Episode #2288 - Hammer and Nigel Full Show

Jason Hammer (0:00)

Oh, if you could hear the off-air conversations.

Party people, what's going on? I'm Jason Hammer. Big Nige is out. Brian Alvey is filling in. And joining us now in studio, he is from the WIBC Newsroom, Ryan Hedrick. Ryan, let's get caught up on some Indiana stuff here for just a moment.

Yesterday, I don't necessarily think it was a debate per se, but there was this Secretary of State event that was taking place downtown. Were all your favorite TV pals from Max Engeling to Bo Bai to Greg Ballard and more. They were all down here talking about the race. You covered this. Anything come from this?

Ryan Hedrick (0:46)

Yeah, I thought it was interesting, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me on. So it took place at the Rotary Club in Indianapolis at the Rathskeller right off of Mass there. And I think the biggest takeaway from this was the fact that we still don't know what Max Engeling would do in terms of auditing the current Secretary of State's office. He has talked about the Inspector General, which is good friends with Governor Braun. So that might create a little bit of a conflict there. But when you're talking about auditing the Secretary of State's office, you have to ask yourself, if you want to move forward and advance Indiana into 27 and beyond, do you want to spend so much time with Diego Morales that you get caught up on what Diego was? Because as Max Engeling told me yesterday, Diego's not on the ballot. He's not on the ballot. Max is the Republican nominee.

And a lot of people feel, at least online the scuttlebutt is that Max doesn't really have a position on auditing Diego's office. Mallard said again, reiterating that he has talked to law enforcement about this.

Jason Hammer (1:55)

OK, so since we're kind of going down this rabbit hole of unanswered questions, has Bo Bayh responded on how the Secretary of State is going to reduce taxes and the gas prices?

Ryan Hedrick (2:10)

Well, you don't really think that's the position of the Secretary of State, but watching football last week, he was all over the data centers. Wasn't he talking about the data centers? I mean, the Secretary of State's race has received a lot of attention. And if you ask Greg Ballard, he'll say it's because he's in the race, right? He created this Lincoln Party dynamic. But a lot of people just see the heavily politicized nature of this race. And now we're talking about tax increases and data centers and stuff like that.

Jason Hammer (2:40)

That's like Craig Hodges on those Bulls teams going, you know, people are buying tickets to go see me. Granted, there's that Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen fellows out there, but people are buying tickets to see Craig Hodges.

Ryan Hedrick (2:51)

That's who it is. Yeah. So, I mean, the biggest takeaway I had was really the voting center. So people that don't know about the voting centers. Indiana has 92 counties, obviously, right? And 72 use voting centers instead of being assigned to one polling place. People who vote can use an available voting center in their county. Now, the four candidates have different positions on this. And I think this voted kind of for the diversity of the field, right? Bo Bai works.

He says what works in one county might not work in another. And I think that's right, because you have to leave it up to the counties to decide what's best for them. Every county has a unique position on what they feel the residents need, right?

SPEAKER_4 (3:39)

Right.

Ryan Hedrick (3:39)

100 percent.

SPEAKER_4 (3:40)

That's fair.

Ryan Hedrick (3:41)

Inglings says that counties should consider geography, not just population, so people outside major population centers can reach polling places. Ballard supports voting centers, but raised questions about consistent training for county clerks. And then Schilling's said that voting centers offer convenience, but have drawbacks. The county clerks understand their communities the best.

Jason Hammer (4:04)

Now, Brian, I will say this about Laurie Schilling's. She seems like she's probably fourth place in this race, at least according to polling and attention and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

She has not embarrassed herself, I think, in this race. I don't think she has said anything that made you think, Oh, my God, why are you even on the ballot? As a matter of fact, on that televised debate, you could make the case that Laurie Schilling's outperformed some of the bigger names.

Brian Alvey (4:33)

Absolutely. I think she's a good person. I think she's she's very good at articulating her points. Her points are hard to argue with. She is she is a qualified human being. She's just running as a libertarian man.