to get that check. Well, then I get a text from him. And it says, ‘we've talked,’ not that we've met, it was within two hours. And so I called him back and I said, ‘I think that's utterly dishonest and contemptible that you would do that, that you would allow her, as vice chairman of a party, to basically in essence, vote as part of a group, even if she didn't vote, which I think she did, but regardless, to write herself a check for $2,500, or to take a check from other Republicans. I just think that's dishonest. And I think it shows some basic character issues there.
CB: Looking back on your current term in this district, is anything you would do differently moving forward into your second term?
BB: No. The bottom line is I felt like a lot of the issues that we that we passed in the last two years, they were what we would call social-moral issues. One was that we stopped transgender surgeries from being performed on minors. And to me that was just completely, to do that to a child is criminal. And another one was basically we said, boys can't take part in sports that are designed as girl-only sports. You know, that was another issue. I mean, we don't just deal with social-moral issues, but those were two of the key issues. One of the issues that I'm being attacked on right now a lot is because I voted for the state's budget, which was not this session but the prior session. But in that budget, what it did is it allowed for indexing of gas taxes. And I just spoke on the way over here with Jeff Thompson, the chairman of Ways and Means. And I said, ‘Jeff, I've been running those numbers,’ I said, ‘to the average Hoosier, alright, on voting for that bill, what will that cost them a year in gas taxes?’ And he said, ‘well, for the average Hoosier, or at least a one income family, we're just talking about a one income family, it would cost them roughly about $25 a year, somewhere in that range.’ And I said, ‘alright, but in that same bill, we also voted to lock into place an income tax reduction, what would that be for the average Hoosier household?’ And he said, ‘probably in the range of around $150 a year.’ And so basically, every time you vote on a budget, you're voting on tons of items that are in there, I mean, we're talking, you know, 40, some billion-dollar budget. So there are things that, you know, I'm not going to like everything that's in there. But on the balance of the entire situation, I had to look at it this way; I'm like, ‘okay, I have a chance to give the average Hoosier $125 to $150 I think, and potentially cost them $25.’ Well, that's still a net savings of $100 to $125 a year. So I chose to vote to allow them to keep another $125 or so in their pocket. That was the net savings.
CB: And speaking of budgets, next year is a budget year.
BB: Yes.
CB: And we're working with the new governor.
BB: Right.
CB: What do you think are going to be top priority items to consider?
BB: Without a doubt, one is going to be the Medicaid issue. There's no question about that. Of course we always have the K through 8 education, high school education. We have higher ed, we're here at Indiana University, you know, and, the bottom line is those are all givens that we're going to have to deal with. When I was mayor of Jasonville, we always had a balanced budget, and by law we had to. And I wrote all of our budgets, quite frankly, but the bottom line, it was pretty easy on certain items, because you would just look and say, ‘okay, what did we spend last year?’ If we were buying, for example, body cams for the police officers, well we may not need buy those this year, but do we have a car that's getting a lot of mileage on it where we need to replace it? So you can kind of look at your prior year's budget and just deal with those figures. And then alter those somewhat, based on what you think, you know, with inflation and so forth. It might be there's some things you don't need to spend money on. As a state it's the same way, there's certain things that just kind of incrementally grow and some things you may say, ‘hey, we don't need to’, you know, maybe a new library was built in a campus somewhere, ‘we're not needing to fund that this year, so we can shift that money somewhere else.’ Those things are a given. The things that are not givens are going to be funding, you know, I-70, for example, looking at the Medicaid issue, which I described again as the 800-pound gorilla in the room. So those are the big-ticket items that we'll have to deal with.
CB: And as you said, a huge part of that budget is education.
BB: Sure.
CB: Curious what your thoughts are on all the consolidations and referendums happening throughout the state as it relates to the budget?
BB: I mean part of the consolidations that are occurring, if you go to YouTube, and I don't know if it's still on there, I've actually got the DVDs, there's a thing that's called Demographic Winter. And then if you look at the sequel to it, it's called Demographic Bomb, and the man that produced that series, I believe, is a mathematician, or not that series, but those two documentaries, and he described what's going on with most of the industrialized world, including the United States, and basically the bottom line is that a quote was made in that movie that one of the reasons that our population is growing is not because we're breeding like rabbits, but it's because we quit dying like flies because of the lifespan expanding. The lifespan growing. But one of the problems we're having is that I believe even in the United States, now, the birth rate is below what they call the replacement rate, meaning that if we don't to have more children than we're having now, then what's going to happen is we're just gonna, as baby boomers continue retiring as workers retire, we're just simply not going to have enough young workers to help meet those needs. And we're even running into that today. I mean that's one of the biggest issues I hear.
So one of the issues, I know it sounds like I went the long way around, and I'm not trying to do that. But one of the issues that we run into with the school consolidation isn't because, it's not even so much a cost issue, it has to do with demographics. I met with a group of teachers from down near Evansville a while back and they were looking at having to consolidate some schools. And they said, ‘well, where did those children move off to?’ And I said, ‘come on in my office.’ So I invited them in my office at the statehouse, which is a little tiny office. So we were all just kind of squeezed and huddled in there, and I pulled it up on my computer. And I showed them Demographic Winter, the documentary, and I said ‘those children didn't move anywhere, they just simply weren't born.’ And they were like, you know, you can see the light coming on in their eyes, and they're like, ‘we never thought about that.’ I said, ‘a lot of the school consolidations are not happening because people are moving, hopping from point A to point B, it's happening because you simply are having, you know, especially in your small rural schools, a much smaller foundation.’ And just like in Duggar, Indiana, they lost their school, all right. And it wasn't because everybody was moving off. It was because of the lack of children being born. And they're a community that loves their school. They ended up, they did get a charter that's established the school there and the school is actually growing. They do a really good job of educating, and quite frankly, our what I would class as our traditional public schools do a great job as well. I've told a lot of my teachers it isn't that we favor School A over School B, it just happened to be that Duggar wanted to keep it's, you know, wanted to keep a school there, and, you had a group that chartered a school, and then they came in but as far as education goes, one of the big things that we had to do was that in the past, what was happening is if, let's say Johnny Smith went from School A to School B, all right, what we were doing is we were funding both of those schools for a period of time. And we can't afford to do that as a state and the property taxpayers can't afford to do that either. And so what we had to do is literally move to a formula where the money follows the child because in the past, what they would when the budgets were set up, is as a child would go from one school to another, they would just simply grow the budget every year in those schools. And so if Johnny Smith went from School A to School B, guess what, School A was still being funded for Johnny Smith. And so will School B when the taxpayers were being raked over the coals. And so we had to stop doing it that way, it didn't make sense to do it that way. That's why we switched over to the money following the child and it's worked out better. Is it perfect? I mean, probably not depending on who you talk to. But it's most certainly a more workable mathematical solution. I mean, the bottom line is, when we establish the state's budget, it's purely a mathematical or accounting function and then we have to make it work.
CB: Previously, you mentioned some social justice issues that you handled in your time in this position.
BB: Right.
CB: If you’re reelected, are there any social issues top of mind that you would want to tackle?
BB: Yeah, one of the issues that I actually introduced a bill on last session that didn't get a hearing, and it has to do with basically regenerative medicine. In fact, I watched again a YouTube video, but it's a fella that's a brain surgeon, and he said that, basically, he was talking about stem cell research and that he said that it's the modern miracle of this generation. And ultimately, what's happening, a friend of mine, he had COPD, he is a lifetime smoker. And he went to a doctor down in Evansville, that gave him, he had quit the smoking kudos to him, but he was still struggling to breathe. And the doctor gave him stem cell injections into his lungs. And he's breathing very well these days. He said that he couldn't imagine what a difference it made. And unfortunately, what's happening is that there's kind of a fight against that, because it's basically using something that God created, in fact it's referred by some in the medical community, the stem cells, as the god cells. But I believe it was in the state of Arkansas, the governor down there had had stem cell regeneration done. And I don't specifically remember what the medical condition was. But he was so impressed by the recovery that he had, that they ended up passing a law that basically made regenerative medicine covered by their state health plans, meaning whether they were funding, you know, state employees, or teachers or whatever, they had that option for it to be covered. And they thought it would save the taxpayers, I think it was about $100 million in the first year. And I think the figure came out closer to 400 million. But that's a bill that I actually authored and I will you know, the Lord willing, that I'm back, I will author again and try to push for that again. It's, you know, something that's kind of cutting edge technology and for my friends in the pro-life community, which I was endorsed by the Indiana Right to Life, so there's no question about my stance on pro-life issues, but there was a basically kind of a bugaboo about that in the past that well, you're using babies. Well, that's kind of, that's the thing of the past, at least to my knowledge anyhow, here in the United States, because what's happening now is they're actually using the umbilical cords. In fact, I spoke with a woman last night as I was out campaigning, her daughter just gave birth to a little girl. And she said they allowed the umbilical cord to be harvested. And what they do is they go in, and they remove the stem cells from the umbilical cord. And I think in each child's umbilical cord, there's 60 to 80 million stem cells, I could be wrong on that figure, but I think that figure is pretty close to right. And what they do is they literally go and inject them in the body. And then they what the stem cells do is they, particularly umbilical stem cells, they look for areas of inflammation, and basically problem issues in the body. And then over the period of time, they go in and they regenerate those areas. Some things are more successful than others. But that's a bill that then I would gladly author again.
CB: A lot of bills were passed last session regarding higher education. Curious what your opinion is about the current state of higher education in Indiana?
BB: I think we've got some great universities. I actually did some studying here at Indiana University. I have my Bachelor's degree in business from Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri, but I did some of my classes whenever I couldn't squeeze them in. I mean your college graduate, right? And your wife is studying as well based on our conversation (off camera). So you know how that goes. Sometimes you can't always get a class during the semester in which you want it. Now you can probably pick it up online or go to another university. And so when I was at Evangel, I would go over to Southwest Missouri State you know, and pick up some of my courses. And I think, I believe we talked about Drury (University), I'm pretty sure I even took maybe one of my business courses at Drury, I'm trying to remember. I know I used to go visit over there. But nonetheless, having said that, I think the state of higher education is really good. One of the key issues that I would be concerned with and it's not just for the state of Indiana but for all states, is that I think sometimes students get in situations where the classrooms are so large, that they really struggle to stay on top of it. I can remember one of the chemistry classes that I had here at IU. I want to say I had five or 600 kids in that class. and you just can't get that individual attention. So if anything, if we could concentrate on anything, it would be making sure that the classrooms were small enough that students could get individual tutoring and so forth if they needed it.
CB: Finally, why should District 45 voters choose you?
BB: I would say the bottom line is that I know it sounds like I'm just throwing this as a caveat out there, and I promise you I'm not, I really do all things unto the Lord. You know, at the end of my life I want to hear ‘well done thou my good and faithful servant,’ but not just for me. I want to hear it for my wife, my children, my grandchildren, I'm a new grandpa, kudos to Clara Jane, my newest grandchild, she was born April the 15th in Knoxville, Tennessee. But when I look at an issue, I think is this godly? You know, is this a bill that if I vote for it, is this the bill that God would be pleased with my vote? And secondly, I think, okay, does this pass the mustard of constitutionalism? Is this a constitutional bill? And that is a big factor to me. And then third, how is this treating Hoosier taxpayers? When I was mayor of Jasonville, I was just really emphatic on making sure that every penny that we spent, whether it be in the utilities because I was over the utilities, or whether it be for law enforcement, no matter what we did that we were wisely using the taxpayer dollars. And so I really do treat the public's money as if I were spending my own dollars because in essence, I am as well. And I'm emphatic about making sure that we're kind to the taxpayers.
