Sarah Brown is sitting cross-legged on a sectional large enough for all 15 of her kids, sporting a green “Make America Healthy Again” cap.
Her life — including her run for office against Rep. Jefferson Shreve — is centered around her accomplished family. Brown talks a lot about getting down to the root of issues, which is fitting, given right outside the window is her 22-acre farm.
She casts an alternative vision of conservative politics that prioritizes building strong families and is skeptical of powerful, wealthy corporations and lobbyists. That vision arrives at a time when the Republican Party is trying to find its identity.
“I might not sound like a Republican right now,” she said. “I sound like an all-American mom right now who pays big taxes and homeschools her kids.”
Brown’s family life formed her politics
“When I was a kid, I said I want to be an artist and a mom when I grow up, and I kinda wanted to build rockets,” Brown told me.
Her father served in the U.S. Air Force and worked for NASA before the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart in 1986. Her mom is an artist who has displayed her work at art shows across the country.
Brown’s dreams more or less came true without having to sacrifice having children first. She got married at 22 and in the process of homeschooling her children, created a curriculum to help students with dyslexia, started a publishing company, an educational farm and a homeschooling co-op.
She also found the time to serve on the Fortville Town Council in the early 2010s.
“Women are under a lot of pressure to pursue a career, to pursue a calling outside the home, to just feed into this feminist system that says mothers don’t matter,” she said. “I want to be an inspiration to women that you don’t need to follow the feminist dream.”
In 2012, she moved overseas to do missionary work and ended up in Ukraine before fleeing during the conflict that began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Her family traveled across Europe and moved back to Ukraine in 2015.
Shortly after, her family adopted five siblings, bringing the total number of her children to 15.
“If you have the ability to do good, you should,” she said. “In Ukraine, when kids age out of the orphanage at 16, a lot of times they get funneled right into human trafficking. Especially the Gypsy kids.”
Brown added that her adopted children faced racial prejudice in Ukraine, motivating them to return to the U.S.
“We went to take our kids to the public pool and it had a sign that said ‘white people only’ and they wouldn’t let us in with our adopted kids,” she said. “We had to evacuate our home because our neighbor, who was a mafia boss, came onto our property saying he was going to slit the throats of our gypsy kids.”
After that, her family moved to Hawaii, then back to Indiana in 2021.
She then served as Jamie Reitenour’s campaign manager during Indiana’s 2024 Republican gubernatorial primary. Reitenour was an outsider candidate who ran an unconventional campaign critical of the Indiana Republican Party. Brown, though, speaks with more deference to the conservative establishment.
“These are just people who have been invested in the Republican Party for a long time,” she said. “They got involved for the right reasons.”
Shreve’s deep pockets, superficial conservatism
Brown knew she wanted to give back to her community by serving in an elected role once her kids were a little older. She decided to run against Shreve once she saw he was initially uncontested.
“Our family is absolutely living the American Dream,” she said. “And now we need to step up and take responsibility and make sure our grandkids could.”
Brown told me she wants to focus on getting things done. She has an excellent opportunity to do so because of the unique circumstances that allowed her more moderate opponent to represent a largely conservative district.
Shreve won the 2024 Republican primary with just 28% of the vote against six opponents. Most of his opponents were more conservative, like Brown. One of them — Jamison Carrier — goes to her church.
Brown has called out Shreve for flip-flopping on political positions between his run for Indianapolis mayor and his run for Congress. He supported banning assault weapons sales, repealing permitless carry and raising the legal age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21 in 2023. That didn’t stop him from getting an endorsement from the National Rifle Association this year.
Shreve also made it clear he would impede enforcement of Indiana’s abortion laws in Indianapolis by not designating any resources for it in 2023. That didn’t stop him from getting an endorsement from SBA Pro-Life this year, either.
Shreve owes at least some of his support to deep pockets. He raised over $2 million last year, has spent tens of thousands on local political consultants and has donated thousands to local county Republican clubs. He has also spent taxpayer dollars on mail that speaks positively about his record.
That’s on top of the fact that he is one of the wealthiest members of Congress.
“I represent the voter … I’m not self-funded,” Brown said. “My husband and I were able to put $5,000 into this campaign. Everything else is grassroots.”
Lobbyists are a problem, too, she told me. If elected, she plans to require lobbyists who want to meet with her to be represented by one of her constituents.
“Congressmen spend more time with lobbyists than people from their district,” Brown added. “So many problems that Indiana is facing are because of incentives … lobbyists incentivizing congressmen to serve big corporations.”
The future of conservatism
As Brown walked me through her farm, she pointed out part of her herb garden. She had shaped the dirt there herself, digging several feet below the ground in some areas to allow for the growth of plants that needed more shade. It took working several hours per day for several weeks to finish.
Everything she grows or raises on her farm works together in some way. Brown looks at everything with the future in mind.
“Congress needs to think about how the actions of today actually impact future generations,” she said.
She told me there’s a lot that can be fixed at a federal level, but many things need to be fixed at home around the dinner table, too.
“The future of America, I believe, is the pursuit of happiness,” Brown added. “It almost sounds silly, but what more do we want than to have peace, safety, joy, family, community health … to pursue happiness is the end goal of all other goals. That is the American Dream.”
Brown is living her American Dream. Her pursuit of happiness started with her family, then her publishing company, then her farm. Now she wants to make sure the next generation has access to the same opportunity.
“Maybe someday I’ll build rockets,” she said.
Contact Jacob Stewart at 317-444-4683 or jacob.stewart@indystar.com. Follow him on X, Instagram and TikTok.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: She has 15 kids, a farm and $5,000 to take on Jefferson Shreve | Opinion
Reporting by Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
