Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith is coming to Bloomington for a town hall 7 p.m. April 28 at The Warehouse on 1525 S. Rogers St., according to Beckwith’s post on X.
Beckwith, a Noblesville pastor and self-described Christian nationalist who earned a surprise lieutenant governor nomination at the Republican Party’s convention last summer, has served as Gov. Mike Braun’s second in command and as Senate President since January.
Both while campaigning and since taking office, Beckwith has faced backlash for his promise at a Monroe County Republican Party event to fire or demote state employees with pronouns in their email signatures, apparent social media use while presiding over the State Senate and more.
He told Indiana Public Media in October the state should monitor what universities like IU teach and that students and faculty don’t feel they can share conservative perspectives. He attended a press conference in January calling on IU to be more transparent about the funding of the Kinsey Institute.
“We will make sure that IU is in full transparency, that IU is not using taxpayer dollars to fund something that is rooted in this wickedness,” Beckwith said at the conference. “And we'll call it out.”
In November, he threatened the Indiana Daily Student over its Nov. 7 front cover, which featured a photo illustration of then President-elect Donald Trump with quotes from his former political allies. He called the page “elitist leftist propaganda” that “needs to stop or we will be happy to stop it for them.”
Town halls nationwide have taken the spotlight in recent months, with several Republican-led meetings turning testy. Indiana U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz held two contentious town halls in Westfield and Muncie last week.
The National Republican Congressional Committee chair last month told House Republicans to stop in-person town halls. Republican U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin, who represents Indiana’s 9th district, including Bloomington, put a pause on some of her regularly scheduled office hours in Bedford last month. In response, the Indiana Democratic Party is hosting dual “People’s Town Halls” in Bloomington and New Albany on April 12.
Beckwith has bucked this trend. He held a town hall in Shelbyville in February and one in Franklin this past Monday. Beckwith clashed with some attendees of that town hall, and one person was removed after calling him an expletive.
“While the media led you to believe the last town hall was ‘contentious’, in reality it was a very civil discussion about community concerns,” Beckwith wrote Thursday on X.
But Beckwith doesn’t shy away from the conflict, his government affairs director Cory Grass told the IDS in an interview last month.
“He’s not foolish,” Grass, who’s also the Monroe County Republican Party chair, said. “He knows the pushback he will get from IU, the pushback he will get from a lot of people in Monroe County, and he loves it. He does not shy away from explaining his side of things at all, so I think that’s healthy.”
