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I found Rep. Ed Delaney’s IBJ comments about the “Indiana Republicans of Old” to be of personal interest. My late father, John K. Snyder, publicly evoked the 11th Commandment “Thou shalt not speak evil of thy fellow Republicans” numerous times on his course to help lead the cast-out Republicans back to victory in 1966 (following the disastrous defeat they experienced in the Goldwater election of 1964). As State Treasurer, he never spoke ill (at least when I was around) of his former Democratic opponent Jack New, and even struck up a warm friendship with Democratic Gov. Roger Branigan, whom he found had “a great sense of humor.” Gov. Branigan would award my father with his first Sagamore of the Wabash shortly before the Governor left office (in those days, the Indiana Governor could only serve one term).
As a young teenager in 1968, I found myself immersed in an inadvertent inside view of Republican politics, as to fulfill (the now abandoned) state office residency requirements, my father rented an old, threadbare suite on the fourth floor of the old Harrison Hotel across from the Statehouse (now an office building). Given my father’s strict ban on any members of the opposite sex visiting the suite, it became known as “The Boar’s Nest.” During the time before the 1968 Indiana State Republican Convention (when all state office candidates were chosen at convention), there was a great deal of internal Republican acrimony between then-Secretary of State Ed Whitcomb, Purdue ag professor Earl Butz, and then-Speaker of the House Otis Bowen and their supporters, but it didn’t often spill out into open forums like today. Given the proximity to the Statehouse, the fourth-floor “Boar’s Nest” suite became a popular meeting place (and sleeping hangout) for Republican politicians of all stripes, ranks, and counties. My father would often bring me along for his trips between our Washington home in southern Indiana and Indianapolis, where I would quietly sit off to one side, out of the fray (former U.S. Senator Bill Jennings did personally school me in the rules regarding the use of four-letter words).
Numerous heated political discussions often lit up the night in the 1960s “Boar’s Nest,” but nothing ever approached the open rancor and bitterness of present 21st century politics. There was a conservative tone to the Indiana General Assembly in those days, but that was a time when the Democrats controlled the Indiana Senate (prior to 1968), so elected officials – including my late father – often reached across the aisle. Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy actually won the Indiana Presidential Democratic primary on May 7, 1968 (his first), but I don’t recall a single Republican ever speaking with anything but sympathetic support a month earlier on April 4, when Sen. Kennedy delivered impromptu and compassionate remarks in Indianapolis when he announced the terrible assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The year 1968 proved to be a year of additional tragedy when barely a month after his decisive Indiana victory, Robert Kennedy himself was shot in Los Angeles following his victory in the critical California primary.
The Republicans won all Statehouse offices that year (Republican Senatorial candidate William Ruckelshaus was defeated by incumbent Democrat Birch Bayh that year, but went on to become the first director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency – EPA). Owing at least in part to his personal openness, my father went on to be re-elected as state treasurer, earning an impressive large measure of cross-over votes from Democrats. The victory earned him being designated “Mr. Republican” by the Indianapolis Star.
May the Indiana political process return to the spirit of the days of Ronald Reagan as described by Re. Delaney!