By the numbers: 2024 Indiana General Assembly session

When it came to the 2024 legislative session, the representatives each authored an average of about four bills, with over half writing exactly five bills. In a short session (Indiana has a longer session every other year to determine the state budget), they are only allowed to introduce five bills, but some still end up with more than five authored bills due to changes in authorship.

For example, Rep. Jake Teshka, R-South Bend, led all with seven authored bills, but he was the original author of only five.

Rep. Mitch Gore, D-Indianapolis, is another; the House Bill 1131 authorship was changed from Rep. Vanessa Summers, D-Indianapolis, to him 29 days after it was introduced. When The Statehouse File spoke to Gore, he said the bill was his idea, but he passed it onto Summers since he had five other bills.

The switch to Gore occurred because there was a chance HB 1131 was going to be heard in the Commerce, Small Business and Economic Development Committee, and committee Chair Rep. Robert Morris, R-Fort Wayne, suggested Gore be named author so he could advocate for the bill as it went through the process.

The bill never made it to committee, but Gore described the change as “good advice from the chairman there.”

Of the 418 House bills, 95 passed. (Although one—HB 1002, having to deal with the state definition of “antisemitism”—was vetoed by Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb.)

Fifty representatives, 28 of whom were Democrats, failed to push any legislation through the two chambers and to Holcomb’s desk.

Averaging out: Indiana Senate

While the House bills have one author and then co-authors are added throughout the process, Senate bills often have more than one author to begin with, before other senators jump on as co-authors.

So, even though there were only 296 Senate bills this past session, the 50 senators each authored 10 bills on average. The only senator whose name didn’t grace any legislation was Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville.

Each senator on average passed 3.84 bills (77 in total), higher than their colleagues across the hall but still low enough to be better than the average MLB pitcher’s ERA.

(Note: Sometimes both the House and Senate will put forward the same bill and only one will end up being adopted, leaving one to pass in spirit but not literally.)

The standouts, good and bad: the House

In the House, Rep. Kendall Culp, R-Francesville; Rep. Dale DeVon, R-Granger; and Rep. Jennifer Meltzer, R-Shelbyville, led the way with four of their five bills passing. In addition, DeVon went 4-for-5 when it came to bills he co-authored, and Meltzer was 7-for-11 as a co-author.

Of the 30 Democrats, only Rep. Rita Fleming, D-Jeffersonville, and Gore were successful in legislation they wrote.

But what about quality over quantity, Rep. Jeff Thompson, R-Lizton, may ask. Everything Thompson touched turned to gold: He wrote three bills, co-authored three bills and all six passed.

Also of note is Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, who got three of his four authored bills and all 11 of the bills he co-authored to the finish line. While Steuerwald’s 93.33% may put him near the top of the IGA class, that type of fielding percentage wouldn’t be anything special in the big leagues.

On the other side of the spectrum, there were four representatives who did not author any bills: Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers; Jack Jordan, R-Bremen; Randy Lyness, R-West Harrison; and Chris May, R-Bedford.

Jordan was the only representative who wasn’t the primary author of anything, including resolutions. His stat line is solely co-authorships and co-sponsorships.

The standouts, good and bad: the Senate

Switching focus to the Senate, Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, stayed busy, writing 22 bills. Charbonneau’s feat was topped maybe only by the total numbers of Rep. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen: 15 authored and 27 co-authored bills.

Interestingly, of the nine Senators who authored fewer than six pieces of legislation, eight were Republicans. (The singular Democrat was Sen. Jean Breaux, D-Indianapolis, who faced health issues during the session and died March 20.)

When it came to actual bills passed, Rep. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, and Rep. Linda Rogers, R-Granger, paced the field with 11 authored bills each.

Looking at the senators’ percentage of authored bills and co-authored bills that made it through the General Assembly illustrates a difference between the two chambers.

In the House, some representatives had very low percentages—four at 10% or lower—and others were very successful—eight at 80% or higher. No senator fell below 19.23% or rose higher than 64%.

The three senators who got through at least three-fifths of their legislation were Sens. John Crane, R-Avon; Cyndi Carrasco, R-Indianapolis; and Eric Koch, R-Bedford.

Dr. Elizabeth Bennion, an Indiana University South Bend political science professor, suggests voters look beyond just the numbers of bills introduced and passed when evaluating their representatives, though.

A few benchmarks Bennion laid out:

If you reach out to a legislator, do you hear back in a timely manner?

Are you able to meet in person with one of your representatives?

Do they present themselves and interact with their colleagues in an appropriate manner?

Are they active in the community they represent?

It is also important, Bennion said, to understand that, due to the nature of a supermajority, members of the minority party are less likely to have numbers as high or impressive as the majority.

“So simply looking at the number of bills a person passes won't necessarily indicate their level of work, effort or effectiveness,” Bennion said. “If somebody is in the minority party, it will be harder to pass legislation because the other party controls the calendar, controls the committees, controls what goes to the floor for a vote and can outvote you.”

Party divide

Looking at the success percentages shows clearly the struggles Democrats have in the GOP supermajority.

In the House, the 10 lawmakers with a success percentage of 20% or less are all Democrats. Meanwhile, in the Senate, the results are only slightly less partisan: Nine of the bottom 10 senators—not counting Bray, since he authored no bills—are from the minority party.

Freshman Sen. Randy Maxwell, R-Lawrenceburg, was the lone dot of red in a sea of blue because only one of his three authored bills and two of the eight bills he co-authored passed.

Democrats take up 40 of the 150 seats—barely a quarter—so it’s no wonder the results are lopsided in favor of Republicans. One wouldn’t expect much from the Indianapolis Indians if their defense consisted only of a pitcher, first baseman and center fielder.

Only eight of the Senate bills that passed had a Democratic author. As a comparison, 184 triumphant Senate bills had at least one author of the Republican variety.

Of the 95 House bills that passed, only three were written by Democrats—specifically, Gore and Fleming.

Gore and Fleming

One of Gore’s two successful bills added household items that can cause intoxication—such as insecticide—to the already existing list of items it is a level five felony for inmates to traffic.

He said it was something he identified as an issue during his full-time job as a captain with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. It passed unanimously in both chambers.

Gore’s other bill created a “green alert” for missing veterans.

“We know that veterans, when they go missing, are more likely to die by suicide thereafter than the average person and we know that they're more likely to be armed,” Gore said. “First responders need to be aware that the person missing is a veteran. And, of course, the public needs to be aware. It adds a sense of urgency, I think, when a veteran goes missing.”

The green alert bill was also unanimous and, according to Gore, topped the list of some Republicans’ newsletters recapping the session.

That doesn’t mean it was destined to pass, however. Some version of the bill has been introduced every year since 2020, beginning a year before Gore was in office, without ever making it to committee.

“There’s good legislation that, you know, ends up dying each year,” Gore explained.

With Army veteran and former police officer Rep. Steve Bartels, R-Eckerty, in his second year as chair of the Veteran Affairs and Public Safety Committee, Gore said it helped to have someone who could understand the importance of the bill in a leadership position.

“Sometimes the timing is just right, and the people in power—they just happen to be who you need,” Gore said.

Fleming’s bill also grew out of her own experience in her day job—she was an OB-GYN—but wasn’t universally received like Gore’s bills. The final iteration of HB 1426 passed in the Senate 30-18 and the House 87-9. Eleven of the 27 nays were Fleming’s fellow Democrats.

The bill requires hospitals—those with a maternity unit and no faith-based objection—to offer the implantation of a long-acting reversible contraceptive after a patient gives birth.

Fleming discussed the process of finding co-authors, saying for “any legislator on either side, it's recommended that you have bipartisan authorship on a bill.”

For HB 1426, the original co-authors were Reps. Cindy Ledbetter, R-Newburgh, Maureen Bauer, D-South Bend, and Brad Barrett, R-Richmond, before Barrett was removed and Rep. Joanna King, R-Middlebury, was added.

“Cindy Ledbetter is a nurse health-care provider so I thought it was important to have someone with a health-care background. Maureen Bauer is one of our younger members and is very enthusiastic about all issues related to maternal and infant health,” Fleming said. “And then Joanna King—Joanna and I work very well together. She's Republican and just has a lot of common sense.”

Barrett is chair of the Public Health Committee, where the bill was heard.

(Fleming announced her retirement in May, after The Statehouse File’s interview with her was conducted.)

The rookies

Six legislators had their first session this year. Four are senators and only one of the six—Sen. David Vinzant, D-Gary—is a Democrat.

Four of the eight he co-authored were successful; however, he ended up not voting for one of the bills—SB 146—after the House added amendments.

The two representatives are Rep. Lori Goss-Reaves, R-Marion, and Rep. Alex Zimmerman, R-Greensburg, and they, along with Sen. Cyndi Carrasco, R-Indianapolis, each batted over .500 when it came to bills they authored or co-authored passing. The other three failed to push half or more of their bills through.

Goss-Reaves was the busiest when it came to authoring, writing six pieces of legislation and co-authoring 14 bills.

Putting the stats to use

In sports, underperforming players face the possibility of being cut. One way teams know if it’s time to get rid of athletes is by looking at the stats—it’s a good overview of their production or lack thereof.

But the intangibles must also be considered, such as character and if they work well with the other players on the team.

In the same way, when staying informed on candidates, the numbers can help shed light on whether assembly members are below, at or above average when it comes to things such as putting forward legislation or getting their bills passed, but that’s not the whole story.

Fleming suggests talking to your legislators and going beyond flyers and mailers.

When Gore is voting, he worries first about who the candidate is as an individual.

“I want the person to be kind and smart and dedicated,” Gore said. “And I want them to be ethical and upstanding with some kind of demonstrated record of that. I don't want them to be mean spirited.”

An issue citizens and state legislators are faced with is locating or providing this kind of information.

With significantly less money poured into local races, it’s harder for candidates to advertise than those vying for state and or federal positions, Dr. Laura Wilson, associate professor of political science at University of Indianapolis, told The Statehouse File.

At the same time, candidates have to actually explain what the state legislature is.

“So when you're talking about a low-information election, like some of these state legislative races, the burden is on the candidates to be able to explain what are the issues state government deals with,” Wilson said. “We have lots of educated, informed voters … but there are many voters who think about immigration and national issues and don't understand what state legislature does.”

Fleming also pinpointed this as a problem.

“And a lot of the things on both sides, both Republican and Democrat, that are national issues may be of concern to our district, but those are not things that we deal with as state representatives,” Fleming said. “We are supposed to represent our district and then, down the line, the state.”

To some, when it comes to low-information races and candidates, the solution is to employ an all-Republican or all-Democrat voting strategy.

“The lower down the ballot you go—so some of those really smaller niche races where it's reasonable a voter may not recognize any of the candidates names, they may not understand the responsibilities of this public office, and they're trying to make sense of who their best choice would be, foregoing other modes of research—they will absolutely look at the straight-ticket ballot,” Wilson said.

Bennion pointed out one potential benefit of straight-ticket voting—especially in Indiana where voters can fill in a bubble at the top of the ballot instead of going through every race—is it makes voting quicker and more efficient, possibly encouraging more Hoosiers to go vote.

This is not an unintelligent or irrational way to vote, Wilson said. Voters who go with a straight-ticket ballot may not end up liking every candidate they vote for, but there’s “a strong likelihood of a good decision.”

A factor in not every candidate from a party aligning with a voter’s values is that there are only two successful political parties, Bennion said.

The two-party system can push candidates who don’t fit well into either box to pick Republican or Democrat anyway.

For those voting straight ticket, whether that candidate’s stances match the ones that compel voters to go all in on a party isn’t explored. All that matters is the “R” or “D” next to their name.

Indiana still has plenty of voters who don’t vote solely based on party, however—even when it comes to national elections.

In 2020, Hoosiers recorded 1,729,519 votes for President Donald Trump. Todd Rokita, the Republican nominee for attorney general, received over 7,000 less votes than the Trump-Pence ticket, while Holcomb lagged almost 23,000 votes behind.

And when it came to the nine U.S. House of Representatives races, the Republican candidates, in total, received over 9,000 more votes than Trump.

“As a voter, it's ultimately your decision: Who do you think is going to best represent you in the position?” Wilson said. “Just looking, just being knowledgeable and making an informed decision—as a consumer, right, but also as a constituent—is really valuable.”