Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct an error.

Indiana fifth district congressional seat candidates gathered at Anderson High School Thursday night to discuss policy plans, beliefs and campaign promises. 

All four candidates running were present, including the reincubate candidate Victoria Spartz (R), Deborah Pickett (D), Robby Slaughter (I) and Lauri Shillings (L).

The event was hosted by the League of Women Voters from Muncie and Anderson branches. The forum was moderated by Steve Lindell, the vice president of programming for Woof Boom Radio, who also was partnered with the event. 

All candidates were allowed one minute to respond to questions that had been submitted and vetted for fairness by the League of Women Voters. All candidates were held to their minute time. 

Many topics were discussed by the candidates, including abortion, immigration, gun control, taxes and education. 

TOP ISSUES OF EACH CANDIDATE

Each candidate was asked to share the top issues important to them. Pickett shared her top priority is to codify and bring Roe V. Wade back to a federal issue. Shillings shared her top priority is to reduce the national debt and focus on the separation of the government and the people. Slaughter’s top priority is to establish term limits but to “earn the trust” of voters. Spartz said her top priority is to lower the national debt, tackle inflation and change the current “oligopolies” that oversee the healthcare system.

STANCES ON TOPICS

IMMIGRATION

Spartz: Spartz said her goal would be to “tighten our immigration,” calling its current state a “national crisis.” She referenced her work in Congress with the current border bill, stating she had been for it and working on it before changes happened that ultimately prevented it. 

Pickett: Pickett said she would support an immigration bill, citing a concern for the shortage of workers that would result in the state harming industry. 

Shillings: Shillings advocated for an adjustment to the current process that would “modernize” the process of getting citizenship. 

“If your family was war-torn or being enslaved by cartels you would also want to leave that,” Shillings said in regard to the large numbers of immigrant families coming to America. 

Slaughter: Slaughter shared a similar concern to Shillings, pointing to the “broken system” that is the immigration system. 

“Asking someone if they would support this bill is like asking someone to pitch in some scotch tape to help someone riddled with bullet holes,” Slaughter said.

INFLATION

Spartz: Spartz said, “On China, which has taken American jobs, we have to get back jobs to America that will help inflation significantly.”

Pickett: Pickett said inflation is down and the Federal Reserve should be lowering your interest rates in the coming week. She brought up a policy started in Trump’s Administration and continued through Biden’s, the punitive tariff. She said,, “... those tariffs need to be removed”

Shillings: Shillings started out saying inflation is a “hidden tax on American people.” She said the only way to fix that is to strictly reduce spending in the government.

Slaughter: Slaughter began by explaining what inflation means. He said Indiana has an “affordability crisis” He said the most important thing to do is provide economic opportunity for individuals. 

ABORTION

Spartz: When asked about abortion, Spartz led with the notion that she supported the decision on abortion bans coming back to a state level, highlighting her view on the importance of states making a decision best for them, creating a variety of states with various political agendas. She said the state borders “aren’t closed” and if citizens didn’t agree with their state's decision, “people can move.”  

Pickett: The right to choose and the codifying of Roe V. Wade is a top issue for Pickett, she said, sourcing that a majority of Americans and Hoosiers are pro-choice, and an individual’s choice to an abortion is a “personal one” that should remain in the hands of citizens.

Shillings: The message and opinion that the government should be further separated from the decisions of citizens was clear across the night from Shillings, but was highlighted in her opinions and plans for tackling abortions and the right of choice and the government’s role in such. Shillings said that abortions became a “politicized” issue that should be left to “you, your physician and your faith.” 

Slaughter: Quick to acknowledge his position as the only male candidate, Slaughter voiced that he felt as though his opinion of the matter should not be the leading opinion because of being a man. Slaughter did say that there should be “fewer abortions,” little government interference and women’s safety should be a top priority in conversations about abortions. 

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Sparkz: Spartz began by saying she is a big Second Amendment supporter, saying “it is how we protect ourselves.” Spartz followed up by suggesting that there needs to be an exploration on the impact of mental health in school shootings. 

Pickett: Her first statement was how this topic is important to her, as she is a mother and grandmother. She added , “The safety of our children is the most important thing to us.” She agreed the second amendment is important as a gun owner herself but continued that there should be stronger background checks, as well as having guns secured. Pickett concluded with the remarks, “If you want to go shoot your guns, go join the U.S. Army.”

Shillings: Shilling started out by saying gun owners should be educated, but said that people should look at what causes school shootings. She said, trauma is one of the main causes and aims to “change the Stigma about mental health care.”

Slaughter: Slaughter first addressed a concern for him surrounding the lack of mental health support in schools, noting his personal experience with his spouse, who is a social worker. In his opinion, there should be a priority in the mental health care of students in schools “to make sure students are safe, loved and cared for.” Slaughter then followed up and added we should “turn the TV off and talk to each other” after shootings, citing concerns about the overwhelming amount of coverage after a tragedy and its effects on the community. 

EDUCTION 

Spartz: Spartz said she felt it was important to invest in “human capital” and continue to support public education. She said it's important to have states address education issues, but it is also a “national security” issue that the federal government should aid in addressing. She felt as though the federal government needs to get student debt “under control” so students can get “skills and education to get them into the workforce.”

Pickett: “A public education is the most important investment we can make in our people,” Pickett said. Pickett sourced the value of a department of education to act as a source of curriculum information and support educators and state departments. She said that it is important to know that there are standards reflected from school to school ensuring equal education. 

Shillings: Shilling's first stance on the role of the federal government in education is the government shouldn’t be involved in education and that “education should be privatized.” She felt that students have been falling behind in technology skills, citing her time working in higher education where she has personally noticed students struggling more with foundational skills. She voiced opposing the voucher system, sharing her opinion that the system was being abused by “higher income people,” who “didn’t need that support.” 

Slaughter: Slaughter sourced that he felt many people were “uneducated about the role of the federal government in education.” He highlighted that most decisions being made that affect students are being made at a state level. Slaughter also highlighted his belief that there is a misconception about education getting worse, saying he felt as though it is getting better as a whole, while we are “still falling massively behind our peers.” He also voiced that America needs to “transport our schools to the next century” by ways of innovation and technology advances.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Spartz: “The climate has been changing for centuries, we used to be in an ice age,” Spartz said. “Republicans get a bad rep, that we don’t care about the environment. We do care about the environment.” 

Sparkz continued to share that her priorities lay in the lack of  a good energy policy in her opinion and “we are destroying domestic energy production by depending on foreign adversaries that want to destroy it.” 

Pickett: Pickett said that climate change is an “existential threat” to Americans, highlighting the impact of climate change on farmers. She then highlighted the fact that a farm bill that would economically support farmers has been pushed back in the house, which Sparkz was quick to clarify in the following question that the bill was passed after back and forth between parties. She added that climate change has had negative effects on infrastructure and is costly to taxpayers. 

Shillings: She first acknowledged that “science is science” and climate change is real. Shillings highlighted the use of fossil fuels negatively impacting the community and that there should be investment in natural and renewable energy. 

Slaughter: Slaughter said he had two major concerns, a concern that there is a lack of agreement amongst Americans about the legitimacy of climate change and America, in his opinion, is not the major contributor of climate change and attention should be more focused to countries like China. 

ISRAEL AND UKRAINIAN AID

Spartz:  Sparkz briefly mentioned former President Regan, “peace only works for strength.” After that, she brought up the Obama Administration and did not do much but give blankets out while Trump kept putting sanctions on Russia. She ended by saying she won’t support “Slush Funds.”

Pickett: For Pickett, her time spent in the Army Reserve and her birthplace of Ukraine, have created a personal connection and opinion on the federal financial support of Ukraine and Israel. “Understanding better than anyone what the threat of Putin is and Russia is as a neighbor, it was astounded to me that she [Sparkz] voted against that funding,” she said.

Shillings: Shillings stated she is going to stand for non-aggression. She brought up the fact that it's not crates of money we are sending over but rather money to our military to make the weapons then send the weapons overseas. She said that she believes we should, “stop being the world's policeman overall, and we should kind of focus more on what we're doing here in our own Life”

Slaughter: Slaughter commented that we are in a “impossible Situation”. That no matter what we do we will make the enemy more aggravated or Ukraine could get overrun by the enemy. His ending claim of this topic was, “To fix this issue is by doing the heart of diplomacy, calling for peace, calling for ceasefires and rebuilding relationships where trust has been lost at home and abroad.”

MINIMUM WAGE

Spartz: Spartz said that the government should prioritize finding new and “quality” jobs as a way to fix the “national security threat” that the economy and job market is. She voiced concerns about needing to have more federal regulations to support small businesses. She did not directly address a decision to either increase the minimum wage or not.   

Pickett: Pickett agreed it would be important to citizens to have an increased minimum wage, however, she said she felt as though it would be important to leave the decision up to states and local governments, as each community is different in her opinion. 

Shillings: Shillings first cited that, in her opinion, anytime the government gets more involved it only gets worse. She said that anytime the government says ‘you must do this,’ there is a negative consequence, such as having to increase prices, layoffs or other various negative changes. She is not in favor of raising the minimum wage. 

Slaughter: Slaughter suggested that each individual state and community will have different opportunities, needs and standards that would require unique needs. He said a national minimum wage would not solve that issue and that it should be left up to specific states, cities and municipalities. He highlighted long term that increasing minimum wage would not fix the problem- only creating new jobs could do that. 

More information about the upcoming election, such as deadlines to register and voting locations can be found online at indianavoters.in.gov. 

Contact Olivia Ground via email at olivia.ground@bsu.edu . Contact Shelby Anderson via email at sanderson9@bsu.edu .

Share

---