Extended interview: John Schmitz, Republican candidate for U.S. House District 7

WFYI is speaking with U.S. House of Representatives candidates running for election in Central Indiana.

Republican John Schmitz is running for office in the 7th Congressional District, which represents most of Indianapolis. He faces incumbent Democrat André Carson and Libertarian candidate Rusty Johnson.

Schmitz is a business owner who previously ran for Indianapolis Mayor. He runs a masonry and construction business that he says gives him insights into how to get a good contract.

Reporter Ben Thorp met with Schmitz before the November 5th election to discuss why he’s running for the seat and his plans to serve Indiana residents.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and style. WFYI fact checks all candidate interviews and provides editor’s notes in the audio and digital publications.

Ben Thorp: Let's start today by asking, you know, why are you running for election in this district?

John Schmitz: Well, my main reason is, you know, I vote for people [based on] how you can get a hold of them. If you can't get a hold of your representative, or your elected official, they are worthless. I cannot get a call back from my state rep. I cannot. I got a staff call back from Andre Carson's office, but not him. I requested a meeting to talk about the floodplain in Mars Hill, got the runaround, filled out a form, and finally got an answer. After a year and a half of ‘We can't help you.

Well, this is a federal issue, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)  all that. Somehow you could at least meet with me and talk to me. Didn't happen.* My ‘why’ is to represent people and to be with the people. Not be out in Washington watching the cars go by, but to be here, making sure the cars don't run over your kids here in your neighborhood. And you know, I don't have a problem with going to every neighborhood. And my phone number is on my business card. It's in my literature. You call, you'll get me, or you'll get my answering [machine], and I will call you back.

Now, I know that's hard to do for 5-600,000 people, but you know, I will get to you if you have an issue. I want to get involved with it. And I just don't see that with our elected officials locally, statewide, and especially federal, they get up to that level where they pay somebody to do the work. I want to be hands-on. I want to be able to help my staff answer these problems. We have veteran problems, we have floodplain[s], we have all sorts of problems that need to be solved, and I don't see the action. So, I know that was a long answer to the question, but that's how compassionate, that's how passionate I am, and how committed I am to getting this done right and serving the people.

*Editor’s note: We reached out to Congressman Carson and offered him an opportunity to respond. Here was his campaign staff’s response: “The Congressman's office has corresponded with Mr. Schmitz several times. While our office does not specifically handle the issue of floodplain designations, we were able to forward his inquiry to FEMA. We passed along FEMA's response on November 6, 2023, which confirmed that Mr. Schmitz's property is indeed in a floodplain. We also instructed Mr. Schmitz that if he disagreed with this designation, he could seek a Letter of Map Amendment, which is a process through FEMA, not the Congressman's office.”

Thorp: Talk to me, what, from your perspective, are the most pressing issues heading into the 2024 election?

Schmitz: Well, there's, you know, immigration is a big issue. And, you know, I've been a mason contractor for a bricklayer for 34 years [or] longer than that, but I've had my own company, and in the 90s, I started out in residential.

You know, immigration, ever since 1986, Reagan did a 3 million amnesty to get people into citizenship. And since then, it has steadily gotten to a point where we have a lot of illegal, undocumented workers in our country.* What happens is they do not abide by our standards of working. You know, nine to five, Monday through Friday, they will work from daylight to dark, seven days a week, and it basically, you know, our way of doing work has changed. So, I had to move to commercial work because of that. And that sort of is a barrier for people that may not have the capital or the time to wait for their checks or have the insurance or have the documentation.

So, it's sort of a barrier for folks that can't get there. That can lower the wages and lower the amount of money and, honestly, how much you work. I mean, I like having weekends off, and that's, you know, something that doesn't happen when you have people that will undercut that labor price and undercut how it works, and that's just steadily gotten worse. I see it more and more in the last three years,** especially that we have a lot of folks that are coming here and they don't really have a job, and they're thinking that we have all these jobs, and it's starting to tax on our economy.  So, that would be one of the things I would like to tackle, as far as finding a way so we can at least get [them] Green Cards, or at least get them documented.

*Editor’s note: Pew Research Center estimates there are some 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. as of 2022. That’s more than the previous year but still lower from the peak of 12 million in 2007.

**Editor’s note: Unauthorized immigrants represent about 4.8% of the U.S. workforce in 2022. This was below the peak of 5.4% in 2007.

Right now, if you're pulled over by the police, they will just write you a ticket. They used to take your vehicle. Now, they just write a ticket. And we know that [this] ticket is probably not going to get paid, or they may pay it, and there's got to be a way to alleviate the situation on our systems.

Our school systems have some places that are up to half that aren't speaking English, and we have issues with trying to teach those kids that are being put into our schools.* We just can't handle that influx of people in our system. It's already stressed enough so that's one of my big, big situations, and obviously inflation.

*Editor’s note: Five school systems in Indiana, out of over 400, have a population of English language learners that exceeds 50%. English language learners have varying degrees of English ability.

And one of the things I'm really concerned about is energy. Energy drives inflation. When energy goes up, our prices go up. Everyone uses energy. We're using energy here today to do this interview, and when you have to pay more on your light bill, then guess what? You have to pay more there. So, I really want to try to expand our energy network.

We have a lot of technology we can do with energy storage, and then we have some companies that have gotten pretty big. And you know, those are some that are going to be hard to tackle because they have money to influence politicians and be able to get their rates raised. And I think we really need to focus more on tightening that belt and getting the energy prices down, and that would help us with our inflation issues, and that helps us with grocery, with all the things that are really stressing out families right now. So that's one of my things.

And obviously, you know, doing all that to help our environment not be stressed with that and I would say that, you know, in Indiana, we actually import energy now when we used to have enough of our own, but we actually have to rely on others. We need to start getting away from some of these coal-fired energy plants and maybe look at some modern technology in the nuclear part of things. There's some great technology out there that we just don't seem to be exploring.

So, those are the types of things that I want to do that would make someone's life every day less expensive and actually better so you can go out and do what you want to do with raising your family, you know, having some fun and getting things done.

Thorp: Yeah, so Indiana faces questions about the future of its Healthy Indiana plan. Now that a federal judge has struck down things like premiums as violating federal law, how would you like the state to proceed with its Medicaid expansion program?

Schmitz: Well, Medicare, that's a very deep subject. And I would actually put healthcare and health on my list of things that are important.

You know, one of the things that people fail to look at, they look at the program, they look at how we can fund this and fund that, but we don't look at the root cause of why is health care so expensive.

I'm a big fan of Milton Friedman, and he talks about licensures, and licensing. Medical school is a tough thing. We want it to be good. We want it to be stringent. But we have a lot of nurse practitioners that practice specific practices. And I think we really need to expand to make it, I won't say easier, but make it more accessible to somebody to study a certain area instead of a general physician's position.

And honestly, a lot of our physicians are getting older, and you know, my doctor is 67 and I said, “Why are you still doing this?” He feels obligated that no one's going to take over for him, and he can't really get rid of his practice. To somebody in that regard, I would like to see our older physicians be able to train people to do certain things and broaden that field. And when we have more competition, the price goes down. And right now, it's tough. I got some doctor's appointments that are six months away. Let's fill those voids. Let's get that happening, and I think that would help us with the Medicare situation, and the Medicaid, all the way around.

But, you know, I'm the bottom end of the baby boomers, and we're getting ready to be a big burden on the health care system and, you know, frankly, retirement people that have to go into assisted living in some of these facilities, they're already taxed to [the] limit. I'm afraid I'm not going to get a room because it's getting to that point.

Thorp: Indianapolis is hoping to make use of some $140 million from the federal government for a new public transit bus line. That line came under scrutiny during the most recent legislative session, with lawmakers hoping to pause construction in a way that transit officials say would have essentially killed the project. Do you have any perspective on how the city should be managing public transportation projects?

Schmitz: We definitely need public transportation, and it is definitely one of those, ‘If you build it, they will come’. You have to invest in this. My complaint with the Red Line, the Blue Line, and the Purple Line is just the method of how they did it, being in construction.

You know, I see how the design of this stuff is, and, you know, after one year, we're replacing the concrete runways in front of the stops because they weren't designed right or weren't put in right?

There were a lot of design issues that I had issues with, and also the quality of construction and sustainability for this thing, you know, [it] costs a lot of money to run this bus line for the amount of people that it is serving. Now, the Blue Line recently was scheduled to go all the way across Washington Street out to the airport. A group on the west side, and I'm from the west side, got together and basically had it shifted over to Holt Road to go out to I-70. And the dedicated lanes [were] a problem.

I mean, we're really giving up a lot of lane space for something that's used every 20 minutes. So to me, the dedicated lanes are an issue. I know that that got addressed on the blue line, and I think the only real spot was in Irvington, where they actually have the bus stops in the middle of the road, which to me, makes no sense. You have to cross a lane of traffic either way to get into that situation. So again, that's sort of a design issue. But, you know, that's like putting cooked spaghetti back in the box at this point because it's done. So, how do we keep it going?

You know, if you look at a city like Denver, they have an excellent transit system. It's got trains, it's got buses, it's really put together nicely. We can't do that physically from our infrastructure situation, because we just don't have the space. But it is an issue, and we do need to have more people who are willing to use that process so we can afford to pay for it because it is definitely going to be a budget issue to try to keep it running.

So, sustainability and design are key to being able to make this work. And I always thought, ‘Well, we came out with these giant buses. Why did we not come with a smaller bus?’ And you know, some people say, ‘We have that one time where we have a full bus’, but at the same time, when we can't afford to buy the big buses, then there's gonna be no bus. So, I tell you, half of something's better than all of nothing.

So, I guess that was a long answer to: Good management and good design is definitely, what we need for any projects going forward to make sure we can do that. And that's that. And that's where, you know, my construction background and my leadership and management come into play quite well on these projects. You know, we elect these lawyers and different professions into politics, mostly lawyers or political science majors. We need a couple of contractors. Somebody's got to be able to read the plan and say, ‘Hey, look this doesn't work,’ but we don't have that.

And, you know, another issue on that would be bonding. You know, if there are any projects with the city, you have to be bonded. Why do you have to have a performance bond? Well, that's to make sure you're doing it right. Well, if you're a lawyer, you don't know if it's being done right. But if a contractor like myself can look at - I can look at this job and say: ‘This is designed wrong, or it's designed right,’ and then I can look at the work and you've done what you're supposed to do for the right price. They have no idea of cost, price schedules, or any of that stuff. I've done that for my whole career.

So one of the things that I think, you know, would definitely help any of these city project[s], any federal project, is to have some eyes on it that will be able to cut expenses on things [and] make it, you know, call it value engineering. There are certain things that you can trade out. You'll get the same exact thing with the lesser-cost product.

One of my things is I could cut 20% off of anything the government's putting out there, at least 20% and I have some background to prove that I can do that. And I think that people are clamoring for good leadership that's going to make their taxes less and they're going to get more money for their taxes.

Right now, everybody feels like our money is being wasted, and I feel that would be another reason why I'm running, is to get more efficiency in the government. I know [there are] 435 other people out there trying to get their piece of the pie, but, you know, it's hard to argue with a good idea. I mean, they do, but it's hard.

Thorp: Homelessness has been increasing in this district much as it has across the country. How can cities better invest in, you know, federal resources in managing housing and homelessness issues?

Schmitz: Oh, boy, that's a good one. I only have 10 minutes here, but so this is, I'm going to tell a long story here, if you didn't think those other ones were long, but so, you know, when I got into politics about six years ago, and I was doing my own my business, I was doing quite well, just minding my own business, but I got into politics and I started going out in the neighborhood. I didn't even know there was this homelessness issue.

So, I go with several groups to serve, and Kathy Albright (executive director of the faith-based nonprofit Meet Me Under The Bridge). She'll be mad because I said her name, because she does it all for Jesus, no don't mention her name. And I started serving with her about six years ago, and I started, I mean, it really was eye-opening, how many people are struggling. And we served folks on the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) parking lot down there every Sunday. Still do, but not [at] the ACLU parking lot, but at 3 p.m. rain or shine, or whatever, we take a meal, and then we have supplies.

And you know, we were serving six years ago. We were serving about 40 to 60 people. And then, you know, the ACLU folks decided that we were too much of a burden for them, and they said, ‘Well, you guys got to go.’ So, we went to Mission 27, which was around the corner, and they've been gracious enough to let us use their parking lot, and we serve 80 to 100 now.

So, in that short, you know, six years, things are getting worse,* and one of the problems I see is the federal government. They send money to these cities, and we just had a big increase. I think we went from $6 million to $9 million from the federal government to address homelessness.** Now that has to go into programs, or to, you know, like CHIP [Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention], or there's another blueprint program that you have to have these programs in place.

*Editor’s note: Homelessness in Indianapolis increased slightly this year but is down from a peak in 2021.

**Editor’s note: the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently increased its support for homelessness and housing initiatives in Indianapolis from $9.9 million in 2023 to $12 million in 2024.

The problem with these programs is CHIP, for example, they don't really do anything to serve the homeless. They are there just to collect the money and to count people and to do whatever.* And I was very frustrated with that. This should be going to the people who have boots on the ground. Our group gets a little bit of funding from the city, but most of it is volunteers. And I joke. I said, ‘Well, I've been going for the job. I've not gotten a job yet, but I still have the work, and I just every Sunday at 3, I go down, and when we serve people, and a lot of it is wellness check, or, you know, there's just a lot of people struggling. Some people can afford rent, not food. Some people are just, you know, they're addicted. Some people have a mental illness.

All that to be said is that we have to start doing something different. And what I see with a lot of homeless [people] is that there is no structure, you know, and they really don't want any rules. I mean, you know because we have Wheeler mission, we have places they can go, but they have rules. And they have to have rules. If they don't it just runs amok. So, we have to be able to pretty much be our brother's keeper on a lot of this stuff, because they really need some structure and some guidance, and almost, I hate to use the word force, but they need to be told what to do, and, and how they can get better and jail is not, that's not the answer at all.

*Editor’s note: WFYI reached out to CHIP for a response. In a statement, they said: “CHIP is not a direct service provider,” a spokesperson said, but noted that the organization is the lead agency for the city’s Continuum of Care which oversees intake for homeless outreach and entry into support systems.They added that “CHIP’s role has helped secure $12 million in annual CoC funding to support Indianapolis housing and services provided through fifteen direct service agencies.”

In fact, homeless folks will not be arrested. I had a homeless guy run into my building last Monday at our food pantry, and he had no license, no license plate, no insurance, no anything. And one of the food pantry people called the police. Why'd you do that? And they came out and I said, we're not going to file a report here. This is, you know, there's no place for this guy to go. So, we need places for these folks to go. And I would say that they don't need to be the most comfortable places, you know, a lot like Wheeler Mission, pretty nice. It's a nice place.

Actually, jail is better than sleeping under a park bench, but we need a place for these folks to go [so] that they can get some stuff straightened out, and not just [be] out wandering the streets and laying in alleys and having issues like that. They do need help. Each person is different, and I've given this a lot of thought, and we talk about, are we enabling? Are we helping? And there is a fine line with that.

We always say we love them where they are. We've lost several people over the years. The life expectancy of being homeless I would say 10 or 20 years less than say, you or I. It's a tough life, and sometimes we need to step in and take care of some stuff. And I just feel that that's where we are now. It just keeps getting worse, with inflation, leaving people behind affordable housing. Like I said, this is a long story. There's a complex solution to it, and it's multi-tiered, which starts with housing, with accountability, with purpose [and] with hope. We need to restore those things to these folks, and that's how it works. It's a lot of work. It's not easy. If it was easy, it'd be done. But, obviously, that's something I'm passionate about. I know a little bit about it, but it affects us all. It affects us all.

Thorp: Give us your perspective on how Indiana is positioned in the global market right now, particularly when it comes to China, we've invested heavily in semiconductor manufacturing. What are your thoughts on this?

Schmitz: Well, I think we rely on China and Asia too much. You know, we invented the cell phone, and we have zero cell phone manufacturers here in the United States.* I would love to see some of that come back to Indiana. And I know that our governor has made some trips abroad, and I know that we are trying to make some moves in that direction. But Dan Elliott, our state treasurer, has basically moved away from any investment that is China-related or ESG-related. And you know, that's sort of a good thing to cut the cord a little bit from China, and we need to be more self-reliant, and Indiana needs to be poised to be able to take advantage of that.

You know, we're trying to get into the semiconductors. I know Todd Young had a bill that was to bring semiconductors back here, and we have the LEAP project, which is loved by some and hated by others. You know, due to the fact that it does chew up our resources, and I would love to see our resources used well. Indiana has a vast amount of resources, and we need to make sure those are used well for the best purposes, but basically, we just have to keep grinding away at it and getting things done.

*Editor’s note: Most popular phone brands in the U.S. are manufactured outside the U.S. but there is at least one smaller company, Purism, which manufactures phones in the U.S..

Thorp: So I want to end with, you know, can you tell us who you are backing for Indiana governor and US president in the upcoming election?

Schmitz: All right, for the governor, I'm a Republican. I have to go with Mike Braun. I'm friends with Micah Beckwith, and I'm sort of an underdog, and he was an underdog in our own party. So, I have to back that.

For President, I would say that I am a Republican, and I'm going to leave it at that, but I would tell your listeners that I'm going to hold whoever's President accountable. You know, if they have a good idea, that's a good idea. I don't care if it's an R[epublican], a D[emocrat], or an L[ibertarian], if it's a bad idea, they're going to hear from me.

My goal is to represent our people in District 7. It's a very hot topic of who's going to be president, or maybe even who's going to be attorney general [of our] state, because of right or left politics. I would just have people lose your label on this.

I mean, I'm obviously an underdog in this district, but I feel like, you know, I will represent everyone and probably work harder to represent someone who may not believe like I do. So for President, I'm, I know I dodged that question quite well there, but honestly, that's where I'm at, I’m neutral, on Trump. I don't like his style. I'm a Hoosier. I'm not a loudmouth New Yorker. No offense to all you New Yorkers who might vote for me, who are transplanted here because our city is much better than that. You know that's what it's about.

We have to remember what this position is. I think politicians forget who they're serving, why they're serving, and where they're serving. And I want to really change that method of politics. I want to bring back hard work. These people say hard work. I want to do hard work. They don't know. You come out and lay some bricks and pour some concrete with me, they'll find out what hard work is, or go in some neighborhoods and help some people fix their properties up, that's work. Or go out in the community and be supportive. That's what work is. It's not fighting with somebody out in Washington.

I hear politicians say, I'm going to fight for you, I'm going to fight for you. No, I want to hear people work for people. I want to go out and work for you. I don't want to go fight with somebody. I don't have time for that. We have a lot of problems that we need to work out, that we need to get fixed, [and] that we need to move forward. I want to make you, I want to let you, Ben, I want to let you live your best life. I want to give you all the tools that it takes to do that.

I don't care about your race, creed, religion, sexual [orientation], whatever. I want to try to make that the best for you that you can have. And the government needs to get out of the way in a lot of ways. You know, we got it. We have to let people do their thing and do it the way they want, to do it without restriction. And take a saying from the libertarian, you know, you can do whatever you want, as long as it's not hurting somebody else. So there you go.

Thorp: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

Schmitz: I really appreciate it. Well, I appreciate you having me. You know, it's always great to be able to get your message out and people can get to know what you're about and that type of thing. So I appreciate it.