Shelli Yoder and Matt Pierce represent Bloomington in the State Senate and State House, respectively. Both are IU professors, both are Democrats, both push for progressive agendas in a state that hasn’t voted blue in more than a decade.
Recurrent in each politician’s interviews with the Indiana Daily Student was the ever-present Republican supermajority in both houses of Indiana’s state legislature. Going into Election Day, there are 10 Democrats and 39 Republicans in the state senate. The state house has 30 Democrats to 70 Republicans. The Democratic Party will need four more seats in the state house and six more in the state senate to break the supermajority.
Both Yoder and Pierce said they would be more effective at their jobs with dismantled Republican supermajorities. That’s in large part because Republicans can reach quorum, the ability to do business, with the number of members they already have — if the supermajority was broken, they wouldn’t be able to reach that number without Democrats.
Still, both are working with what they can. Here’s who they are, and their priorities going forward:
Shelli Yoder — State Senator, Kelley School of Business lecturer
Shelli Yoder has been Bloomington and much of Monroe County’s state senator since 2020, and is looking for another four years, running uncontested in this year’s election.
Yoder is also a senior lecturer at the Kelley School of Business, where she’s taught since 2011. There, she’s part of the communication, professional and computer skills department, teaching during the fall semester. She spends the spring semester on unpaid leave, at the legislature while it’s in session.
She started out in politics in 2012, when she ran against Republican Todd Young in Indiana’s 9th Congressional District. She lost by just over 10%; the district voted Republican by a 30% margin in 2022. She ran again and lost in 2016, by 14%.
Yoder said a lack of action on climate change inspired her first run.
“We were still talking about it being a lie,” she said. “And as we have seen, there are more and more wildfires, stronger tornadoes and storm systems, hurricanes that are demolishing communities more and more.”
Her experiences with the response to climate taught Yoder that to change policy; she had to “fly under the radar.” She’s more focused on the small steps she can take to improve Hoosiers’ lives.
She only gets to put in a few bills per session, so she has to pick carefully. Yoder’s had two laws she brought up from her term. One targeted food insecurity by extending the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program reapplication period to three years (up from one) for seniors and people with disabilities. She said another increases efficiency and access in long-acting reversible contraceptives.
Those pieces of legislation had to go through many approval processes, all the while she was walking a tightrope in trying to balance relationships with Republicans and bringing legislation to the floor.
In between her runs for house, she served on the Monroe County Council from 2013 to 2020. She touted her work in combating substance use disorders while on the council, helping to implement more widespread harm reduction strategies countywide. In 2017, she co-founded the South Central Indiana Opioid Summit.
“The issues are just right in your face every day,” she said.
Afterward, she ran for state senator unopposed. During her term, the Indiana legislature responded to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade with a near-total abortion ban.
“It was heartbreaking and gut wrenching,” she said. “We heard so many stories. And Hoosiers had exceptional courage to come and share those stories of how access to reproductive Health care, access to abortion care, saved their lives.”
Her priorities for her next term include fighting to restore reproductive rights, transparency within schools under the voucher system, increasing access to affordable housing and implementing renter protections. Yoder, like many state Democrats, said she’ll also focus on improving Indiana’s childcare and access to pre-K.
Matt Pierce — State Representative, Media School Lecturer
Matt Pierce has represented Indiana’s 61st State House District for more than two decades now, and is running for another term. He was first elected to the state house in 2002, and joined the IU Media School the year after, now teaching telecommunications law, policy and management.
Since the legislature is in session in the spring semester, that makes the first part of the year quite busy for Pierce.
“You really don't have any days off,” Pierce said. “You do legislative stuff Monday afternoon through Thursday evening, and then you've got classes that teach on Friday, then use the weekend for grading and preparing for Monday classes.”
He started politics in IU’s student government, becoming vice president of what was then-called the IU Student Association while an undergraduate. He later served on Bloomington’s city council from 1996 to 1998 and was Democratic congressman Baron Hill’s chief of staff from 1999 to 2002.
In Pierce’s time, he’s seen the legislature flip from Democrat to Republican control, and ultimately to the Republican supermajority. Within those constraints, he said his most important work in recent years has been to fight for his priorities in state budgets.
Usually, that’s meant funding for schools, childcare, public health and other social programs. He said he’s been working on fighting the rise of school voucher programs, which has exploded in recent years in Indiana. He’s also fought in culture war issues, including opposition to the state budget's ban on funds to IU’s Kinsey Institute in 2022.
That’s led to today, where he said he sees culture war issues becoming more tumultuous. Here also lies the priority of breaking the Republican supermajority for Pierce.
“I think that's when you have an opportunity, particularly on the culture war issues, to get them (Republicans) to stay more focused on the issues that actually relate to people's everyday lives, and not these kind of issues designed to fire up their base,” he said.
