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Two candidates are running for the newly redrawn Indiana House District 32: Republican candidate Fred Glynn and Democratic candidate Victoria Garcia Wilburn.
The district includes parts of Clay and Delaware townships in Hamilton County and a small part of northern Marion County. Glynn is a mortgage broker and a member of the Hamilton County Council. Wilburn is an assistant professor of occupational therapy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
WFYI sent each of the candidates five questions to help voters learn more ahead of the election on Nov. 8. Wilburn's responses are below. Glynn did not respond.
Editor’s note: Candidate responses were edited for AP Style and grammar, and any numbers used were checked for accuracy. When a statement required more clarification or could not be independently verified, WFYI reached out to candidates before publication. Those instances, and those candidate responses, are noted throughout in editors’ notes.
Victoria Garcia Wilburn
What do you see as the most pressing issue lawmakers will address in the upcoming legislative session?
The most pressing issue lawmakers will continue to address will be reproductive freedom. The passage of Senate Enrolled Act 1 was careless and will no doubt be readdressed in session. Lawmakers must critically assess the implications of restricting health care to one particular segment of the population and the effects this has on the entire health care system. Indiana is nowhere near prepared to address the societal harms that ensue from restricting access to safe and legal abortions.
Indiana’s schools are facing numerous challenges including teacher shortages, racial achievement gaps, reading ability and the declining college-going rate. What do you see as the state’s top education issues, and how would you address them?
Strong public schools are essential to our community’s collective well-being and economic prosperity. We need education policies that provide adequate funding, fairly compensate teachers and direct more resources to special education services. Every student should have the opportunity to go to a safe, enriching public school, and I’m committed to legislation that is designed to invest, not disinvest, in our public education system.
I want to ensure that our most vulnerable children receive the services they need to thrive, and in order to do this we have to provide teachers and support staff the resources they need in order to truly serve children who require an Individualized Education Plan. We need to lower Indiana’s student-to-counselor ratio and increase the number of school psychologists and social workers – so our schools can fully implement trauma-sensitive school strategies. We must equip students with a robust education in order to be competitive in an increasingly global workforce.
Indiana lacks affordable housing inventory and communities across the state deal with landlords who shrug off local health and safety violations. How would you address the state’s lack of affordable housing and laws to protect tenants from bad-acting landlords?
The economic implications of homeownership are great. Homeownership provides upward mobility and provides security among generations in families. Responsible community development and planning are essential. This will require partnership with state and local governments to ensure that all Hoosiers can achieve the American dream.
Tenant education, in regards to their rights, is also essential. Partnerships with nonprofits and a commitment to providing legal education in a tenants language of choice – those are simple policies that can have a large impact when one is pursuing rental housing. Further, the state must then lower Indiana’s abnormally high eviction rate by allowing tenants to withhold rent when landlords fail to maintain safe, clean and habitable conditions, and it should limit landlords' unconditional power to evict tenants without providing a fair time period to fix and resolve lease violations.
In recent legislative sessions, state lawmakers tried to regulate local decision-making; two examples are wind turbine regulation and bail reform. How would you approach issues of local versus state control as a lawmaker?
Collaboration is key to ensure a prosperous state, however, overregulation can have consequences that ultimately do not benefit citizens. Local issues need to be led by local leaders and have autonomy regarding policies that impact their community directly. Balance between collaborative partnerships in local and state government is necessary for both to function in a healthy manner.
Indiana lawmakers voted to ban most abortions, with narrow exceptions for rape, incest, and certain serious medical complications and emergencies. Would you support the legislature revisiting Indiana’s abortion law? What would you change?
We must revisit Indiana’s current abortion law. At the time of this questionnaire, the current abortion law has been blocked from being enforced. Therefore, abortion is once again legal in Indiana. As a health care provider myself, my stance on abortion is clear. Abortion is health care, and health care decisions need to be made between a health care provider and their patient. Abortion is complex and decided upon due to a variety of reasons, none of which are up for public judgment and should remain protected health information.
We know that states that center abortion as health care have better maternal outcomes, something Indiana is already struggling with. This health care intrusion sets an unnecessary precedent for a myriad of other complex health care decisions patients may face over the course of their lifetime.
How to vote in Indiana:
Vote by Mail Application deadline: Oct. 27, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. (local prevailing time).
Election Day is Nov. 8, and you can find your polling place at the Indiana Voters Portal.
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