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Destiny Wells speaks with reporters after winning the nomination for attorney general during the Indiana Democratic Party convention on July 13, 2024. (Photo/Arianna Hunt of TheStatehouseFile.com)

By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
July 18, 2024

Three days after winning the Democratic nomination for Indiana attorney general, Destiny Wells was outlining her platform in a virtual news conference and highlighting a national analysis that has downgraded the chances of the state’s chief legal officer, Todd Rokita, hanging onto the seat.

Wells, a former deputy attorney general under the previous Indiana Attorney General, Republican Curtis Hill, overwhelmed her opponent, Beth White, for the Democratic nomination at the Indiana Democratic Party convention on July 13 in Indianapolis. White, president and CEO of the Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault and Human Trafficking, won just 475 delegate votes to Wells’ 1,057.

“It was a great success for us,” Wells said of the victory. “We won with great margins.… We’re so ready to pivot to the general (election) and start focusing on Todd Rokita.”

As she shifts to campaigning for the November election, Wells is buoying her candidacy on Sabato’s Crystal Ball switching its handicapping of the attorney general race from “safe Republican” to “leans Republican.”

The January 2024 Crystal Ball analysis of the contest noted the headwinds Rokita is facing, including the public reprimand he received for misconduct from the Indiana Supreme Court in November 2023 and his low popularity among “establishment Republicans.” Also, the review of the race was impressed by both Wells and White and believed whoever won the Democratic nomination would receive significant support from the party.

“It would be a heavy lift for any Democrat to beat  Rokita – no Democrat has won a statewide contest in Indiana since 2012 – but a Democratic win is no longer outside the realm of possibility,” the Crystal Ball said.

During the news conference, Wells outlined her top three platform priorities: medical privacy, workers’ rights and restoring integrity to the attorney general’s office.

The focus on medical privacy stems from Rokita taking the stance that the terminated pregnancy reports filed after every abortion are public documents. This is contrary to the view of the Indiana Department of Health and the Indiana Public Access Counsel who said because legal abortions have fallen dramatically since the state’s near-total abortion ban was enacted, the reports contain enough private medical information to identify the women patients.

Also, Wells claimed the state has seen “an exodus” of employees leaving the attorney general’s office. She said her focus will be on “improving the culture and climate of the office from the jump” and taking the partisanship out of the office. She wants to bring back the lawyers who “really love the work” but have gone elsewhere.

Finally, Wells wants the attorney general’s office to put more resources toward investigating and enforcing the laws against wage theft, labor trafficking and worker misclassification. That kind of work, she said, has “almost completely fallen” in the Rokita administration.

“So we want to build that back up and have a workers’ rights task force where we start to build that out and become more of a people’s attorney in addition to being the government’s attorney,” Wells said.

 

Beth White convo
Beth White, who ran unsuccessfully for the attorney general nomination, speaks with a delegate at the Indiana Democratic Party convention on July 13, 2024. (Photo/Marilyn Odendahl)

 

A different race but reproductive rights still top issue

Wells ran for Indiana Secretary of State in 2022, losing to Diego Morales, a Republican who had been fired from the office previously and had a questionable military record. She blamed her loss on straight ticket voting. Even though, she said, Republicans told her they liked what she stood for, they voted for Morales because they “stopped reading the names” on the ballot.

However, Wells said the 2024 race will be distinct from 2022 contest. Rokita has been in politics much longer than Morales and has a very different history, she said. Also in November, Hoosiers will have more choices when voting for president, since President Joe Biden, Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, Republican, will be on the ballot as well as Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Libertarian Donald Rainwater.

“There are a lot of different variables at play this time that make this race different and we’re concentrating on those,” Wells said.

At the Democratic state convention, delegates were upbeat about their party’s chances in the general election. Along with choosing Wells as their attorney general nominee, they also picked former state Rep. Terry Goodin as the lieutenant governor nominee who will run alongside the party’s gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormick.

Carlette Duffy and Josette Robinson, delegates from Marion County, ticked off the issues they believe everyone wants regardless of political affiliation. Every Hoosier, they said, wants to take care of their families, have happy and healthy children, provide a good education for every child, take care of the environment, and live in safe and thriving communities.

The residents of Indiana have more in common than they have that separates them, Duffy said. So the Democrats have to have candidates who can speak to the common needs and connect with voters in rural and urban communities in order to show those voters that their concerns and needs are being addressed by the Democratic Party and not by the GOP.

In speaking about the race for the attorney general nomination, Duffy articulated the issue that continues to ignite Democrats – reproductive rights. She said as a mother and a grandmother, she wants the state’s chief lawyer to fight for women’s rights.

The issue is personal to Duffy. When her daughter, who suffers from Lupus, became pregnant, Duffy said she was terrified her daughter would die during the pregnancy because if she needed abortion care to save her life, she would not be able to receive it.

Marshall McConnell, a delegate from Hancock County, has similar concerns about women’s health.

He recalled that as a young boy, he would accompany his father to the local cemetery on Memorial Day and help him put American flags by the graves of military service members.  The cemetery had many tombstones for women with epithets saying the deceased had died during childbirth.

Still moved by that memory, McConnell said abortion access allows women to get the treatment they need and survive.

“I think Democrats need to really harp on that,” McConnell said of the GOP-dominated Indiana General Assembly passed a near-total abortion ban in the summer of 2022.  Democrats need to “say what Republicans are doing and the problems it’s causing.”

Goodin was an opponent of abortion during the two decades he served in the Indiana House, but, in announcing his run for the lieutenant governor nomination, he said his position had changed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs that women do not have a constitutional right to end their pregnancies.

Speaking at the party’s convention, Goodin sought to emphasize his stance.

“I want folks to hear me real clear and plain when I say this: folks it’s time to end the war against women in our state,” Goodin said as the delegates erupted into applause. “Hoosier women not only deserve the right, but we demand the right that women make the decisions about their own bodies.”

 

Ind Democratic Party convo
Indiana Democrats are optimistic they can win a bigger foothold in the Statehouse even though the party has not won a statewide office since 2012. (Photo/Arianna Hunt of TheStatehouseFile.com)

 

‘Do your one duty this year’

Nyla Nyffeler, a delegate from Allen County, marches every week in front of her local public library with other members of the National Organization for Women, advocating for abortion rights. She said that as a woman who has lived openly as a lesbian for 50 years, she is worried the LGBTQ community will be targeted, and the country as a whole will decline, if Trump returns to the White House.

‘I’m here to honor my father” Nyffeler said of her dad who served as a medic in the U.S. Navy. “He patched up a lot of people and put a lot of people in body bags fighting fascism during World War II.”

Just like her father, Nyffeler said, she is fighting to save Democracy. “I’ll be damned if I let it fall to the Republicans and Donald Trump.”

At the news conference, Wells echoed that sentiment, saying the 2024 election would be a pivotal moment. Her concern, she said, is not so much Trump but all the “bad actors” surrounding him and the Project 2025 blueprint for upending government. She wants to keep the status quo rather than return to the chaos, she said, that ensued when Trump was elected president in 2016.

Wells said Hoosiers  must get to the polls in November.

“If you can do your one duty this year, it is to make sure that you go and vote,” Wells said. “I am encouraging folks to read every name on the ballot this year and make sure that they’re voting for the best candidate and not just the party.”

 

The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org

 

 

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