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Two candidates are running for Indiana’s 46th House District: Democratic candidate Kurtis Cummings and incumbent Republican Rep. Bob Heaton (Terre Haute). District 46 covers Owen County, half of Clay County, and portions of Monroe and Vigo counties.
Cummings owns Switchyard Brewing Company in Bloomington. Heaton is the Majority Whip and was first elected in 2010, re-elected in 2018, and ran unopposed in 2020.
WFYI sent each of the candidates five questions to help voters prepare for early voting and Election Day, Nov. 8. Cummings' responses are below. Heaton did not respond.
Editor’s note: Candidate responses were edited for AP Style and grammar, and any numbers used were checked for accuracy. When a statement required more clarification or could not be independently verified, WFYI reached out to candidates before publication. Those instances, and those candidate responses, are noted throughout in editors’ notes.
Kurtis James Cummings
What do you see as the most pressing issue lawmakers will address in the upcoming legislative session?
Given the upcoming session is a budget year, the most pressing issue lawmakers will address will be that of the enormous surplus that the state has been sitting on. Saving for a rainy day is one thing, but neglecting public educators and our child welfare system is another. We must address the burnout that our educators, DCS workers and school administrators are facing due to lack of resources and support. I volunteer in my community as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate). I spend a lot of time in our public schools and alongside DCS and service providers. I have a unique perspective into what it means to be actively involved in our most vulnerable Hoosiers’ lives.
Indiana’s schools are facing numerous challenges including teacher shortages, racial achievement gaps, reading ability and declining college-going rate. What do you see as the state’s top education issues, and how would you address them?
The top education issue is funding and support. Our public schools are on the verge of a workforce crisis, from bus drivers to special education teachers. An astonishing number of Indiana students can’t read at grade level. Indiana has fewer teachers now than 10 years ago. Our kids and our educators aren’t getting the support they need. Let’s start by investing in our future and making public education a huge part of our 2022 budget.
Indiana lacks affordable housing inventory and communities across the state deal with landlords who shrug off local health and safety violations. How would you address the state’s lack of affordable housing and laws to protect tenants from bad-acting landlords?
I will specifically address the lack of affordable housing, as it is an issue that my family has navigated through recently. Besides incentivising builders to build homes that are within reach of first-time home buyers, to better terms on construction lending, to fewer local regulations and restrictions that significantly add to building cost and time it takes to move a permit through local zoning and building departments, none of these measures will work at increasing affordable home ownership if we don’t also empower everyday Hoosiers with better financing tools.
Obtaining a mortgage has remained excessively tight and incredibly restrictive and has forced very qualified buyers to rent apartments that are two times the monthly cost of a 30-year mortgage. This is a complex issue, but I feel we can work with existing state resources to make the American dream a reality for many, many more Hoosiers.
In recent legislative sessions, state lawmakers have tried to regulate local decision-making; two examples are wind turbine regulation and bail reform. How would you approach issues of local versus state control as a lawmaker?
As much as I believe in green energy and its ability to create jobs and reduce our carbon footprint, I also believe that local government officials are likely more in tune to the day-to-day life of their constituents. There has to be a middle ground here. Local, community issues that affect voters in Delaware County may be different than that of Vigo County or Monroe County or Tippecanoe County. It is important to allow individual counties the opportunity to legislate based on their citizens' needs.
Indiana lawmakers voted to ban most abortions, with narrow exceptions for rape, incest, and certain serious medical complications and emergencies. Would you support the legislature revisiting Indiana’s abortion law? What would you change?
I believe that it is every woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions based solely on her religious beliefs and moral and ethical code.
Listen. No woman plans on having an abortion. It’s certainly not on a bucket list somewhere. But with 520 menstrual cycles in her life to navigate, that is 520 possible chances to become pregnant. We should focus our time, money and resources on supporting, streamlining and making adoption, access to birth control and sex education more affordable for all.
In the Statehouse we have the unique ability to truly affect the daily lives of Hoosiers. Regardless of the upcoming [legislative]** session we should not neglect the need for funding and providing universal access to child care and paid parental leave. In today’s economy it’s simply impossible to provide for a family on one income.
Our health care providers need to refuse to be weaponized by the state – medical abortion is indistinguishable from miscarriage.
Rape, incest and life of the pregnant person need to be top priorities in the upcoming [legislative]** session, but we also need to include non-immediately life threatening conditions like HTN, diabetes, anxiety, depression and substance abuse that are all significantly affected by pregnancy.
**Editors' note: Clarity edits noted.
How to vote in Indiana:
Vote by Mail Application deadline: Oct. 27, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. (local prevailing time). Election Day is Nov. 8, and you can find your polling place at the Indiana Voters Portal.
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