Editors note: This is part of a series of stories covering the 2024 elections. Read the rest of the stories here.
Democratic candidate Marc Carmichael hopes to offer Hoosiers a progressive option in the race to represent Indiana in the U.S. Senate, vying for a seat which has been held by now-Indiana Gubernatorial candidate Republican Mike Braun since 2019.
Carmichael said he decided to run for office after the U.S. Supreme Court issued their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in June 2022, which ended federal protections for abortion and allowed individual states to make their own decisions about abortion access. Twenty-one states have banned abortion or restricted access to the procedures since June 2022, according to The New York Times.
A near-total abortion ban took effect in Indiana in August 2023, only allowing hospital centers and surgical centers owned by hospitals to perform the medical procedure. The law provides narrow exceptions to provide the abortion if the pregnant person’s health or life is at risk, if there is a lethal fetal anomaly up to 20 weeks post-fertilization and in cases of rape or incest up to 10 weeks post-fertilization.
If elected, Carmichael said his first priority would be restoring the federal abortion protections safeguarded by Roe V. Wade.
“I have four granddaughters and when the Dobbs decision was handed down, I knew that I had to do something,” Carmichael said. “They now have fewer rights than their mothers or their grandmothers had when it came to managing their own bodies.”
After Republican Senatorial Candidate Jim Banks announced he was going to run for the seat in January 2023, Carmichael decided to run as a Democrat. He kicked off his campaign in June 2023.
Carmichael served in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1986-91, where he unseated former House Speaker Republican J. Roberts Dailey. While serving in the role, he was appointed to the House Ways and Means Committee, where he worked with other legislators to develop biannual budgets.
Carmichael believes his experience working with legislators from other political parties sets him apart from Banks, who describes himself as a “conservative champion and fierce opponent of Joe Biden’s radical agenda.”
“I had to learn to work with Republicans to get things done for my community,” Carmichael said. “What I bring that Jim Banks doesn’t have is the ability to work across the aisle and be a legislator, not a bomb-thrower.”
Carmichael ran as the Democratic nominee for Indiana’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996 but lost to Republican David McIntosh. In 1999, Carmichael became the president of the Indiana Beverage Alliance, a trade and lobbyist association for beer distributors in the state. He retired from this position in 2020.
In addition to re-establishing federal abortion protections, Carmichael said he would support legislation that provides access to gender affirming care for LGBTQ+ youth. He said he would want to establish universal access to Medicare, a federal health insurance program only offered to people 65-years-old or older and younger people with disabilities.
“I would like to see Medicare for all, including the LGBTQ+ community, so that they get proper care from physicians rather than being used as political pawns by mean-spirited, narrow-minded legislators,” Carmichael said.
He also said Congress should do more to support teachers across the country. According to an NBC News analysis, Republican lawmakers in 30 states have introduced or passed legislation restricting or regulating instruction on diversity, equity and inclusion topics.
“We need to let them do their job without political interference and we need to quit using them as a political football like the Republican party has been doing,” Carmichael said.
Carmichael’s other priorities include working to ban the sale of military style assault weapons, addressing global warming, combating white nationalism and antisemitism and confirming impartial federal judges. He also said he would work for immediate immigration reform, help create jobs, support organized labor and push to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule 3 drug at the federal level.
Carmichael said, if elected, he would support other democracies around the world. He specifically mentioned supporting more aid for Ukraine, which Republicans in Congress have pushed back against.
His support for democracy across the world, he said, shows his commitment to being “an American first and a politician second.”
“I fully intend to conduct myself in that manner,” Carmichael said. “I think that people need to look at politicians asking for their vote [and ask] ‘what kind of person are you?’”
To learn more about Carmichael and his priorities, visit his campaign website.
