Bio
Mitch Gore is an Indianapolis native who has lived on the east and southeast side for most of his life and currently lives in Warren Township. He is the product of public schools and a working family. He currently works in the Marion County Sheriff’s office, achieving the rank of Major, while serving in the state legislature. Gore’s top priorities include addressing public safety issues, expanding access to healthcare and fighting for affordability.
Q&A
Why are you running for Indiana House District 89?
We still have some work to do in District 89 and in the state, and I think I’ve been the most effective Democrat in the General Assembly since I got there, and I want to keep that up. There’s just a lot of work to do, maybe now more than ever, and I seem to have a knack for it. I genuinely love my district and getting to serve, so we’re giving it another shot.
What committees do you feel you’d be best equipped to serve on in the upcoming legislative session?
I like the committees I’ve been on since I got there. I’m the ranking member of Courts and Criminal Code, and that makes sense with my experience in law enforcement, but by statute the ranking member of Courts and Criminal Code is also a member of the Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council for the state. That is a group made up of dozens of stakeholders in the criminal justice system. We’re chaired by an Indiana Supreme Court Justice and we make some pretty interesting discoveries because we’re the chief data hub for criminal justice in the state, and we can really enact some meaningful policies and push them out to the local units. So that’s been great to be on. I’m also on the Veterans Affairs and Public Safety committee, and I really respect our veterans. I’ve been able to pass a couple bills to help them, and the public safety part is some Department of Corrections issues, some firefighter issues and things like that, which I understand pretty well. Employment, Labor and Pensions is the other committee I’m on. I’m a union member and I care a lot about working people, so that’s been great to be on. It deals with a lot of stuff involving pensions and you know work standards and workplace safety that I care a lot about. I also used to be on the Roads and Transportation committee, and I would like to be back on it. We made a heavy push while I was serving on that committee to address Marian County’s infrastructure funding, and we’re seeing some of that come to fruition, but there’s still work to do there too. So I’d like to get back on that committee.
What would be your top priority if elected?
I just think we need a hard reset. There’s some things that are occurring that illustrate the structural faults in our government, and they ripple out through society. A lot of people talk about affordability, public safety, utilities, housing and so on, but so much of that can’t be meaningfully addressed currently. We just kind of half-ass it and piecemeal it and it’s because of the money in politics, the corruption in state government, a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability, which I just can’t stomach anymore. My focus over the next several years is going to be on these more structural issues. For instance, I think the Inspector General needs to be in an elected position. Currently, they are appointed by the Governor, so they have no impetus to actually investigate corruption in the executive branch. Of course, now their reports are going to be less accessible through the Access to Public Records Act. Our public access counselor, similarly, is slowing down their work and not releasing it to the public as they should be. We have to get money out of politics as much as we can under Citizens United, and there are ways to do that, we just have a long road to go. We have a lot of politicians who are living a life of luxury on the taxpayer dime, from quarter million dollar IndyCar suites to luxury SUVs and helicopter rides, and that really pisses me off. So, just out of spite, I’ll be working on solving those issues.
What do you think is the biggest problem for the residents of Indiana House District 89 and how would you address it?
Everybody says it, but it is affordability. My district is still, in the grand scheme of things, relatively affordable in terms of housing, but it’s still way too expensive. My wife and I wouldn’t be able to afford the home we bought back in 2016 today. Owning a home, which is part of the American dream, has nearly slipped away for most average working-class people. Groceries are also going up because of the war in Iran and our war on farmers here at home. Healthcare is through the roof as well. When I started working for the government, it was in part because I needed health insurance because I have Crohn’s disease, and now the government isn’t even the place you go to get reasonable benefits. The trade-off used to be that the pay is not great, but the benefits are good, which is no longer the case. High deductible plans are kind of the usual thing you get at many employers, and you just have to hope and pray that you don’t get sick, if you have insurance at all. Childcare as well is just insanely expensive. It costs more to send a kid to childcare, in some parts of our state, than in-state tuition at a public university does, which is insane. People are just being priced out of life. Forget thriving and having some kind of joy in your life, many people are struggling to make ends meet, and now the ends aren’t meeting anymore.
What role do you think the federal government or national organizations should play in state and local politics?
I mean, everybody has their First Amendment right to advocate for certain issues. Citizens United was the death nail for responsible politics, in my opinion. It’s just disgusting that because you oppose the president’s plan on redistricting, for example, that he and his allies can just dump millions and millions of dollars into state senate races out of spite, just to take people out. And then you see the president pro tem say, “I’m not even going to run for pro tem because you know they have so much money.” $15 million is, to us state legislators, an enormous pot of money to exact your political revenge, but to them it’s nothing to them. $15 million to Elon Musk is like 75 cents to me. So these national organizations and national interests that can blow money in state legislative races have started to ruin democracy nationwide and in Indiana. Again, we have to get money out of politics. When I started in 2020, we used to say that we don’t do things like they do in D.C. We’re common sense people, we work across the aisle, we do things the right way, we disagree without being disagreeable and that’s all gone. I’ve been in since the session of 2021, and I’ve been through three special sessions in six years. We’re averaging one every other year and, before I got here, it was like one one a decade when there was an actual emergency that needed being addressed. That’s all gone, and it’s all been focused on national issues now. I really regret that it’s playing out that way, and it makes it much less fulfilling to do the job. I’m really paid to care about the people who’ve been my neighbors forever, all 65,000 of them, and I care about the rest of Hoosiers as well, so it gets rough. But there’s a lot of work to be done, so we just keep chugging away.
Why should voters support you?
I try to be open with my neighbors, mainly through knocking on tens of thousands of doors over the last seven years, and I hope they see that I don’t work for anybody else but them. No party or special interest is going to persuade me or dissuade me from doing what I think is best for the people of District 89 and for all Hoosiers, and you can’t always say that about politicians. I was looking for a job when I found this one, but I’m not here for the money. This is what I admired about some of those senators on redistricting; I can honestly say I’d rather lose than to cast a vote that runs contrary to what my neighbors need. I’m just going to be dogged in my focus on getting them what they need and fighting for them. I think they know that that’s genuine, and I’d just be honored to be able to keep doing it for them. It’s the greatest privilege of my professional life, so I’d be very happy to keep it up.
