Ed Charbonneau has been a member of the Indiana Senate since 2007. He represents District 5, which encompasses Pulaski County as well as portions of Jasper, LaPorte, Porter and Starke counties.
Charbonneau initially took the oath of office on July 23, 2007, six weeks after Republican precinct officials endorsed his bid (he was the only candidate) to succeed Vic Heinold, a Kouts Republican who had resigned in May — 2½ years into his first term — to take a job in Louisiana.
After completing the remainder of Heinhold’s term, which ran through November 2008, Charbonneau was elected in his own right. He won re-election in 2012 and 2016.
Charbonneau was a relative latecomer to electoral politics. The Gary, Indiana, native spent the bulk of his work life at U.S. Steel, a lynchpin of Northwest Indiana’s economy for more than a century. He worked for the Pittsburgh-based company for 36 years, starting out as a summer laborer and concluding his career as the head of government and community affairs.
Charbonneau retired from U.S. Steel in 2002, but he didn’t abandon the executive suite altogether. He became president and chief executive officer of the Northwest Indiana Forum, which promotes economic development in seven counties in its namesake region. Later, he served as interim president and CEO of Methodist Hospitals, a not-for-profit healthcare system that operates hospitals in Gary and Merrillville.
Over the years, he has lent his energy and experience to a number of area civic organizations, including the Porter County and Lake County chapters of United Way, the Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council, and the Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center.
Charbonneau holds an undergraduate degree from Wabash College in Crawfordsville and an MBA from Loyola University in Chicago. He earned a juris doctorate at South Texas College of Law in Houston. The lawmaker says his approach to public service is simple: Help people, solve problems and avoid unnecessary partisanship. “I’m passionate about what I do — being able to help people in need,” he told the website NWI.Life in 2019. “In the end, it doesn’t have to be a major thing, although there are major things at times that we’re able to help with. But when people are overwhelmed, it feels good to be able to help them.”
Charbonneau’s legislative work extends beyond Indiana’s borders. In 2019, he began a two-year term as chair of the Great Lakes Legislative Caucus, a nonpartisan group of lawmakers from eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The panel’s primary mission: Improve the Great Lakes’ water quality and, perhaps more important, prevent invasive Asian carp from entering the lakes via the Chicago Area Waterway System.
Charbonneau and his wife, Sharon, have two children and seven grandchildren.
Bohm, a small business owner in St. John, is described on his campaign website as a native Hoosier who worked with small businesses and non-profit groups out-of-state before returning to Indiana in 2018: “After Luke graduated he worked with small businesses and non-profits throughout the Mideast. While working with Main Street Alliance and New Jersey Citizen Action, Luke brought paid family leave to the state of New Jersey. He was also apart of a successful Ax the Beverage Tax campaign in Philadelphia and Chicago.” – Jon Schwantes
