Commentary: What Hoosiers think, what Hoosiers want

By Cam Savage
TheStatehouseFile.com

We like Mike Pence. We want to be able to buy cold beer on Sundays. We want education policy authority split between the state board and state superintendent. And when it comes to what to do with the state budget surplus, more of us would prefer to hold on to it than spend it or use it to cut business taxes.

These are the findings, among others, of the 2014 Hoosier Survey from WISH TV and Ball State University that annually measures Hoosier opinions on a broad range of policy topics.

The full survey and results are available on the website of Ball State’s Bowen Center for Public Affairs.

This survey is important because it is conducted annually and therefore gives us the ability to monitor changes in Hoosier opinion over time.

For example, in last year’s Hoosier survey Gov. Mike Pence approval among respondents stood at 55 percent. This year, that approval rating is up to 62 percent. That’s a strong approval number and should give any Democrat considering challenging him in 2016 pause. Again, this is a snapshot and 2016 is a long way off, but Pence isn’t showing the signs of weakness potential challengers hope to see in their opponents.

One big topic of discussion you are likely to hear more about is whether or not Indiana should join 48 other states in allowing supermarkets and convenience stores to sell alcohol on Sundays. At present, Hoosiers can only get a drink on Sundays if they are in a restaurant or bar.

But 52 percent of Hoosiers favor Sunday sales, while 45 percent who oppose them. It’s interesting to see an issue so evenly divided and on which so many people have an opinion. Only two percent of Hoosier respondents say they don’t know or don’t care.

The question for the Indiana Generally Assembly, which seems likely to take up this important question in 2015, might be, “how much do Hoosiers care?” By that I mean, should the legislature decide to allow for Sunday sales of alcohol, will the 45 percent of Hoosiers who oppose Sunday sales make much of a fuss or are they just satisfied with the current arrangement? I suspect your local legislator is trying to parse that question right now.

Here’s one that might surprise you if you’ve been following State Board of Education meetings for the last few years. When asked who should have “the final say on education policy in the state,” the State Board of Education or the state superintendent, 15 percent said the state board, just 10 percent said the state superintendent and a whopping 71 percent said “they should share the authority equally.”

I suspect this is evidence that not many Hoosiers are paying close attention to those State Board of Education meetings, because the alternative – that they are paying close attention to the meetings and like what they are seeing – seems unbelievable.

Now, on to that question about the state budget surplus. Here’s a question that I propose tells us quite a bit about who we are as Hoosiers.

When asked what they would rather see the state do with its $2 billion reserve and “annual budget surplus of $100 million,” the biggest chunk of respondents (39.1 percent) opted to “hold onto the surplus in case of another economic downturn,” while 31 percent want to “spend more on programs that have faced cuts in recent years,” and 21 percent want to “cut business taxes.”

So we’ve got almost 4 in 10 Hoosiers saying we ought to be prudent and hang on to those reserves for the inevitable rainy day. That feels “pretty Hoosier.” Hoosiers, we know, are a prudent and generally conservative bunch.

One in five respondents wants to cut business taxes, presumably to encourage economic growth, or perhaps their own bottom line.

About one-third of Hoosiers want to see the state spend some of or all the surplus. I suppose their question to legislators might be, why collect it if not to spend it?

How much is enough? This is the central question of governing bodies, summarized by the oft-quoted political scientist Harold Lasswell who said the study of politics was the study of “who gets what, when and how.” And that, as always, is the question members of the Indiana General Assembly will ponder when they convene in January, with a little guidance from the Hoosier Survey.

Cam Savage is a principal at Limestone Strategies and a veteran of numerous Republican campaigns and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He is a graduate of Franklin College. He can be reached at Cam@limestone-strategies.com.