The Story:
Since Indiana is the home state of (Republican) Vice President Mike Pence, the pick-up of its Governor’s seat for the Democratic Party would be seen nationwide as a symbolically important victory. The Republican incumbent, Eric Holcomb, is running for re-election. His most likely Democratic opponent (indeed, at the writing the only declared candidate for the Democratic party’s nomination) is Woody Myers.
Background:
Mike Pence was elected the Governor of Indiana in 2012, and served in that post for four years. Holcomb served as his Lieutenant Governor and then, in 2016, won the right to be Pence’s successor by defeating Dem nominee John Gregg.
Myers, on the other side, once served as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2020, that may seem a great political credential.
The Thing to Know:
One of the issues that Myers might well raise involves charges that Governor Holcomb downplayed a loss of life in order to improve the state’s business climate. In November 2019, journalists said that Holcomb had pressured an Indiana OSHA investigator to drop a worker fatality case against Amazon, because Amazon had Indianapolis under consideration as the site of its next headquarters. The Governor has denied this.Â
