Shelli Yoder, Democratic congressional nominee for Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, spoke about her campaign at a Rotary Club meeting Tuesday.
“We can build an Indiana that works together, responsibly and hard,” she said to nearly 50 club members at the Indiana Memorial Union Solarium.
“We raised $1.1 million one donation at a time,” Yoder said.
She then accused her opponent, Republican nominee and wealthy businessman Trey Hollingsworth, of district shopping.
She said as a native Hoosier, she is better fit to represent District 9 than Hollingsworth, who moved from Tennessee to Indiana in September 2015.
Yoder then asked her audience what is at stake in the upcoming election. She asked them to think what District 9 Hoosiers will say to Indiana, to the country and to the world moving forward.
One member of the audience asked Yoder to explain her policies regarding campaign finance reform. She said she planned to overturn the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allows corporations and nonprofit organizations to make unlimited political expenditures in the form of super Political Action Committes.
She also said she does not fully support the public financing of elections; rather, she said she wants to see more restrictions on the amount of money flowing into the political system.
Yoder said she has been traveling all throughout Indiana’s 9th District. She noted the disenfranchisement of Hoosiers at the polls and called turnout rates atrocious.
She attributed some of the political apathy to the polarized electorate, which seems to have become more divided during this year’s presidential election.
“Collaborative leadership is built on relationships and reaching across the aisle,” she said, while stressing the importance of fostering healthy relationships and working with Republicans in Congress to move forward with bipartisan compromises.
Yoder said she did not know how to run an effective campaign for Congress in 2012 after she lost the popular vote by about a dozen points against Todd Young.
However, she said she feels more prepared four years later to defeat her opponent and wants to be the voice of the people she represents in Congress.
“This is your government,” Yoder said.
During the 1980s, Yoder’s family-owned small gas station was devastated by the plummeting oil prices. Though this was not a product of the state crippling it with regulation, she said her experience with the family enterprise has made her care about the prosperity of Hoosiers’ small businesses.
“We have to take into account that a one size does not fit all,” said Yoder, regarding the so-called red tape that over-regulates small businesses. However, she did not specify her policies regarding the regulation of big corporations.
As a professor at IU’s Kelley School of Business, Yoder said she values education. She said she hopes to see everybody who wants to pursue a college degree to be able to do so.
“I want an Indiana in which all people can access a living wage job,” Yoder said.
