Briggs' mailbag: Why candidates for governor ignore Indiana in TV ads

Daylight saving time is good, actually.

No one asked me about it, though, so I'm not going to belabor it here. What some people are talking about is election season. The Indiana General Assembly session is over, and primary elections are coming up fast.

As I wrote last week, I expect the Republican gubernatorial primary ads to get dark and intense real soon. And, as I discuss below, we have ourselves to blame, at least a little, for the direction the ads are about to take.

As always, you can send questions on the election or (literally) any other topic by filling out the Google form at the bottom of the online article or emailing me at the address below. Let's mailbag!

Carl Gottlieb: Most of the campaign for governor commercials I have seen on TV seem to be campaigning against President Biden. I didn't know he controlled the Indiana Statehouse? Where do these clowns stand on issues relevant to Indiana?

I agree it's annoying how candidates operate like McDonald's franchisees, offering templated menus to local communities. But, much like in the restaurant industry, political candidates are responding to market demands.

You, me and (probably) most people reading this exist in a bubble where we want to see candidates offer policy-based discussion. But it's a pretty small bubble!

A record 3 million Indiana residents, or 65% of registered voters, cast ballots in the 2020 general election. Turnout for those elections is typically below 60% — and it falls to around 25% for primary elections, which is what you're talking about here with the GOP gubernatorial race (which is probably going to determine our next governor).

Among the people who show up and vote, most are busy living their lives. They pick up fragments of election-related information and file it away according to preexisting (and nationally oriented) understandings of politics.

Ball State University conducts an annual Hoosier Survey and one result in particular stuck out to me this year. More than 23% of respondents had no opinion of Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican who is in his eighth year as governor. Chad Kinsella, the director of the Bowen Center for Public Affairs and a Ball State professor, put that into perspective.

“What has been found in past Hoosier Surveys and other state surveys is that there are large numbers of people — anywhere from 25% to 33% of respondents — who do not know who the governor of their state is," Kinsella said.

If a lot of people don't know who the current governor is, think about the challenge facing candidates running for governor in a crowded field.

Those who possess or raise enough money to blanket the airwaves must create ads strong enough to: No. 1, make people remember their names through Election Day; No. 2, link the candidate to values shared by voters; and No. 3, brand opponents as unacceptably awful and depress people who otherwise might vote for them.

That's why Sen. Mike Braun long ago shapeshifted into MAGA McMAGAface and is running for Indiana governor on issues such as the southern border. Talking about policies he cares about — such as qualified immunity — has only gotten him into political trouble, so it's better to campaign as an empty, Trumpy vessel and let voters fill him up with their projections.

Braun has a big lead in the race because he has already accomplished objective Nos. 1 and 2, so you can expect his opponents to ratchet up the attack ads to satisfy No. 3 any minute.

We can say we want our vegetables, but political campaigns have data to show what actually moves us. They're giving us the ads our voting behavior has told them to make.

Christine Tyler: What do you think about ballot initiatives in Indiana? Will we ever gain that ability? What about ranked-choice voting? Any chance of that?

Personally, I'd be interested in seeing both, but neither will happen in the foreseeable future.

You're not going to see ballot initiatives in Indiana for the same reason many people want them: Republican supermajorities in the legislature would have to agree to relinquish power so citizens could work around them on contentious issues, such as abortion. That's a no-go.

As a centrist squish, I like ranked-choice voting because it gives the advantage to broadly appealing candidates over extremists. But, again, Indiana is a state where Republicans are competing to out-MAGA one another. It's hard to imagine people who benefit from the current system advocating to change it.

Paul Kropp: I receive the paper at home. Will we get 3-day-old news once printing moves to Peoria in April? Much of what I see in paper, I have already read online. Will there be anything original in the paper anymore?

I'm stepping a bit outside my lane to answer this one.

As announced in January, IndyStar is closing the Pulliam Production Center and moving newspaper printing to Peoria, Illinois, on April 9. This is a sad announcement for many reasons, ranging from the loss of jobs to the historic end of newspapers rolling off presses in Indianapolis.

Printed newspapers have meant a lot to me. I used to spend summers with my grandparents in Manchester, Illinois, where I'd get up early and grab my grandfather's paper off the front porch and spread it out across the table. I can smell the sun-baked newsprint as I write these words. I had a paper route as a kid. I cut out my articles when I was first getting started as a writer. I've been a longtime newspaper subscriber as an adult.

As an old millennial, though, I'm an outlier in a generation in which such experiences are no longer common. Physical newspapers have gone from being products of cutting-edge technology to artifacts in the digital age. No startup company would hire a bunch of journalists, print out their articles and drive them to people's homes every day. The economics would be insane.

Newspaper companies, like ours, have legacy infrastructure in place to keep operating that approximate model. That doesn't mean we exist outside the bounds of economic reality, though. Newspaper printing is a brutal business that necessitates tough choices, such as consolidating printing plants.

It's true that longer distances between presses and homes means older articles appear in newspapers. But comparing newspapers to their former selves is the wrong framework for evaluating the printed product. The real choice, increasingly, is between having a newspaper or not having a newspaper (and, yes, I know many people who subscribe also have delivery issues).

Seven-day newspaper delivery is a luxury in 2024. Such service is already obsolete in many other cities.

Thank you for reading! To send questions for future mailbags, email [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Mike Braun talks border, not Indiana in campaign ads