Indiana Senate election 2022: Todd Young seeks reelection
WASHINGTON ― Sen. Todd Young wasn’t making small talk.
As the Republican senator traveled to a meeting using the Senate subway system at 10 a.m. one June morning, with (at least) his second Diet Mountain Dew of the day in hand, he was focused on studying up on a sheet of information to preparefor a classified briefing.
Everything about Young seems disciplined, focused, perhaps at least in part a byproduct of his days in the Marines. He goes to the Senate gym every day before his meetings start. On mornings he can’t, he sets aside time in the middle of his day to go.
Young, a Republican, also doesn’t deviate off script. In his decade in public office, he hasn’t made a single notable gaffe. Those who respect him say he’s a serious lawmaker, yet private. Those who want to defeat him say he’s “insular” and “very scripted.”
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But Young’s attitude and demeanor may be the reason his seat is widely seen as safe as he inches closer to the November election where he’ll face Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, a Democrat who smoked marijuana in a campaign ad and isn’t afraid to make somewhat crass jokes. Largely unknown Libertarian James Sceniak, a behavioral therapist, also is running.
Young is focused more on passing what he sees as serious legislation than being the center of attention on the cable news talk show circuit. Methodical and practical, he is anything but surface level when it comes to the issues, making him far more likely to delve deeply into a policy issue when chatting with reporters than to share a soundbite.
In June, for example, the Capitol was abuzz with talk about what the bipartisan gun safety package would look like and the upcoming Jan. 6 hearing, both of which provided fodder for scorched-Earth comments. Young, though, primarily wanted to talk about what became known as the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, a pricy but fairly wonky bipartisan bill intended to make the United States more competitive with China and increase semiconductor production.
To be clear, Young, 50, votes along Republican party lines most of the time and routinely criticizes Democrats’ policies. On an issue pressing to his home state this summer, he said he supported “whatever principled compromise” state lawmakers would come to on abortion. He’s only voted with President Joe Biden 45.5% of the time, more than fellow Hoosier Sen. Mike Braun, but certainly less than moderate Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, according to a FiveThirtyEight tracker.
Still, Young has built a reputation as someone willing to work on bipartisan issues in the Senate, while still maintaining goodwill with Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, voting against many of Biden’s proposals and helping pump cash toward Republican candidates during his stint as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2020.
Young was labeled the 6th most bipartisan Republican senator in 2021 by The Lugar Center’s bipartisan index, introduced fellow Hoosier Pete Buttigieg at his Senate confirmation hearing, and is part of a bipartisan team attempting to reform the counting of electors.
“I didn’t come here just to make points, I came here to actually solve problems,” Young said. “And oftentimes in the process of making points, people undermine their ability on behalf of their constituents to solve problems.”
Despite votes that could anger either Republicans, such as voting for the gun safety bill in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, or Democrats and with no endorsement from former president Donald Trump to boast, Young was able to bypass any primary opponent in May and is largely expected to win in November with a fundraising campaign war chest 41 times the size of McDermott’s as of the end of June.
Young is in a much different place politically than he was six years ago when as a lesser known U.S. representative trying to advance to the Senate, he faced former Sen. Evan Bayh, one of the biggest names in Indiana politics, and pulled off a major upset.
Nowhe is perhapsthreatened only by the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, though Democrats point to a surprisingly close internal poll to build the case they have a chance.
But whether his votes and demeanor shows he’s politically savvy, sticks to his values or is incompatible with the current Republican Party depends on whom you ask. And if you ask the state Democratic Party and some far-right Republicans, he’s a flip flopper and hypocrite.
“I think that Sen. Young is struggling to find his place in the world, his place in Indiana,” said Mike Schmuhl, chair of the Indiana Democratic Party. “I think that he kind of goes back and forth on issues and kind of blows in the wind.”
‘Very scripted’ or a ‘serious lawmaker?’
It’s hard to separate Young the senator from Young the Marine. He graduated in 1995 from the U.S. Naval Academy after growing up in Carmel.
But even before he joined the Marines, Young was the responsible kid and dedicated soccer star with a goal in his backyard, working as a janitor in his father’s HVAC equipment business. Parents in his neighborhood pointed to him as a role model, said Patrick Tamm, an Indiana lobbyist that grew up on the same street as Young.
In a testament to that drive and focus, during a brief tour of his office in Washington, D.C., Young pointed to a famous Booker T. Washington quote on success, that he said he had it on his mirror growing up, calling himself “kinda dorky.” During the interview, his press team had attempted to encourage him to focus on something other than the quotes on his office wall, or to “connect” as Young described it.
“The achievement of a man is measured not by where he starts out in life, nor by where he ends up, but by the distance he travels in between,” the quote reads.
His time at the academy and the Marines serving as an intelligence officer and later recruiting was only a decade of his life. But it gets mentioned far more than his MBA from University of Chicago that he gotin 2002 while working night school, his brief stintin 2001at the University of London or his law degree in 2006 from Indiana University. That’s where he met his wife, Jennifer, the niece of former Vice President Dan Quayle, with whom he shares four children.
Much of his first Senate campaign in 2016 was centered around those Marine roots, as was his first TV ad for this general election, which Democrats argued was a sign he had nothing to show for his first six years in office.
He’s heard — and laughs at — all the jokes about the Marines being the only thing he talks about. But it’s clear he takes his ties seriously. When he’s back in Indiana and the suit jacket is off, he can often be seen wearing a bracelet in honor of Lance Cpl. Alec Terwiske, a Hoosier Marine who was killed in Afghanistan in 2012 during Young’s first term in the House.
Others notice his demeanor too. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., pointed out that when Young realized the Democrat he’d be facing during his 2016 campaign would likely be none other than Bayh, Young was stoic. He didn’t panic, he just got to work.
His campaign vehemently attacked Bayh for questions about his residency and status as a Hoosier after a career in Washington, D.C. Young’s other colleague Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., described Young as relentless, and Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston called him a “serious lawmaker.”
His office staff is reliable and responsive too. Mark Miles, president and chief executive officer of Penske Entertainment Corp, said foreign IndyCar drivers have often turned to Young’s office when they need help figuring out what they need to get into the United States, a challenge especially during the pandemic.
Tamm said Young is someone he could point to as a role model for his own children.
“There’s the need for people that really approach public service in the manner in which Todd does,” Tamm said. “I don’t have to worry about when he goes on TV if he’s gonna say something crazy.”
Young notably isn’t on Fox News preaching about the latest culture war. That’s a departure from some other fellow Hoosiers such as Rep. Jim Banks, a vocal defender of Trump. It’s also a bit surprising given Young lives in a red state where Trump won by 16 percentage points in 2022.
To explain why he doesn’t get involved in such conversations, he frequently uses a polished line referencing his decision to stay out of it when the far right reacted with outrage when the “Mr.” was dropped from Mr. Potato Head children’s toy.
“Mr. Potato Head’s gender is not something I have the ability to meaningfully impact as a United States Senator, so if Mr. Potato Head’s gender is the most important thing to somebody, I probably won’t be their favorite federal level official, and I can live with that,” Young told IndyStar in his Washington D.C. office in June. “We’re not going to pass a law related to that. They’re just statements, they’re empty…
Read More: Indiana Senate election 2022: Todd Young seeks reelection