Incumbent Democrat Shelli Yoder was reelected to her uncontested seat in Indiana’s State Senate District 40 on Tuesday with 33,395 votes. The district includes most of Monroe County.
She has held the seat since 2020.
Yoder has passed two laws in her recent legislative history: one that 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 voted against House Bill 1426, which aims to increase the efficiency and accuracy in long-acting reversible contraceptives.
Yoder introduced Senate Bill 208 in January, though the bill died in committee. The bill proposed the reestablishment of licensed abortion clinics, the removal of the eight-week limit on the usage of abortion-inducing drugs and eliminating the requirement for physicians to lose their licenses for performing an abortion that violates the law.
Yoder told the Indiana Daily Student in a previous interview that her priorities include expanding renewable green production, increasing public school teachers' salaries and raising Indiana’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Yoder is a senior lecturer at the IU Kelley School of Business. She graduated from IU with a master’s degree in 1996.
