Brian Howey | South Bend Tribune
EVANSVILLE – To understand Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch’s governing philosophy, 1 lone needs to look southbound of the Ford Center to the beauteous Stone Family Center for Health Sciences that houses the Indiana University School of Medicine’s southernmost determination campus.
In 2012, then-State Rep. Crouch was successful the process of dealing with a uncommon vocation setback. When Ways & Means Chairman Jeff Espich retired, she sought that influential perch. Speaker Brian Bosma tabbed Tim Brown instead. There were nary sour grapes, with Crouch calling Brown’s enactment “really the champion decision, and, the champion for maine long-term.”
Four years prior, Dr. Steven G. Becker had reached retired to Crouch. The IU School of Medicine was housed connected the adjacent University of Southern Indiana campus. It was the lone determination aesculapian schoolhouse without its ain facility. “He believed they could elevate the School of Medicine to get much radical from this country if it had its ain campus,” Crouch explained of Dean Becker.
A section advisory radical formed, on with a consortium of Evansville country aesculapian interests. “The advisory committee was gathering astatine USI 1 evening successful 2012 and 1 of the members said to me, ‘You know, Suzanne, you’re connected Ways & Means. We request wealth to commencement this task and you tin get that done, can’t you?”
“I’m like, yeaaah, maybe,” Crouch replied.
At the opening of the 2013 session, she went into Speaker Bosma’s bureau and, “I had a full database of projects I wanted backing for successful Evansville and 1 of those projects was the IU School of Medicine, $2 million.”
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Bosma added it each up and said, “Suzanne, that’s $22 million.”
“I said, ‘I’ve been present for 8 years and person ne'er asked for anything, truthful disagreement it by 8 and it’s not that much,’” Crouch said. “That’s however we got the backing to commencement the project."
This was quality to IU President Michael McRobbie. But section lawyer Patrick A. Shoulders was president of the IU Board of Trustees and was emphatically for the facility. “He fast-tracked it, got it through, approved by the Board of Trustees earlier the extremity of the league truthful that the backing could beryllium included,” Crouch said. “That’s however the full happening got started.”
Becker, acrophobic astir emerging aesculapian “deserts” and a deficiency of country aesculapian schoolhouse residency slots, present presides implicit this caller authorities of the creation facility, lodging programs from IU, USI and the University of Evansville. “Suzanne was 1 of 4 oregon 5 radical who was captious successful making this happen,” Dean Becker explained. “Suzanne is simply a occupation solver. She makes things happen.”
Lt. Gov. Crouch kicked disconnected her 2024 campaign for governor past week. If she’s successful, she would not lone go the Republican Party’s archetypal credible pistillate campaigner for governor, but the GOP’s archetypal pistillate gubernatorial nominee. If she wins successful November 2024, she would go the archetypal Hoosier pistillate astatine the pinnacle of power.
In past eras, the lieutenant politician was the heir apparent. In the tv property of Hoosier politics, Republican Lt. Gov. Robert Orr of Evansville, and Democrats Frank O’Bannon of Corydon and Joe Kernan of South Bend, ended up connected the 2nd level bureau of power. In 1968, Democrats nominated Lt. Gov. Robert Rock, but helium mislaid to Secretary of State Edgar Whitcomb.
That came to an extremity successful 2003 erstwhile Kernan, assuming bureau aft the decease of O’Bannon, nominated Kathy Davis arsenic the archetypal pistillate LG. She was followed by Republican Lt. Govs. Becky Skillman and Sue Ellspermann. Of this group, lone Skillman mounted a run for politician and it was brief, measured successful weeks. Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Rep. Mike Pence were pondering statesmanlike runs, and the GOP powers-that-be annointed Pence arsenic the gubernatorial nominee successful 2012 to wide the Indiana lane for Daniels.
Lt. Gov. Crouch has, politically, conducted herself much similar Orr and O’Bannon did. She has crisscrossed Indiana’s 92 counties portion holding a sprawling medication portfolio that includes agriculture, agrarian affairs and tourism.
I asked Crouch, however bash you triumph a superior against Sen. Mike Braun and Fort Wayne businessman Eric Doden, some susceptible of self-funding?
“You person a plan,” she began. “You person capable resources – $8 cardinal to $9 million. That volition marque maine competitive. There volition beryllium astir a cardinal superior voters and I request to show that I americium the idiosyncratic who is champion prepared to pb them into the future.” She has the enactment of GOP financier Bob Grand.
Crouch explains, “A governor’s contention is antithetic from a senatorial contention oregon legislature race. It’s much astir likability. It’s much astir what benignant of idiosyncratic radical trust. Are you that benignant of idiosyncratic that radical spot starring america guardant into the future? And improving their lives?
Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke, an unabashed Crouch protagonist and person for much than 40 years, calls the region’s collaborative quality “our concealed sauce.”
“I cognize determination is collaboration everywhere, but it’s truthful earthy present due to the fact that of heavy idiosyncratic relationships,” Winnecke said. “So you tin telephone Suzanne and say, ‘Hey, tin you speech to Sen. So and So?’ And she gets it. It’s an casual telephone telephone to her. She’s besides very, precise accessible.”
Those attributes are, potentially, the makings of a governor.
The columnist is managing exertion of Howey Politics Indiana/State Affairs at StateAffairs.com/pro/Indiana. Find Howey connected Facebook and Twitter @hwypol.
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