(Devan Ridgway/WTIU News)
As part of WTIU/WFIU News’ 2024 election coverage, reporter Ethan Sandweiss invited the three candidates running for Indiana’s Ninth Congressional District.
The three candidates are incumbent Republican Erin Houchin, Democrat Timothy Peck and Libertarian Russell Brooksbank. Of the three, only Houchin did not respond to an invitation.
Indiana’s Ninth District consists of the southeastern portion of the state, including Monroe County and areas along the Kentucky and Ohio state lines.
The interview with Russell Brooksbank can be found here.
Ethan Sandweiss
Could you talk a little bit more about your background, where you grew up, and how you got to, you know, eventually coming to politics?
Timothy Peck
I am an emergency physician. I graduated from residency and then started a telemedicine practice full time in 2015, and that telemedicine practice was well before telemedicine was a thing in the United States, which is what brought me to DC. Because I went to DC to work on getting the laws changed so that telemedicine could be adopted throughout the United States.
Ethan Sandweiss
You went to Holy Cross, Harvard and NYU before going to Silicon Valley, correct? That's an unusual route to New Washington, Indiana.
Timothy Peck
I live in New Washington, small 500-person town in rural Clark County, on a 40 acre farm with my wife and my son. My wife is from New Washington, and when we were deciding where we wanted to raise our family, the Midwestern values and kind of off the grid on a farm seemed to be the right place for us. So we have our two year old who's at home and growing up fast and loves new Washington.
Ethan Sandweiss
What kind are you involved in, in terms of community groups in New Washington?
Timothy Peck
It’s an unincorporated town, so all the services are volunteer. And I'm on the Beautification Committee, which really is the committee that cleans up the town and get your hands dirty on the garbage in the town, but also then makes it beautiful through various events such as Trunk or Treat or Christmas downtown in the square, et cetera. So that's where I've been involved most. My wife is the coach for the girls cross country team. There's also a running club that we're both involved in that we've created, and my wife is really the lead on that, called the Mustang Run Club. So very involved. Go to all the basketball games. Know the people in town.
Ethan Sandweiss
What made you decide to run for Congress?
Timothy Peck
It had to do with the divisiveness that we're seeing in the United States right now. My time was spent in DC back in 2017, 2018, 2019 testifying before Congress and working on getting telemedicine bills through Congress. All of that was bipartisan, and then the government shut down for the longest time in history in 2019 and I saw that the lawmakers who were responsible for keeping the government open had really lost sight of what was happening with the end user, with the citizen, with the person there. Our company that we had was saving lives that otherwise wouldn't be saved, and all of a sudden had to shut down due to the arrest of government here, and those lives that we were saving, all of a sudden people were dying. And so, government has a real effect on people, and that had an effect on me. And I said I'd like to be on the other side of the dais now and run for Congress. Bring people together.
Ethan Sandweiss
If you're elected, this would be your first elected position. Do you feel like you know what to do to get things done? Once you're in Congress, how do you feel like your experiences prepare you for that?
Timothy Peck
I know the process in Congress in DC quite well. Again, spent about three years on and off there meeting every single congressperson at the time, testifying before Congress, understanding how the Congressional Budget Office works. I understand Medicare policy, VA policy, Medicaid policy extremely deeply, which is, you know, over 20% of our budget, and understand that better than most. And honestly, there's, only a handful of physicians and other healthcare workers in Congress right now, and I think it could use a few more who understand the healthcare system, both from the front line as well as the business of healthcare and how the operations work.
Ethan Sandweiss
So it sounds like healthcare is particularly for you an area of expertise, but also in the area of emphasis, somewhere where you see a lot of need, because you talk about how the healthcare system in Southern Indiana could benefit from a change in policy.
Timothy Peck
For sure, I think Medicare and Social Security are in danger right now, not being funded. We know that we won't be able to pay hospitals in 2028 without losing money out of the Medicare Trust Fund, which will not only sink Medicare, but will sink the entire budget, because Medicare is such a huge, huge piece of our healthcare, and I know how to fix that. It's about changing the way we pay to be much more involved with the value that we are bringing patients, rather than just doing services, if I may. Right now, as a doctor, if I treat you and I give you great care, great service, I get paid. If I give you terrible service, if I hurt you, I get paid. And that doesn't make much sense. So instead, if I give you good care, I should be rewarded for that, incentivized to do that. If I give you poor care, then I shouldn't have the same type of compensation. If we change the system to be based on quality and experience, it changes the entire way we incentivize people to act and work in healthcare.
Ethan Sandweiss
One issue that's been coming up for a lot Democrats, Republicans, generally viewers who live in rural areas, is lack of healthcare access. More broadly, a lot of rural of hospitals have shut down in Indiana. Do you have any plan for addressing the crisis of lack of care in rural areas?
Timothy Peck
Yeah, this comes down to behavioral health access as well as the opioid epidemic, and then rural hospitals and critical access hospitals. So, on the opioid epidemic that we're experiencing, seven Hoosiers die every day from drug overdoses. It is the leading cause of death between for people between 18 and 45 right now, the leading cause of death, and we have passed bills on the national federal level in order to fund that, including greater access to services, greater access to rehabilitation services, telemedicine, to be able to reach people in rural areas. And my opponent, Erin Houchin, the current freshman sitting congressperson, voted against that. She was one of 37 people in the United States to vote against that that bill when it comes to critical access hospitals, rural hospitals, we have a problem right now that consolidation is happening with our health care system. So, a lot of health systems here in Indiana and elsewhere are kind of buying up smaller hospitals, and they are not for profit. However, because they're not for profit, they get a lot of tax breaks, but they also get to put any money they make, not call it a profit, but put it into reserves. So IU Health, for example, has $8 billion in reserves, but we call it a not for profit if we give it tax breaks. They also are responsible for rural health that we have, yet the resources tend to go more toward urban and suburban areas and places where they can make more money, in surgery centers in the suburbs around Indianapolis. I was in a critical access hospital in my district in North Vernon, just a few weeks ago, and I couldn't believe it that they're part of a large hospital system. They don't even have security there. They have to call 911 when someone comes into their emergency department who is behaviorally having a crisis, or if they brought a gun, which has happened there before. They are not even getting the basic services of money. Yet that health care system is spending so much money to build pavilions in Indianapolis. And so, there are ways that we can use federal encouragement incentives to make those systems be able to invest in the rural areas as well.
Ethan Sandweiss
So, on your website, you have a section on reproductive health. You mentioned that you support abortion in cases of rape or when a mother's life is in danger. This is partially informed by your own experience as a medical doctor. So, what is your position on elective abortions?
Timothy Peck
So, my whole experience comes out of my positions come out of my experience. So as you said, I'm an emergency doctor. I've treated a lot of women who've been raped. I've treated girls who've been raped, I've treated women who would have died unless we treated them with an abortion. And never once in those experiences that I ever think about what the government had to say, and I just don't believe the government belongs in my exam room. It's a very nuanced situation that's between the provider, the woman, the woman's family and their faith. And so from there, becomes more of a hands off type, libertarian view, if you will, where these situations are so complex that I don't think the government should be governing it. It's too big of government to do so. So when it comes to women's health and elective abortions and those below the third trimester in the first and second, I think restoring Roe is the is the way that we should go, and take government out of the exam room.
Ethan Sandweiss
So if there were a bill in Congress to codify abortion protections, would you vote for it?
Timothy Peck
It would have to be reasonable in the first and second trimester.
Ethan Sandweiss
I wanted to talk about some other issues that are local to Indiana, one of them being forestry, which is something that a lot of people, especially around Bloomington, care about. We have beautiful forests around here. Forests are also important for economic activities around here. Should there be more restrictions on logging?
Timothy Peck
Protecting our forest is an incredibly important piece of it. Logging not only gets into logging but cutting down forests in order for real estate development, making sure that we're protecting runoff into our rivers and streams. So there needs to be responsible logging, and their regulations need to be tighter than they are right now, especially in protected lands.
Ethan Sandweiss
I wanted to ask about foreign policy. So right now, the United States is supporting two allies in wars, one in Ukraine and one in Israel. I wanted to ask if you support current administration's policies in both of those conflicts.
Timothy Peck
Yeah, so how I think about Ukraine is, firstly, we need to stand up to the despot of Putin, and we have, and that's something we should be very proud of. We know European history from our high school experiences and what happens when despots try to take over that continent, and we know what it does to America in the process, bringing us into a much larger war. And so, standing up to Putin is imperative in terms of how that war ends. We do need to end it, and there's going to need to be some sort of compromise in order to do it, or we will be in an endless war. When it comes to Israel and Gaza and now Hezbollah from Lebanon getting involved with firing missiles back and forth - this morning, Hezbollah fired its first missile into Israel, which was intercepted - Israel, of course, has the right to defend itself. It was pretty atrocious thing that happened with people and terrorists kind of coming over the border into Israel and killing and raping and hurting people. But there has been a lot of use of weapons in Israel in a relatively indiscriminate way to be able to get their not only their point across, but really demolish that city, that country, and so I do think the United States has a role in making sure that the weapons that they supply are being used in a much more responsible way than they currently are. In terms of having a ceasefire, I'm really pleased, again, as a doctor, that we had a ceasefire for polio. When we did the first shots for polio vaccinations, we will need a second round, and that will be an enormous opportunity to get people talking. And ceasefire is necessary for people to talk.
Ethan Sandweiss
So if Israel continued to use those US supplied weapons in a not responsible way, would you support an arms embargo?
Timothy Peck
A full arms embargo? No, I wouldn't. I think we need to have much more nuanced approach with our ally there to make sure that we are having them use those weapons in a responsible way. They still need to defend themselves, and so completely cutting them off from arms doesn't really help anybody.
Ethan Sandweiss
Indiana is about to execute its first prisoner in 15 years. Federal executions also carried out in Indiana, carried out in Terre Haute. Should the state and federal government be able to carry out executions in Indiana?
Timothy Peck
Can I answer this question in two ways? One is just pure cost of doing this. And take the emotional component out of it, where the cost of executing someone actually costs more than what you need to care for someone in our jail system. The other thing is that our prison system is broken in many ways across the board, and this is just one part of it. So, we are locking up way too many people and indiscriminately for as well, in many ways. And there are prisons here in Indiana, nine, including in Scott County, that are having lower amounts of people with lower recidivism rates because of the care that they're giving to those prisoners. So that across the board, and I need to say that, because that across the board, needs to change. When we come to capital crimes and capital punishment, I don't believe that we should be killing people, especially in cases where the family does not want to have that person be tried, be executed.
Ethan Sandweiss
So you would describe yourself as anti death penalty?
Timothy Peck
I’m anti death penalty. There are atrocious crimes that happen, and I think my upbringing as well has taught me that there's room for forgiveness everywhere, but even if forgiveness can't be had, reform definitely shouldn't be necessarily a goal in terms of trying to get people out of jail for capital crimes, I don't think we should be killing people.
Ethan Sandweiss
Homelessness is a big issue here in Bloomington. It's got a lot of local implications, but the sources of this problem have to do with local, regional, national causes. What would you do in Congress to try and alleviate the issue of homelessness?
Timothy Peck
This is a huge issue, and one of the most important issues to me. My father was head of homeless services for Salvation Army. He started the first veteran shelter in the United States. So I grew up around homeless people and also understanding the issues as well as the services that people were receiving, and later, how it all gets funded as well. It is multifactorial: opioid crisis, as I spoke about, and mental health crisis that we're having in terms of access needs to be solved, it's an enormous part of homelessness. Housing crisis, which really stems for decades of problems that we've had, including the 2007 mortgage-backed security crisis and various factors that have gotten to us to the point where housing is so expensive, we do need to make housing more affordable by building more houses, as well as helping first time homeowners get into homes themselves. The economy itself needs to stay in a place where jobs are available for people, but the problem we have with the economy right now is that although people have jobs, we have a ton of working poor people where it's hard not only to save money, but you start to dip into your savings, even though you're working so hard. That has to do with complex issues, including us, literally and unfortunately, printing so much money during and after the pandemic to help us make sure that we didn't go into a depression. And now we have a lot of money circulating, and lot of people had put money into the into the economy, causing inflation. So one of the key things we need to do is work on inflation, or we'll continue to have homelessness rise.
Ethan Sandweiss
You lived in Indiana for a couple of years, but relatively speaking are a newcomer. Why do you feel like you're the best choice to represent the people of District Nine?
Timothy Peck
Sure. So I've been a resident of Indiana for, as you said, four or five years, been coming here for longer than that, with my with my wife, and before that, my fiancé, and before that, my loved girlfriend, and became part of this community. The community accepted me immediately when I came, and that's largely because I embedded myself into it. We talked a bit about some of the local things and how I've been here. I am a licensed doctor here in Indiana as well, and I am someone who shares the values of pragmatic Hoosiers. When I met my wife, she was from the Midwest. I had grown up in East Coast households, and we immediately bonded over the fact that people seemed to be very divided in the United States over lots of lines, Republican, Democrat, East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and that we thought that these lines are more artificial than they are real, and if people start to talk to one another and work together, they can be able to make progress. I think the biggest problem we have in the United States right now is that we can't seem to disagree and still make progress. And I think the Indiana Nine kind of pragmatism lends itself well to that message and the way I think. And frankly, I feel at home here.
Ethan Sandweiss
So how do you reach across the aisle, so to speak, and get some of those voters who previously might have voted for a Republican, who might still feel like Democrat is a dirty word. I mean, what do you do to kind of appeal to those pragmatists?
Timothy Peck
So, first of all, I've been an independent my whole life. I recently joined the Democratic Party to join to run this race. I share views of people on the right and the left. I would describe myself more as a kind of a Lee Hamilton blue dog Democrat, where fiscal conservatism is something that I'm proud to look at and be able to find investments that actually save us money and are good for people. My social politics, as you heard, are more of a kind of libertarian, hands off way of looking at the world, and so I am on the moderate wing of my party. I ran against a Democratic socialist in the primary and won to represent our Democratic party here. When I was in DC, all the bills that we worked on were bipartisan. And question is, how do we do that? I was all telemedicine, and so I would go into an office of a Democrat and say, ‘I have this great innovation called telemedicine. It's really good for people, and it's going to save money. Do you want it? Should we pass bills on this?’ And then I would go into a Republican's office and say, ‘I have this really great innovation called telemedicine. It saves a lot of money, and it'll also help people. And do you want this, right?’ And so the thing that I learned from that is that all Americans really want the same things, just the pressures and the messaging and the way things are ordered might be a bit different, and being able to speak the language of both sides has allowed me to have success. I've taken that same approach with people on the ground. I have signs that say Republicans pick Peck. They're all throughout this district, mostly in the redder parts of our district, that Republicans have in their yards. I just gave one to a farmer yesterday in Marysville, Indiana, and so I'm trying very actively to reach across and bring a way to reach people's pragmatism. I'll say one more thing. Indiana Nine used to be a blue area, right? We were blue dog Democrats. Lee Hamilton represented this area. Baron Hill represented this area. And there has been a change away from the GOP here in Indiana, especially southern Indiana, along the Louisville suburbs, more toward the Democratic Party, who are running pragmatic races last year in 2023 race. We now have the results of 2023 in the local elections are that our four largest cities all have Democratic majorities on the city council. Bloomington, Jeffersonville, New Albany, Clarksville, and the small towns of Charlestown, North Vernon, Scottsburg, Austin, all have Democratic mayors in them. That consolidation has happened because people are looking for balance right now, more than they are looking to kind of double down on a local GOP that has really over the last 15-20 years, brought us into a place where our quality of life is in the high 40s of 50 states, where educational attainment is 41st, where our environmental standards are depleting. It's not great to have one party rule, and we need much more balance than we have.
Ethan Sandweiss
I wanted to ask you about your opponent as well, and how you would assess Erin Houchin performance so far in Congress.
Timothy Peck
Yeah, so I think Erin Houchin’s biggest tool that she has is divisiveness, is that she is trying to divide us. She is on the far-right wing of her own party, which ostracizes people in her own party. She also has not been showing up very much. She hasn't been in the district very much. She also will not debate me. She said in the Madison Courier just the other day that she will not debate me. We have called her to debate. We have had the 4H call her to ask for a debate, the Fraternal Order of Police call to ask for a debate. We have had the League of Women Voters call to ask for a debate, and others, and she's refused all of that. That's not showing up. She also has their reputation of not answering emails or phone calls. She's not here for her representatives, and I don't think she's doing a great job of hearing what all Hoosiers have to say and bringing that back to DC right now. Add this in that it's been the least productive Congress in modern history right now, and so people are not getting things done in Congress right now because we have a far-right and a far-left parties system going on. We need people more toward the middle who are willing to compromise, not see that as a dirty word, but willing to compromise and move this country forward, and that's what I'll do.
Ethan Sandweiss
Kamala Harris has been running on a little bit more of a progressive ticket. She’s proposed some plans like giving money to first time home buyers, things of that nature. Are there any of her more progressive policies that you don't agree with?
Timothy Peck
In terms of first time homebuyers, like you said, I definitely like where she's going with that, we need to stimulate the ability for people to buy housing, because we are in a housing crisis right now, and make that something that's attainable for people. So I am with her on that. In terms of her reputation on the on the border, I wish she would go down to the border more often. I will tell you that my border policies are probably a bit stronger than some of my other Democratic colleagues and lots of Democrats are almost fearful of even saying the word border or addressing the word border. So if I may, I would love to tell you about how I think about the US border. So there are three things that we need to do. It's an emergency right now. More people come over this border, especially the last couple of years, per year, than we have had in many, many decades. And so we need to have a system in which we have more police, have more judges, and have a more aggressive way to be able to shut down the border when we can't have capacity to focus on that. That also includes having funding for fentanyl machines and detection machines and drug enforcement police there at the border. And so funding there needs to be strong now. The second part is immigration system as a whole that we have. We need immigrants in this country to survive, to thrive, to make America. And I'll give you a very clear example, nursing and nurses aids nurses make up 3.2 million people in the United States. We're still about 80,000 nurses short in terms of serving our population right now, and nursing is only having trouble filling its ranks with nursing burnout going on from the pandemic. Of those nurses, about 20% of them are immigrants. And so if you stopped a immigration system, you remove that, your system would literally collapse. Forty percent of our workforce in nurses’ aides are immigrants. You remove that, it collapses. We are also having what is sometimes referred to as the silver tsunami, or whole bunch of people and baby boomers who are going to need more services at home, more nurses, and so we need a larger workforce than we can possibly have. We have an H1B visa program, that's amazing. It allows the most talented special people for various STEM processes, STEM jobs and technology jobs and other special skills into the United States. It's very good. I think we need a similar type process to have for not only those types of people, but the people who are actually doing the work in America, nursing being one of the examples. The other thing that I think Democrats often won't address is around what do we do with the people that have come over the border over these last couple of years, and how do we address that? We need a path to citizenship for those people based off of their economic productivity, if they are able to give to the economy, if they are able to make sure that America is thriving, those people should be given a path to citizenship. If they're not because they're disabled or because of some other reason, they should also be given a path to citizenship based off of their families helping them and being part of a family unit that can help them thrive. The government itself should not be putting preferentially all of its money into helping people who won't or can't, give to our economy.
Ethan Sandweiss
If I can just interrupt for a second, President Donald Trump has made the border central to his campaign. He supports the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. If he is reelected President, would you support something like that?
Timothy Peck
No.
Ethan Sandweiss
I wanted to kind of return back to Houchin for a moment. At the end of the latest FEC quarter, your campaign reported little bit more than $32,000 cash on hand. Houchin’s campaign reported about $820,000. How do you compete with that sort of gap, especially in a district that tends to run red?
Timothy Peck
Every time Erin Houchin puts out a commercial or opens her mouth, really, it helps me. I consider that a commercial for myself. Again, she's dividing us. She is not bringing us together, and Hoosiers don't want that. The other thing is her record, there is not much of one to run off of, and so highlighting that she's also connected to extreme corruption that's happening in Indiana Nine. So those in Bloomington and in Monroe aren't always familiar with the remainder of the of Indiana Nine, especially Jamey Noel, who is the Sheriff of Clark County, but more importantly, the GOP Chair of Indiana Nine, and he has stolen millions of dollars from taxpayers and then infused that money into the GOP. He's currently in jail, and his sentencing will be on the 14th of October. But he put in a plea himself for 15 years in jail. That's a lot of years to even plea down to, and the judge didn't even accept it. He wanted to do a full sentencing. So this is a person who has had full control over the GOP for the last 11 years or so, including every election that Erin Houchin’s ever been in, and he's been putting resources toward her, saying everybody should donate toward her. And that's what she's been able to do to get that war chest. And again, whenever she uses that war chest, it helps us. So what are we doing? I have a commercial on TV right now that is talking about women's rights, because women will come out. There’s a reckoning that's going to happen, and women will come out and support myself and other Democrats and others who will support them. I've been on the ground. I quit my job to do this work for the last year, and so I've been at 17 county fairs, sponsoring them as well, and having an enormous presence there, shaking the hands of people and everyday Hoosiers. Not only that, I used the primary and the fact that I was in a contested primary to allow me to enter into candidate forums and debates, and I did that in the reddest areas of our district. So I went to Batesville and Brookville and Bedford, and Corydon and Aurora and other places, and I would be the only Democrat in those rooms, maybe one of two, and there be 17 Republicans speaking. And I would give my pragmatic moderate message of saying, I want to reach across the aisle and win and flip votes that would have been hers just from straight party ticket voting and instead getting people to think about and vote for us,
Ethan Sandweiss
Is there anything that we didn't touch on, that you wanted to put in some brief closing remarks about?
Timothy Peck
Yeah, we really do have the problem that we can't seem to disagree and still make progress. And that's what I want to do, is represent all Hoosiers. Every single Hoosier. Does not matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or an independent. Take those messages back to DC and figure out a way to work with all sides to be able to make progress.
