Sec. of State Debate Recap

Chris Hammer (0:00)

Last night, Secretary of State Debate, all your favorite TV pals were there, Nigel. Max Engling, Beau Bayh, former Mayor Greg Ballard, Lauri Shillings, she's the Libertarian candidate. Over under 0.5 minutes, how much of this did you watch?

Nigel (0:20)

I tried to watch it, unfortunately, I couldn't find WFYI on my platform, my streaming platform that I use.

Chris Hammer (0:27)

I think I have it, but I could have turned on WFYIBC.

Nigel (0:32)

Oh, I guess I could have listened to it, right?

No, you're right. You're right. I could have listened to it, but it just, you know, Hammer watches these things and thank God for Hammer, so we don't have to.

Chris Hammer (0:46)

So honestly, there wasn't a moment last night. There wasn't a lot of separation last night.

Nigel (0:54)

Okay.

Chris Hammer (0:54)

It was the same old song and dance. Beau Bayh is trying to convince everybody he's running against Diego Morales.

Max Engling, the guy that beat Diego Morales in the primary, after the Republicans realized Diego was a zero. I don't know if he did a good enough job of telling Beau, hey, you're running against me and not dirty Diego. I don't think he did a good enough job of that.

Nigel (1:21)

Interesting.

Chris Hammer (1:22)

I thought if there was a loser last night, and I know some folks will disagree with me, but I thought Greg Ballard may have been the loser last night. His idea for voter guides just seemed a little outdated, seemed a little expensive, seems like a big colossal waste of money, and he kept talking about it over and over again.

Nigel (1:44)

Voter guides.

Chris Hammer (1:46)

These printouts that would either be mailed to your house or be in parts of the community where you know who's on the ballot and fine.

Nigel (1:54)

I felt like that might help, especially when you're doing local school board elections and stuff like that.

Chris Hammer (2:02)

But at what cost though? Are you going to mail all that out?

How about you just fix the crappy website? And that's what Lauri Shillings focused on last night. And trust me.

Nigel (2:13)

She's the libertarian, right? Yeah.

Chris Hammer (2:15)

I've got some contacts over at the Department of Revenue. And they've told me they have to work on these websites. And turd is the word that comes to mind. The website is a turd, total turd.

So that's what I took. I guess if you had to pick a winner, and we're going to play some audio here in just a second. Okay. I guess it would be Beau Bayh. But again, really?

Again, nobody separated themselves and Beau Bayh had his talking points. It was throw Diego Morales under the bus and talk about the expensive cars that were purchased for Republicans by the state of Indiana. So let's get into some audio here. This is the Republican candidate, Max Engling, on the important changes that he wants to prioritize.

Max Engling (3:04)

The first thing that we would do as it relates to benefiting and changing the office would be to institute a transparency portal. I think transparency is very important and Hoosiers want to see an office that they can trust that they have confidence in that office. But they also want to know that if they see challenges, issues at the county level in their local elections, that they can submit that information directly to the Secretary of State's office. So we will be instituting Eyes on Elections, a transparency portal. So you, if you see a challenge, a conflict of interest, any issues around elections, you can submit that directly to the Secretary of State's office. So we could further investigate that exact issue and you know that you are heard.

Chris Hammer (3:44)

You are heard. Okay. Okay. That would be great because I know a couple of years ago, when Chris Hammer and I went to go vote and Jared Evans, old tax raiser Jared Evans, had one of his big sloth looking goons out there to harass people. I did my civic duty and reported it and even gave the names. It's like, I know who this guy is. It's Mike Oles. This company owns construction stuff. He looks like Frankenstein. He said F bombs. He yelled at us. I did all the things. And you know what I got in return?

Crickets chirping. Bubkis? Bubkis.

Here's Beau Bayh last night. Again, he had his talking points, man. He was going to talk about Diego Morales. And then for some reason, still believes the Secretary of State's role involves taxes and gas prices.

Beau Bayh (4:33)

I will conduct a forensic audit of this office. The current Secretary of State has spent $92,000 of your taxpayer money on a luxury SUV for himself. He's hired members of his family, six-figure positions. He's taken trips all over the world and won't tell us who's paying or the purpose of the travel. He's given up millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts to his largest campaign donors. That's unacceptable. I've been to every county in our state, all 92 counties. I meet people on a daily basis that are struggling to get by.