Tom Saunders: The good governance killer that is one-party rule

I served 26 years in the Indiana General Assembly as a Republican from Henry County. I’m proud of that service. But in my last four years at the Statehouse, I wasn’t sleeping well.

My conscience and my caucus were no longer in the same place. Doing the right thing and doing the party thing didn’t always line up—and too often, the latter won.

More than once, I sat in a room full of my fellow Republican state representatives and heard, in so many words: There are 74 of us, and all 74 of us will vote yes. If there are 13 hands saying no, we’ll spend another hour beating up on you.

That’s not how you get the best ideas. That’s how you get people to fall in line.

I’ve always believed voters expect us to work with whomever they elect. Early in my legislative tenure, after Democrat Frank O’Bannon was elected governor, Republican leaders called a press conference about property taxes. As a former county assessor, they wanted me at the podium. I quickly realized their plan was to hammer O’Bannon, so I straightened my tie, took one look at where that was headed and sidestepped out the door.

“Where are you going?” they barked. “You don’t walk out of a press conference.” Well, you do if you don’t agree with what is being said. The voters in my district elected O’Bannon and elected me; they expected us to work together, not shout at each other.

That wasn’t the only time I went off script. During a budget standoff, our side kept guessing what O’Bannon might accept. I walked upstairs to the Governor’s Office and asked him directly. He told me he’d take the deal we’d been discussing internally—and even offered to walk down and tell our caucus himself. Despite that, both the Republican and Democratic leadership managed to bungle things, and we had to come back for a special session to do what a simple conversation could’ve accomplished.

Years later, I tried to eliminate straight-ticket voting because it encourages people to vote party first and person never. We had a committee hearing scheduled, and I was told we had the votes to pass it. Then a phone call came in to the chairman from someone higher up in the Republican Party. The vote was pulled.

After I retired from the Legislature in 2022, my town of Lewisville had a problem. U.S. 40 was torn up, and when people complained, the council told folks, “Don’t call us, call the state.” I strongly suggested they get the state to the table and fix it. When they wouldn’t, I said, “Then I’m running against you.”

I found a like-minded neighbor and asked him to run, too. We both ran as independents. We led the ticket and took over the town council because people wanted good government more than they wanted a label.

I’m not here to scold the Republican Party. I spent most of my adult life trying to make it better. I am here to say what a lot of current legislators will only say off-mic: One-party rule is bad governance.

The worst thing to happen to our state in my time was the rise of a supermajority that stopped listening to the other side. Now some of my former colleagues in the Statehouse want to redraw Indiana’s congressional maps in the middle of the cycle so they can squeeze two more Republican seats out of them. Gov. Mike Braun has called a special session to do just that.

I hope they won’t. It would be bad for them, bad for their party and—most important—bad for our state.

I’ve seen what happens when politics becomes about protecting power instead of serving the people. Indiana doesn’t need more partisanship—it needs more independence. We all deserve a government that listens, that collaborates and that earns our trust.

If lawmakers won’t deliver that, maybe it’s time more of us start doing what I did in Lewisville: Run as an independent and give people a real choice.•

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Saunders is a member of the Lewisville Town Council and represented District 54 in the Indiana House of Representatives for 26 years.