I was asked about the “ideological wing” of the GOP, meaning social conservatives, before the 2024 Indiana Republican Party Convention. I believe it was clear then and now the real ideologues aren’t the Hoosiers who hold to the traditions of their parents and grandparents, but those who push economic development at all costs.
Indiana Secretary of Energy Suzanne Jaworowski’s recent remarks on economic development prove that point.
At the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute, Jaworowski lamented the time and cost developers face in winning public approval, a process that, as IndyStar’s Jacob Stewart noted in “Unelected officials sell out Indianapolis to Google data center,” is too often hidden from the very people it affects and managed by faceless technocrats.
These projects permanently reshape communities, yet by the time they reach the public, the outcome is virtually predetermined. When Hoosiers organize and react loudly enough, projects sometimes collapse. For those who worship GDP charts, this is a disaster.
Jaworowski, the energy secretary, went further, saying, “Personally, I think that those companies should start suing the communities and get serious about it.”
That’s not a neutral policy stance. It’s an extremist ideology and an act of disloyalty to the people she’s supposed to serve.
Such suits could trigger judgment levies on Gov. Mike Braun’s own political base, pushing property taxes to record highs, pressing past the limits the law itself was meant to guard. Companies wouldn’t stop at compensatory damages; they’d seek expectation damages, profits never earned. The figures could reach into the hundreds of millions, even billions. Even if counties managed to win, the crushing cost of litigation would bleed them dry.
This is the true extremism in Indiana politics. It doesn’t lie with conservatives defending local control, prudent growth, or community preservation. It lies with neoliberal Republicans who preach “free markets” while warping them through subsidies, tax abatements and corporate favoritism, leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill.
They call themselves conservatives, but they’re Indiana’s real revolutionaries, willing to pave over distant farmland and destroy communities for another notch on the GDP chart.
Indiana deserves leaders who see our state as more than an “economic zone.” If Republicans mean to call themselves conservatives, they must begin by conserving their own people.
Brandon Harnish, a Republican, is a Wells County Councilor.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pro-development Republicans are Indiana’s real extremists | Letters
Reporting by Brandon Harnish / Indianapolis Star
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