Given his previous stint as George W. Bush’ first budget director
and ties to John McCain’s blundering presidential campaign, Mitch
Daniels shouldn’t be winning a second term as Indiana’s governor.
After all, several polls — including that conducted late last
month by SurveyUSA — shows that the Republican presidential
nominee may be the first to lose the Hoosier State’s electoral
votes since Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson
five decades ago.
Daniels’ occasionally Spitzer-esque pugnacity and his notoriously
sharp tongue often ticks off the many Hoosiers who generally
prefer their vicious partisanship to be veiled in rumor-mongering
and outward gentility. Newspapers such as the Fort Wayne
Journal-Gazette gave him the business early on in his tenure
after he proclaimed that Democratic legislators “car-bombed” a
series of his proposals. Lingering resentment over his successful
effort to place the state on Daylight Saving Time should also
make him a one-term wonder.
Yet Daniels is one Republican who will win reelection this year.
And not by a squeaker. So far, he leads his Democrat opponent,
former congresswoman Jill Long Thompson, by as much as 31
percentage points, according to a poll conducted last month by
political columnist Brian Howey, and Gauge Market Research, an
Indianapolis pollster.
Thompson’s lackluster campaign, along with disarray among state
Democratic Party leaders — who all but abandoned Thompson after
she beat out their favorite for the nomination six months ago —
has aided Daniels’ re-election. So has the tendency among voters
to let all governors serve two consecutive terms. But Daniels has
also earned respect (if not admiration) from many Hoosiers for
effectively managing state government, keeping a tight lid on
spending, and challenging the insular political and social
culture from which he began his career.
As fellow Republicans such as Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell and California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger pay dearly for
abandoning small government principles, this most unlikely of
politicians could compete for the party’s vice presidential nod
four years from now, if not for the presidency itself.
A PRINCETON, HARVARD, AND GEORGETOWN law grad, Daniels parlayed
his father’s ties to the political machine of Sen. Richard Lugar
into behind-the-scenes stints with the Republican Senatorial
Campaign Committee, the Reagan Administration, and the Hudson
Institute. During his tenure in the Bush Administration, Daniels
earned two monikers — “The Blade” and “Mitch the Knife” — and
the ire of pork-loving congressional leaders for his aggressive
spending cut proposals and efficiency efforts such as the Program
Assessment Rating Tool.
After winning the Indiana governorship — and ending a 16-year
string of Democratic control — Daniels lived up to both his
nickname and his reputation as he looked to cut an $800 million
structural budget deficit and cut back a bloated state government
of 74 agencies and 319 different boards. On his first day in
office in 2005, he cribbed from Ronald Reagan’s playbook by
rescinding collective bargaining agreements with government
employee unions. He then passed a two-year budget that cut back
spending, implemented a plan to base employee raises on
performance improvements, and allowed him to be more aggressive
in improving government efficiency than he could ever do during
his White House service.
An overhaul of the state’s notoriously inefficient Bureau of
Motor Vehicles later that year, which included shutting down 27
of its branches, angered legislators, who have long-used the
agency as a patronage tool. They raised even more flack after
Daniels began a wave of privatizations, including handing off
prison cafeteria services to food services giant Aramark,
contracting Medicaid operations with firms such as technology
consulting giant IBM, and leasing the newly built New Castle
state prison — which the state couldn’t afford to operate
despite spending $135 million to build — to the Corrections
Corporation of America.
Then in 2006, Daniels struck a deal to lease the Indiana
East-West Toll Road for $3.8 billion to Macquarie-Cintra, an
Australian-Spanish consortium. This enraged Democrats, citizens
who lived along the highway in Northern Indiana, and even some
Republicans, who accused him of placing a precious state asset
into foreign hands. Legislators approved it by a narrow margin. A
year later, they rejected his plans to privatize the state
lottery and contract with private firms to build and operate
another state highway.
Despite facing re-election this year, Daniels couldn’t keep
himself from riling another faction of the state’s political
establishment. As part of a property tax reform plan, he proposed
to eliminate the state’s 1,008 townships, whose officials control
the patronage that fuels statewide politics. Although Daniels
didn’t win that battle, he eventually succeeded in eliminating
964 township tax assessors; on Tuesday, voters in five counties
will decide whether to eliminate 44 other such positions.
ANGERING FELLOW POLITICIANS and citizens usually isn’t a formula
for political success. But a stop at a motor vehicles license
office in the tony Indianapolis neighborhood of Nora offers one
reason why Daniels is all but assured of winning re-election.
Four years ago, the average visitor could expect as much as an
hour-long wait to simply renew a license or take a written driver
exam. These days, a customer will zip in and out of the office;
others can get vehicles titled at their auto dealership and renew
auto registrations at a discounted price. Average wait times at a
typical motor vehicle branch declined from 28 minutes in 2006 to
nine minutes this year.
Even as states such as Nevada and New York face billion-dollar
budget deficits, Indiana remains in the black. The current
two-year budget still runs a $192 million surplus, according to
data from the state’s budget agency. The state has repaid nearly
all of the $700 million in subsidy payments to local governments
and universities it had delayed during the recession earlier this
decade. An effort by Daniels to clamp down on the state’s
penchant for lavish public school construction spending is
resulting in some $127 million in savings thus far.
Even the lease of the Indiana Toll Road — still reviled in some
quarters — is being applauded by residents in many communities.
The proceeds are paying for long-promised (and oft-delayed)
highway and road projects that would improve traffic in those
areas; the hand-off also got $226 million in delayed maintenance
— for which taxpayers would have had to pay — off the state’s
books.
This isn’t to say that Daniels has completely adhered to
Republican principles. Among his less-stellar efforts: Taxpayers
in Indianapolis and six nearby counties will foot $2 billion in
construction and debt costs for the expansion of a convention
center and the building of Lucas Oil Stadium on behalf of the
NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. As part of the property tax reform, he
approved a 1-percent sales tax increase, which will be used to
pick up local school costs.
But for the most part, Daniels has stuck to small government
principles of fiscal frugality and stellar management of the most
necessary activities that even all but the most left-leaning
Democrat can embrace. This should serve as a lesson for all
politicians —especially congressional Republicans and President
Bush, whose abandonment of those precepts has resulted in a
string of Election Day defeats.
Meanwhile, Daniels’ efforts aren’t just paying off for taxpayers.
Earlier this year, Daniels’ name was bandied about as a possible
Republican vice presidential nominee before the selection of
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for that spot. Four years from now, he
could join the seven other Hoosiers — including Dan Quayle — to
have been nominated or elected to the job. And, though unlikely,
depending on how the GOP housecleaning goes, the former
presidential adviser may end up heading up the presidential
ticket himself.
