The StatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Controversial state Treasurer Richard Murdock stepped down from his post in August leaving the office up for grabs in November when voters will decide between candidates who have experience inside and outside the treasure’s doors.

Republican Kelly Mitchell is a former county commissioner who worked in the state treasurer’s office as director of TrustINdiana, a position that called for her to manage more than $500 million in public funds and train local elected officials about money management.

And before coming to Indiana, Democrat Mike Boland served 16 years in the Illinois General Assembly, serving as chairman of the elections, higher education, and financial institutions committees.

While working with the latter, Boland says he learned how the banking system worked and became more knowledgeable about credit and payday loans in Illinois.

After moving to Indiana, Boland said he started reading about Murdock and his fight to stop the Obama administration from bailing out Chrysler, a move he said cheated the state, which had invested in the company.

“One of the things I see is that Indiana has tremendous potential,” Boland explains. But he said Mourdock used the office in a negative away, using millions of dollars that were wasted in an attempt to kill the Chrysler rescue.

Boland says that if elected, he wants to focus on the small town and cities in Indiana by giving them ways to replace funds that could be lost under law that allowed local governments to eliminate the business personal property tax, which is levied on business equipment. Some lawmakers are discussing eliminating the tax completely.

Although Boland says that he is okay with the elimination of the business personal property tax, he wants to use the state’s $2 billion surplus to help local governments to provide services such as roads and schools.

“That tax is a key to financing cities and counties and school districts and townships. Before we make cuts like that, let’s make sure we replace it and we have money to replace it,” Boland says. “We have a $2 billion surplus that right now is only being used as a political award for Gov. (Mike) Pence to run over to Iowa or New Hampshire and brag about.”

Mitchell started working in the treasure’s office in 2007 when the Indiana legislature created a program that local governments pool their money for investments.

Mitchell said that if she is elected treasurer, she would want to increase financial literacy among Hoosiers. She plans to start a program called Students, Adults, Veterans and Educators that is meant to educate Hoosiers about the financial resources available to them. She’s focused in particular on veterans.

“They have a whole subset of resources to them that aren’t available to the rest of us,” Mitchell says. “I want to work with the veterans service officers in every county to make sure we are educating their veteran population about what is available to them.”

Mitchell also said that she wants to focus on families using the Indiana College Savings 529 plan. She said the plan isn’t just to pay for a four-university but also for any post-high school education program.

TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Americans on both ends of the political spectrum have at least a couple things in common: They are more likely to follow government and political news closely and then lead conversations with others about the topics.

In fact, the 20 percent of people who are either far right or far left of center “have a greater impact on the political process than do those with more mixed ideological views,” says the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

“They are the most likely to vote, donate to campaigns and participate directly in politics,” according to Pew, which is spending a year studying political polarization – and in particular where Americans get their information about politics and government and how they share it.

In a report this week, Pew detailed some of what it has found. Here are three key takeaways:

Consistent conservatives rely on a smaller number of news sources than consistent liberals.

Most Americans rely on a variety of media outlets to gather their news. But conservatives are “tightly clustered around a single news source,” Pew reports.

Which one? No surprise. It’s Fox News. Nearly half of consistent conservatives say the network is their primary source of government and political news.

Liberals, on the other hand, turn to a wider range of news sources. And some of those – most notably NPR and the New York Times – are sources that other Americans use less, Pew says.

Americans closer to the middle of the political spectrum say they use CNN, local TV and Fox News, along with Yahoo News and Google News, Pew reports.

Liberals are more likely to trust news sources than conservatives

Pew says that liberals express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. But those liberals don’t trust just anyone. They are highly distrustful of – you guessed it – Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Conservatives trust far fewer news sources. Some of those are well-known: the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. But others are niche publications, including The Blaze and Breitbart.

“The ideological differences are especially stark,” Pew reports.

Liberals are more likely to de-friend someone on Facebook because of their political views.

In fact, Pew says liberals are also more willing to end a personal friendship over political disagreements.

“Consistent liberals who pay attention to politics on Facebook are also more likely than others to ‘like’ or follow issue-based groups: 60 percent do this, compared with 46 percent of consistent conservatives and just a third of those with mixed views,” Pew reports.

Consistent conservatives, though, are twice as likely as a typical Facebook user to see viewpoints that are similar to their own.

Want to learn more and find out how respondents were categorized on the political spectrum? Go to www.pewresearch.org/packages/political-polarization/ for more details.