By David Slone
Times-Union
WARSAW, Ind. – In his campaign to be Indiana’s next governor, Brad Chambers touts himself as an outsider who has a passion for the state.
Monday, as a continuation of the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce’s Republican governor candidate forum, in partnership with OrthoWorx, Chambers answered about a dozen questions posed by Chamber President and CEO Rob Parker that ranged from education to transportation infrastructure. The forum, open to the public, took place at the Zimmer Biomet Center Lake Pavilion for nearly an hour.
Governor candidates Curtis Hill, Eric Doden and Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch participated in a candidate forum March 25.
“I’m passionate about the mission, I’m passionate about Indiana and I believe there’s a better future out there for us but you got to go get it,” Chambers said in introducing himself. He said fresh eyes are needed at this time in Indiana’s history “to go bring that future, to keep our kids and grandkids here, to grow our economy, to shrink government and to fix problems, and I think it takes a real serious problem-solver – a business person problem-solver, CEO, not a career politician. I’m a career problem-solver, I’m a career job creator.”
In his 59 years of life, Chambers said running for political office, let alone the governor’s office, was never on his to-do list. “But here I am and I’m passionate about it,” he stated.
Parker asked Chambers what he would want to accomplish in the first 90 days in office as governor and what would be his top three priorities as he seems them now.
As he goes around the state talking to voters and taxpayers, Chambers said he’s hearing from them that there’s a property tax jump. People don’t understand the property assessments and property taxes are “jumping faster than ever before and we need to get our arms around our property tax challenges.”
He said education and the workforce are other challenges.
“I’m focused on making sure third-graders can read going into fourth grade. It’s unbelieveable to me in 2024 that in the state of Indiana we have a literacy problem, and we do. We have a literacy problem, we have an absentee problem in education and we need to get our hands on that because that third-grader will be four times more likely to drop out of school if they can’t read well coming out of third grade,” Chambers said, adding education is “fundamental to our future growth, it’s fundamental to GDP growth.”
Along with education and the property tax issues, Chambers said the state needs to grow housing.
“There’s a lot of people who want to move here and housing is a challenge. Our state housing agency hasn’t been modernized in a decade,” he said.