I know I’ve asked that question before—and I suspect I will ask it again often. I don’t understand why the good people—and they are good people—vote again and again for political leaders who show contempt for the voters, for the constitutions of both the United States and Indiana and for the truth.
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is but the most recent example of this trend.
Beckwith has been in the news a lot lately. His management of his office has turned into the political equivalent of a dumpster fire. He’s had staff members—including ones from the church where he still serves as pastor—depart either in anger or disgrace because he either fired them or they were caught up in a scandal that has enraged much of the Indiana General Assembly.
The office carnage began when Beckwith fired his senior advisor, Erin Sheridan, without explanation. Sheridan, for the most part, has stayed silent about her dismissal but has hinted in her responses to social media posts that she does have a story to tell and that she will tell it soon.
Rumors abound in the hothouse environment that is the Statehouse that she was canned because she was about to blow the whistle regarding goings-on in the lieutenant governor’s office.
Sheridan is a respected fixture in the Indiana Republican Party firmament, a political professional who has many friends and allies in the GOP power structure.
If the dispute between Beckwith and Sheridan turns into a he-said-she-said confrontation, my bet is that more Republicans will believe and line up with her than with a latter-day Elmer Gantry who has yet to demonstrate that he’s out for anyone but himself.
If the strange Sheridan firing was the only problem Beckwith had, he might be all right.
But it’s not.
His staff has been further roiled by reports that key aides of his watched and chortled over an AI deepfake video of the wife of a state legislator dancing topless.
An aside: What kind of strange mind decides that creating an invasive and deliberately hurtful representation of a woman who likely has never done anything to harm him or her is morally justifiable, much less funny? And what kind of supposed Christians—Beckwith and his minions love to loudly and publicly proclaim their faith—would laugh at such cruelty?
The revelation of the deepfake video prompted still more staff departures from Beckwith’s office, outrage on the part of the lawmaker and his friends in the legislature, reports of yet another such video floating around and an investigation into the whole incident by the Marion County prosecutor’s office.
Amid all that turmoil, Beckwith showed up at a town hall in Merrillville and told the crowd that he supported President Donald Trump’s plan to gerrymander the GOP to victory in the 2026 off-year elections. Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, came to Indiana recently to pressure Gov. Mike Braun and state legislators into joining the effort.
Braun and the Indiana lawmakers have been slow to get behind the idea, in part because Indiana’s constitution prohibits such activity and costly lawsuits are likely to result from any attempt to get around that prohibition.
Such considerations seem not to trouble Beckwith at all.
But that’s not surprising.
He is, after all, the same guy who not long ago offered an interpretation of the notorious three-fifths slavery compromise in the U.S. Constitution that was every bit as grounded in fact and reality as a Harry Potter novel.
But that’s Beckwith for you. When he’s in front of a crowd, any crowd, and his rear end is on the line, truth, decency and basic sense are optional.
That’s why we’re now being treated to the edifying spectacle of a lieutenant governor whose house is on fire telling the governor, state legislators and the good folks of Merrillville that it’s really, really fun to play with matches and cigarette lighters.
Micah Beckwith in all his self-aggrandizing, self-promoting glory.
Again, where do we Hoosiers find these people?
