Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith. Sine Cera. Part I

Photos courtesy Andy Chandler

EDITOR’S NOTE: Andy Chandler is a presidential historian and a museum archivist at Candles Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute and the Ernie Pyle WW II Museum in Dana Ind. He is also a photographer and his work is often seen on these pages. Recently he sat down with Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. The first of a two-part series is presented today.

It is believed that the word sincere originates from the Latin words sine cera, meaning without wax. It goes that Roman sculptors would melt wax over any stone blemishes that might occur to pass their art work off as perfect. A cheap fix, but if you add some heat, it’s slowly revealed for what it is. Sincere has come down in our lexicon as something without coverup, or blemish.

Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith breathes sincerity as if it were air. He talks with the firmness of someone who believes he answers to someone higher than himself. 

What originally had been my intention to do a sit down with the Lt. Governor over the new faith-based initiative Executive Order 2-26, became an engaging, sometimes meandering hour and a half conversation to get to know the man who occupies the second highest office in Indiana. Topics covered were from the seriousness of potential price hikes due to the conflict in Iran to the more lighthearted questions regarding his gavel twirling during senate sessions.

It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon that I found myself in his office waiting to meet with him. After arriving, I was expecting an aide to usher me in. However, he himself opened the door and just said, “Hold on a second, Andy.” The gentleman at the front desk asked if I wanted a bottle of water. Anticipating that I would be dry-mouthed due to nerves, I graciously accepted. I took two bottles. Hydration is the key to legislation.

Eventually I was invited in, and upon entering, he pointed around the room. “Where do you want to set up?” I answered, “The conference table.” After settling in, we spoke briefly of our home state of Michigan and how we ended up in Indiana.  His family farm is in Hillsdale and when I immigrated, lived in a farm just outside of Battle Creek. We both met Hoosier wives and stayed in the Hoosier State.

The contrast of his easy-going demeanor in his office juxtaposed against his seriousness in the Senate Chamber, has a Jeffersonesque quality. A representative of the people acting as casual as someone having a cup of coffee.

The first question I had was about the gavel that he uses during the senate sessions. As I had come to find out while covering the House and Senate during the last General Assembly, everything has symbolic meaning.

“This was my grandmother’s. She was the vice party chair for the GOP in Michigan. The 5^th district chair. ‘Frosty’ Beckwith. Florence, but people called her Frosty.” He went on to say that when he was elected Lt. Governor, his brother, who owns the gavel, lent it to him for use in the senate.

I suggested we set up a gofundme page to purchase two other gavels so he could start juggling since he’s been proficient at gavel twirling, spinning and using it as a backscratcher. He said he’d probably get called out of order for being a distraction.

Moving past the nominal pleasantries, we settled into the heart of things: politics.

Regarding the last Indiana General Assembly: the Lt. Governor was an outspoken champion of redistricting when H.B. 1032 was defeated in the Senate.

He explained that the overall national redistricting situation was more serious than most people take it. 

“That was a stupid decision that the Indiana Senate made, and they essentially handed the far-left radicals who know how to play politics, they handed them a victory.”

About that defeat and what he perceived as defections in the GOP ranks, he said, “(Republicans) die on our righteous high horse hill all the time. Like we’ll say ‘We don’t do that.’ And OK guys, while you’re not doing that, guess what? The whole house is being stolen from underneath your eyes. Some point you have to stand up and fight or just roll over and be a pushover. And I think what we did, we showed America that Indiana, because of our Senate, is a pushover state. We’re not a flyover state, we’re a pushover state. If Democrats scream loud enough, if they scream hard enough, they will be able to push over at least our Indiana Senate, if it is a pushover state. That may offend people if they heard that, but I’m absolutely just tired of weak conservatives or weak Republicans who don’t know how to fight. Donald Trump has taught us how to fight for our generation. We’re in a war for our nation.”

He went on further to describe the war he sees. Leaning forward and speaking in a much more amplified voice: “American values are under attack. If you don’t believe it, we have freaking boys being told that they can be girls and playing girls sports. And we can’t even get a consensus among Republicans that that’s not a good thing. Right? That is absolutely insane. If you would have gone 25 years ago and told everyone of those senators on both sides of the aisle that you will be fighting battles on whether or not boys can be girls and girls can be boys. They would have said there’s no way. There’s no way on God’s green earth that America ever becomes that stupid. And yet, here we are being that stupid.”

He went onto describe his vision for the primaries. “What Indiana needs now is they need fighters . . . people are tired of conservatives who don’t fight.”

He believes that the primaries will ask the candidates one question. “The question shouldn’t be are you a conservative? The question should be are you a conservative who’s willing to fight for those values. And I think that’s the problem we don’t have that in our Indiana Senate right now.”

We discussed the war in Iran and if he and Governor Braun talked about possible remedies for Hoosiers feeling a pinch due to high gas prices. He stated that while he has not spoken directly to the governor about it, he has talked to Braun’s staff and doesn’t anticipate this being a prolonged issue. He saind there are multiple barriers to affordability aside from Iran, one of those being taxes.

“I don’t want to speak for (Gov. Braun), but eliminating sales tax on gas is a possibility; a gas tax holiday to give Hoosiers some relief at the pump.”

I asked him about the post he made last September about a trade agreement with Taiwan regarding soybean exports. Had the passage of another harvest and of time given him a rough idea regarding how beneficial the agreement was to Indiana’s farmers?

“It didn’t encompass just Indiana; it was some Midwestern states. The reason they wanted to sign it here is because we are one of their best trading partners when it comes to agriculture. Taiwan, they love us, we love them.  It has helped our farmers. Has it been the end all, be all? We need to open up other markets. Try to find customers around the world.”

Getting to the heart of the matter for the push for trade agreements, Beckwith didn’t mince words. “I do anticipate and hope that we cannot be so dependent on China like we’ve been over the last three decades for our farmers. It got easy. China buys a lot of our corn and soy, they are a grain buyer and it got to a point where we lacked diversity in our portfolio. We ended up just having just one customer. That’s not good.”

I asked him if they were actively looking for other trading partners. Recently he met with Dr. Jason Sands, the Director of Agriculture in the Bahamas and a Purdue University grad, regarding a possible agreement for poultry. 

Eventually, the topic came to the coverage of the scandals alleged in his office. In the case that led to a grand jury investigation regarding ghost employment and an alleged illicit image being passed around the office, he explained that the grand jury just went away, and nothing ever became of it. He stated that he saw this as an attack from the left and from country club Republicans.  

“They don’t have to be true; they just have to make a story. The story will last forever; the lie can go away. They just have to print a headline and it’s out there.”

When asked about what Micah Beckwith today would tell Micah Beckwith last January, he responded that he would advise the Micah Beckwith who took the oath of office not to be so quick to trust people. “I was too trusting of people in my party and in the media.”

He’s a polarizing figure in faith and politics; there is no doubt. Depending on who you ask he’s perceived as either brash and arrogant or the real deal. Believe me, I’ve asked. However, apologetic and insincere are two words one should never place on the Lt. Governor. One of the last questions I asked him was simple: if he felt he needed to temper down the rhetoric.

“I don’t want to stand before the saints, when I meet the cloud of witnesses. I don’t want to look Moses, Elijah and Micah in the eye and tell them I could have done better.”