INDIANAPOLIS — Just months after Hoosiers demoted his party to minority status, Democratic Rep. Patrick Bauer has found a way to squat in the center of Indiana's political court — and in the process, shove a governor who might run for president and Republicans who control the legislative branch to the sidelines.
The South Bend native has orchestrated a four-week boycott that has shut down the Indiana House of Representatives and undercut Republicans who are left to negotiate among themselves.
The GOP has a strategy to move forward. It involves developing legislation in the Senate and readying it for a concurrence vote when Democrats return and the House can get back to business.
Ultimately, though, nothing can become law until Bauer and the House Democrats decide to return to the Statehouse — a fact that gives Bauer more influence than almost any minority leader before him.
House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican from Indianapolis, has tried both carrots and sticks to draw Democrats back from Illinois.
When Democrats cited the so-called "right to work" bill, which unions say would have crippled their finances, Bosma said that legislation is dead in his chamber. As Democrats' reasons shifted to measures such as a private school voucher program and another labor bill, Bosma offered concessions there, as well.
He also has levied fines of $250 per day, and those elevate to $350 per day starting today. Bosma said he also intends to censure the missing Democrats, a move that would be noted in House journals and, the speaker said, would amount to a permanent black mark.
But Bauer just shrugs those efforts off. Asked why Democrats do not plan to return to the chamber for this week's first session, he said: "We don't see the welcome mat. It's not a warm, inviting place."
The 40-year legislative veteran has moved into a negotiating stance. His answers about what Democrats want are at times fuzzy, and his only public explanation of his party's strategy is that they take it "day by day."
He also has changed his mind about how Republican moves would affect Democrats' thinking.
On Wednesday, Bauer said several times that the Senate should not yet hold budget hearings. On Thursday, once the Senate had announced it would hold budget hearings, Bauer praised the move as a "positive approach."
Bosma said he has no idea what Democrats' real intentions are.
"I'm not certain what will break the impasse," he said.
The confusion was part of what prompted Senate Republican leadership, which had remained mostly quiet throughout the House standoff, to jump into the fray.
"To suggest that the House Democrats' position that they might come back is anything but a complete pretense and that they're willing to compromise to get back here is absolutely disingenuous," said Senate President Pro Tem David Long, a Fort Wayne Republican.
For most of the last three decades, the House has been evenly divided. Democrats have held narrow majorities for 18 of the last 24 years, and Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has had Bauer as speaker for four of the seven legislative sessions that have so far started during his tenure.
Daniels often has cast Bauer as a political "boss" who demands that his party members toe the line, and in an effort to remove Bauer as an obstruction, the governor raised more than $1 million for his Aiming Higher political action committee to help Republicans turn a 48-52 minority into a 60-40 majority in November's elections.
That emboldened Republicans, but left Democrats with only one option — bolting the House to prevent the two-thirds quorum the Indiana Constitution requires to do business — to stop items with which they disagree.
"I think Democrats stared into the abyss and realized they were going to be on the short end of every piece of legislation," said Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville.
Democrats also say they're responding to a movement by Republicans across the country to weaken labor unions that will hurt the middle class, with Bauer pointing to debates in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.
"We have a constitutional right and duty to deny a quorum when we think the majority has become tyrannical or too radical," he said.
Republicans, meanwhile, can't be blamed for feeling they've got a mandate to push an aggressive agenda after such a big election win, Dion said.
"It leaves the minority party impotent. They have very few options to express their will," he said. "The majority Republicans are exasperated and are saying, 'Put your hand down so we can punch you in the face.'"
As has been the norm, two Democrats were present on the House floor Thursday for procedural purposes. One was Rep. Gail Riecken, D-Evansville.
Riecken said she was not elected to "just sit here and push a button" and added: "I am willing to stay out until I see compromise on both sides."
Rep. Suzanne Crouch, R-Evansville, said a small percentage of Hoosier workers are union members.
"Who's representing the other 90 percent?" she said, as House Republicans responded, "We are."
Dozens of union supporters who have protested in the Statehouse hallways the last four weeks disagreed. They chanted, "Thank you, Democrats."
Rep. Steve Stemler, a Democrat from Jeffersonville, is not participating in the boycott. The other 39 House Democrats have been absent from the House floor since Feb. 21, and at the Comfort Suites hotel in Urbana, Ill., since Feb. 22.
Democrats already have received their $22,600 salaries, but each day they stay out, they are losing their regular $155 per day in-session expense payments.
The Indiana Democratic Party is footing the $99 per-room, per-night hotel bill. Bosma has said he believes labor unions are pledging to cover those costs, and said Democrats should disclose their donors.
As any chances of a quick resolution crumbled Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson, a Democrat from Ellettsville, held her thumb and index finger an inch apart and said: "They were like this close."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.