Indiana's political youth movement

Under old conventional wisdom young political activists were idealistically liberal. Then they had life experience and turned conservative.

These days several young members are trending very conservative in the Indiana General Assembly. Mostly 35 years old and under, these Republicans keep expanding their numbers.

Tim Wesco was elected in 2010, at age 25. Now 29, he has some seniority in this youth caucus. David Ober of Albion is just 27 and was first elected at age 25 in 2012. Casey Cox of Fort Wayne is 32 and first won his seat in a special election in 2013. Martin Carbaugh, 34, also from Fort Wayne, upset a veteran Democrat in 2012.

The wave of young conservatives also has hit the state Senate, where lawmakers are often older than House members and usually first serve in the House before seeking a longer Senate term in larger districts.

Senate Republican Jim Banks is 35, and his wife, Amanda, also 35, is taking his seat while he is away on military duty in Afghanistan. Erin Houchin, from southern Indiana, was just elected last November at age 38, upsetting veteran Democratic Sen. Richard Young.

These conservatives lean toward free-market economics and traditional family values. They want less government, not more. They got into politics for philosophical and ideological reasons, not so much for civic duty.

Some had early experience as the youngest person in the room. Casey Cox was named to the Indiana University board of trustees at age 23 by then Gov. Mitch Daniels. He took an interest in politics back in high school, having former state Rep. Steve Gabet as a government teacher. “When other people would be going to parties, we would go over to Mr. Gabet’s house to talk politics,” Cox recalled.

Generally, these conservatives come from smaller communities in Indiana and grew up in stable families with Dad and Mom very engaged with the family, where they did not necessarily talk politics at dinner.

David Ober comes from six generations who’ve lived in the Albion area of northeast Indiana, but he’s first in his family to win a political office. He was a computer science major at Purdue University and learned free-market economics from an adjunct professor, businessman Joshua Lybolt.

Ober thinks many of his generation may not be true-believing conservatives but do grow skeptical of liberal big government dreams.

“If you voted for a guy who said he would change everything, then nothing much changes and you can’t find a job, would you be very trusting of government?” he asked in reference to President Obama. “It gives you a more skeptical view of government.”

Ober does not believe this wave of young conservatives is foretelling a major generational shift toward the conservative perspective.

“I would love to think that we are the beginning of the next conservative revolution in America,” he said, “but we have a country in which ideology ebbs and flows, to the left and the right. Only time will tell.”

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller is a veteran of state politics, having worked for former U.S. Sen. and Vice President Dan Quayle before joining state government. He believes this younger generation has benefited from more opportunities to learn about the intellectual foundations for a conservative perspective, through organizations such as the Federalist Society for lawyers.

“In the 1980s people were nervous about admitting to be a member of the Federalist Society,” Zoeller recalled, adding that he thinks Republican leaders such as former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels have given some new credibility to a smaller government perspective.

Two of the Democratic Party’s younger members come from Indianapolis: Justin Moed and Dan Forestal.

Forestal is just 31 and first ran in 2012, but not so much for liberal ideological reasons. A firefighter, he saw the General Assembly falling apart, with a Democratic Party walkout to Illinois when Republicans put a right-to-work proposal before the legislature. That 2011 walkout likely hurt the Democrats politically, after right to work was adopted. Republicans and conservatives gained more seats in the next two state legislative elections. Forestal had an idealistic vision to help restore civility and get to know Republicans on a personal basis.

“People were really dehumanizing one another,” he said. “I wanted to be a moderate voice and listen to both sides and help restore the public’s trust in the institution.”

Forestal doesn’t expect his new conservative friends to switch parties, but he wonders if they might move toward the middle in some respects after more life experience.

Or from a conservative perspective, some young people may start out with the idealistic notion that many social problems can be tackled effectively with more and bigger government programs. Then they pay taxes and become familiar with some of the programs and question how well they really work. They also may have children, who become teenagers, and they realize that any effective social policy must come to grips with our sin nature.

In any case, from a conservative perspective, these younger public servants in the Indiana legislature seem to have figured out some basic life principles at a very young age.