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Throughout this election season, the candidates for Indiana attorney general have spent much of their time sparring over what the role of the office should be.
Democrat Destiny Wells argues that Republican incumbent Todd Rokita has overstepped the bounds of the office on some hot-button social issues, especially on the anti-abortion front.
Rokita says he is fulfilling his role as a protector—making sure privacy laws are enforced, fraudsters are brought to justice and criminals stay in jail for their prescribed sentences.
Technically, the job’s most basic function is to be the top legal adviser to state government and represent it in court and in all legal disputes. The office represents the state in civil and criminal appeals.
It also issues advisory opinions on state law to state agencies and other state officeholders.
In Indiana, those responsibilities can apply to a range of topics from consumer protection to Medicaid fraud to federal infringement on state rights.
Wells said one of the most egregious examples of Rokita’s overreach came in 2022 when he strongly criticized OB-GYN Caitlin Bernard for publicly discussing a medication abortion she performed on a 10-year-old rape victim, who was forced to come to Indiana for the treatment because her home state of Ohio prohibited it at that time
In an interview with Fox News, Rokita called Bernard an “activist acting as a doctor” and said his office would be investigating her.
Rokita was publicly reprimanded by the Indiana Supreme Court for the comments, which the court said had “no substantial purpose other than to embarrass or burden” Bernard.
The court later unsealed the conditional agreement with Rokita that contained the reprimand.
That decision came after the state disciplinary commission complained that Rokita’s unrepentant statements following the reprimand were inconsistent with what he committed to in the conditional agreement.
Rokita has noted that a separate investigation by the Indiana State Medical Licensing Board agreed with him, by reprimanding Bernard for a patient privacy violation.
However, it rejected other issues raised by Rokita, with the board president calling Bernard a “good doctor.”
In an interview last week with Indiana Lawyer, Rokita acknowledged that some people don’t care for his pugilistic approach on certain issues. But he was unapologetic.
“The opponents and the haters can do or say anything they want,” Rokita said. “But I know that I have the back of the people, and that’s what matters to me. I have the backing of my family, and I sleep very, very well at night.”
Rokita’s path
Rokita points to his record as the highest vote-getter in Indiana history as proof of his support. In 2020, he led all Republicans on the statewide ticket, drawing more than 17 million votes.
He also has a lengthy career as a state and federal officeholder and likes to point out that he has never lost a general election. Prior to entering politics, he was a private practice attorney for Epstein & Frisch
He was first elected to public office in 2002 as Indiana secretary of state, serving two terms.
Then he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving eight years before leaving to work for a private insurance broker.
In 2020, he won the office of attorney general by beating out embattled incumbent Curtis Hill for the Republican nomination and went on to win the general election.
While general elections have been a high point, he has lost some bruising battles within the Republican Party.
He briefly sought to become the Republican nominee for governor in 2016 to fill the vacancy left by Mike Pence, who withdrew from the governor’s race to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate.
But party leaders picked Pence’s lieutenant governor, Eric Holcomb, to be the nominee.
In 2018, Rokita lost an intense and costly three-way primary race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate to Mike Braun, a millionaire businessman who funded his own campaign and is now running for governor.
That has seemed to be Rokita’s toughest defeat.
“When you go through something like that and you’re able to turn around and endorse the guy that was maligning you falsely, it’s a hard thing to do, right?” Rokita said. “It’s hard, just part of human nature.”
Embracing controversy
As for his time as attorney general, Rokita said his role as protector has resulted in his office attaining a 94% success rate in keeping criminals behind bars and the collection of a record $1 billion from corporate wrongdoers over three years.
He has said he sees his role as protecting jobs and the economy from “bad” Washington, D.C., ideas like the green new deal and better controlling the southern border to prevent the deadly spread of fentanyl.
He also has weighed on a bevy of hot-button social issues throughout his term.
Among his recent efforts have been: a call for the federal government to help investigate the citizenship of 585,000 registered Hoosier voters; an advisory opinion that says the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is duty-bound to prevent the closure of coal-powered power plants until a utility finds a “dispatchable” replacement power source; suing some local communities over their “sanctuary city” policies; joining a lawsuit with 14 other states to challenge federal protections for transgender care; and issuing an advisory opinion that says neither state nor federal law requires the usage of preferred pronouns in the workplace.
Despite all of the controversial topics or perhaps because of them, the only independent poll conducted in the race showed Rokita with a strong lead over Wells, something that is expected for Republicans in barn-red Indiana.
The poll—conducted Sept. 12-13 and commissioned by Indianapolis Fox affiliate WXIN-TV Channel 59 and CBS affiliate WTTV-TV Channel 4—showed Rokita leading the race with 49% support over Wells’ 35%, with 16% undecided.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Rokita also maintains a strong fundraising advantage.
New campaign finance reports filed last week show Rokita with nearly $2.04 million in his campaign coffers at the end of September, compared with about $540,000 for Wells.
Optimistic opponent
Still, the Wells campaign expressed optimism about its fundraising totals for the period from July through September, raising $616,257 in campaign contributions compared with Rokita’s nearly $1.05 million.
“Since securing the Democratic nomination in July, we’ve gained tremendous momentum,” Wells campaign spokeswoman Hannah Smith said in written remarks, “and we are in a strong, competitive position to stay on radio, TV, digital platforms, and expand our reach through (election day on) November 5th.”
For a second statewide election in a row, Wells is being touted by Democrats as someone who could break the strong Republican hold on statewide offices. Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in Indiana since 2012.
When Wells ran for statewide office in 2022, it was another race in which Democrats felt they had a chance to defeat what they considered to be a wounded Republican.
But in the end, she lost her bid for Indiana secretary of state to Republican Diego Morales by 14 percentage points despite a series of controversies that dogged Morales throughout his campaign.
In this year’s attorney general race, Democrats see Rokita as being wounded by his reprimand from the state supreme court and by the increasing number of controversial topics he inserts himself in.
Some political pundits say focusing on Rokita’s behavior is probably a good strategy, but still a challenging path in a Republican-dominated state.prosporpro
“In this state, under these circumstances, in this election, Wells’ best shot at victory is if voters see this attorney general race as a referendum on incumbent Todd Rokita and if they dislike him enough to split the party ticket to support her,” said Laura Wilson, political science professor at the University of Indianapolis.
Wells sees Rokita’s focus on hot-button topics as a distraction to the overarching role of the attorney general’s office and views her 2022 loss to Morales as setting her up for a bigger victory.
An Afghanistan veteran who has earned the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, Wells views her loss to Morales as providing important prep work in creating a statewide campaign infrastructure.
“I look at it as a race where we were prepping the battlefield. So, softening the ground, going out throughout the state, understanding the environment better,” Wells said earlier this year.
She said her entire team came back for this election to support her. “I feel it’s very demonstrative of the belief that they have that we have a winning race,” she added.
Workers’ rights is one issue Wells would like the attorney general’s office to address more frequently, but she said her key issue will be restoring integrity to the office.
She worked as a deputy attorney under former Attorney General Curtis Hill and bemoaned how office morale plummeted after he received a 30-day suspension of his law license over allegations that he drunkenly groped four women at a party.
“I didn’t think it could get any worse. And so now I’ve left the office and I see that Todd Rokita is leading the office,” she said.
In addition to Rokita’s supreme court reprimand, Wells also has taken the attorney general to task for using taxpayer dollars for a trip to the southern border.
“What the Indiana attorney general’s job is not, is not to be using taxpayer dollars to go to the border and then not just go to the border but to hit a political rally on the way home,” Wells said during a debate.
“We need to stop preying upon people’s fears,” she added. “It takes a steady hand and a holistic approach for immigration, not making people scared of their neighbors.”
Rokita said he went to the border to gather facts to prepare for lawsuits his office has filed over immigration policy.
Wells said Rokita and the Republican Party should be doing more to protect Hoosier’s rights.
“We have to look at how rights have been gutted and protections gutted with one party rule [in Indiana] over the last 20 years,” Wells said. “So don’t be deceived when a Republican shows up with a Band-Aid and says they care.”
She said the attorney general’s office also should be doing more to go after big corporations, such as hospitals and grocery stores to make sure they aren’t price gouging.
“There’s the ability to go after some stuff where it’s scary, right?” Wells said.”These are big corporations, but it’s about defending the little guy, not exploiting the little guy to be taken advantage of.”•
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