With just one extra twist in Indiana’s odd political year of 2016, Sue Ellspermann could be governor.
Instead, she’s the president of Ivy Tech Community College, and quite at peace with that destiny.
I reminded Ellspermann of the “you could be the governor now” thing as she, Ivy Tech chancellor Jonathan Weinzapfel and senior VP Jeff Fanter met with the Tribune-Star Editorial Board last month in Terre Haute. Ellspermann grinned and paused, briefly, before answering. She’s not looking back.
”Ask my husband; I don’t really use my rear-view mirror very well. In fact, I rarely look back,” Ellspermann said. “I am where I want to be.”
Her decision in early 2016 to resign as Indiana’s lieutenant governor cleared her path to the presidency of Ivy Tech, a network of 30 campuses around the state, where nearly 160,000 Hoosiers — from new high school graduates to twenty- and thirty-somethings to Baby Boomers — try to build a better life through a trade skills credential, a two-year degree or a launching pad to a four-year university.
Ellspermann announced in February 2016 that she would resign to seek the Ivy Tech role. Mike Pence, then Indiana’s governor, picked Republican Party insider Eric Holcomb as her replacement. In March, Ellspermann followed through and resigned. Holcomb stepped in as lieutenant governor, making him the new running mate in Pence’s reelection campaign. Things changed, of course. Donald Trump picked Pence in July to fill the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket. Holcomb moved up, again, into Pence’s spot as the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate. Pence became VP. Holcomb became governor. You know the rest.
Speculation swirled that Ellspermann resigned amid a rift between her and Pence, which both denied. An Associated Press report at the time pointed out their disagreement in September 2015, when Ellspermann said she supported LGBT civil rights protections for Indiana. A furor, in state and beyond, had ignited in March 2015 when Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a policy that state business groups, universities and citizens protested as discriminatory and counter to “Hoosier hospitality.”
If such a rift caused Ellspermann’s resignation — the first by an Indiana lieutenant governor since 1948 — she shows no hints of it now.
”I’m so thankful still to then-Gov. Pence, now vice president Pence,” Ellsperman said. “But I’m very excited that we know somebody in the White House. That does not hurt anything for Indiana. So, I don’t give that any thought. I’m really happy with where I am. And I very pleased with Gov. Holcomb and the job he’s doing. His experience under the Daniels administration really is creating a smooth transition and helping Indiana continue to move forward in positive ways.”
And the fact the unexpected fall of the dominoes placed her in charge of Indiana’s community colleges pleases Ellspermann. “It’s been wonderful,” she said, noting that a staffer noticed that “she smiles bigger than when she was lieutenant governor. But this mission of helping our students succeed and helping build the economy for the future of Indiana through helping our employers is a huge thing that maybe only Ivy Tech can do.”
Four years ago, the Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America projected that Indiana would need to fill 123,000 science, technology, engineering and math jobs by 2018 and 550,000 middle skill jobs by 2020. State officials set a goal for 60 percent of Hoosier workers to have some type of college degree or post-secondary training certificate just to meet the expected demand.
Obviously, Ivy Tech will be the training ground for many of those folks. Ellspermann is energized by that task, and the passion she sees in the instructors on the campuses.
“They have a special love and care about students, and they know often these students have a more challenging circumstance than a traditional college student, or what many of us experienced as 18-year-olds,” she said. “These are adults and working adults, often. So I think that piece just hits me over and over.”
Ellspermann, now 56, is a Purdue University industrial engineering graduate and former state legislator, who worked in private business and started a consulting firm before entering politics. She’s married to Jim Mehling, a former Indiana State Sycamore baseball player and high school principal. They have four daughters.
She met with the Tribune-Star Editorial Board on March 8, International Women’s Day and in the midst of Women’s History Month. Gender equality issues filled the news this winter, including the Women’s March in January. The Indiana Legislature began its 2017 session with just seven women in the state Senate and 22 in the House, or 19.3 percent of the 150 seats. That’s a drop from 31 women, or 20.3 percent, in 2016.
Ellspermann said she urges Ivy Tech students and other women to seek public office. “I’ll always say, I believe it’s our Ivy Tech students who really need to think about running for office, and that’s women and men, because they’re the ones who stay here,” she said. “They don’t go off to college and leave the state. They’re the ones who are going to be our future county commissioners and mayors.”
Unless something changes, only 1 in 5 of those candidates will be women, though.
“I don’t know why” more women don’t seek office, Ellspermann said. “Well, I know one reason why not — the political incivility is just not acceptable. It is one thing I found unacceptable.” Campaigns, she added, should be “about ideas. It’s not about people. It shouldn’t be personal.
“And then, once you’re elected, you’re on the team together,” she continued. “We are one Indiana General Assembly. We are one Congress. And that’s what needs to change.”
Anyone who witnessed the presidential debates in 2015 and ‘16 should recognize “political incivility,” let alone the legislative level dysfunction. That hostility and division deters women from jumping into that fray, Ellspermann said.
“I would say, for sure. I’ve heard it from many, many, many,” she said. Looking at Weinzapfel, a former Democratic mayor of Evansville, Ellspermann recalled working with him as a Republican facilitator on a stadium project.
“It was always about bringing people together and reaching consensus. I hold a high value [on that],” she said. “I don’t know that all women do, but many of us hold that value of relationships and doing things together in appropriate ways. We raise our children that way. And then to go into an environment where that’s not the way things often work is just not acceptable.”