The Indiana House of Representatives in those days flipped often, with either Democrats or Republicans having only tenuous control of the chamber.
The office of governor in our state is constitutionally one of the weakest in the nation. A simple majority overrides a gubernatorial veto, making that tool designed to express a governor’s displeasure more like a meek request for reconsideration rather than a thundering no.
Because Republicans always had strong to overwhelming majorities in the Senate, that was the place where the veto truly resided.
For a quarter of a century, Garton was the leader who wielded it.
I covered the state Senate then, but I was new to the beat. Word filtered back to me from several sources that Garton was displeased with a story I’d written.
When the Senate concluded its business that day, I walked to his desk on the chamber floor and told him that I’d heard he wasn’t happy with me.
He looked surprised, but he recovered quickly. He ticked off his complaints about the story. I explained why I wrote it the way I did. We agreed to disagree.
Then came the tense moment.
I told him that, if he ever had a problem with something I’d done, he could just talk with me directly.
He could have blown up. Other legislators I’ve known would have at being challenged that way.
Instead, he looked at me for a moment, then invited me to join him in his office for a longer discussion. We talked for quite some time, a conversation that gave each of us a sense of the other.
When it ended, he told me that, going forward, if he had an issue with anything I’d done, he would speak with me directly. I told him I would do the same.
I came to respect him a great deal.
At the time, the perception of Bob Garton was that he was the voice of the establishment, an obstacle to progress.
In fact, he’d been a great reformer.
When he assumed leadership in the Senate, he cleaned up a mess. That chamber had been dogged by scandal, with previous presidents pro tempore going to prison for bribery and other forms of malfeasance.
Committee meetings often were held in secret with votes taken on bills that hadn’t even been put into writing. Afterward, the committee chairs and members often wouldn’t tell the public what the vote had been.
Garton put an end to all that.
Committee meetings became open-air events conducted under strict rules. He brought the public back into the public policy process.
When I left journalism for a time to become the executive director of what was then the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, I came to regard him even more highly.
I often had to talk with lawmakers then. Many just told me whatever they thought would get me out of their offices the fastest.
Garton was different.
Sometimes, he told me I could count on his support. More often, he told me I couldn’t.
Either way, though, I knew that I could take what he told me to the bank. His word was better than gold.
I came to see him as a model of civil disagreement, a leader who grasped that our system was less about winning and losing than it was about keeping people with differing interests and concerns working together.
His legislative career ended when he fell in a Republican primary, largely because he backed retirement and health care packages for legislators that were generous to the extreme.
He did so, he told me over lunch afterward, because a fellow senator was facing financial ruin and was severely depressed.
He never publicly named the senator.
He took the hit for his colleague.
That was his way.
Bob Garton died the other day. He was 92.
The qualities he embodied—civility and respect for the process and for those who disagreed with him—now have become almost extinct.
May he rest in peace.
