Unity and Division

Friends and Constituents,

I hope you are all well. I’ve been busy - but I’m used to that by now. As a recap, some of the big issues that have been taking up my time:

-Helping tenants organize and build up the ability to fight back against slumlords;

-Fighting data centers and pushing to make sure the City’s proposed zoning is as strong as it ought to be, to ensure no bad data centers are constructed in Marion County; and

-Gathering constituent feedback about the best ways to fund our roads.

There’s more to come and a flurry of activity on all of the above. But today I wanted to speak to all of you about a topic that is being discussed widely in the media and social media alike: the division on display in the Indiana Democratic Party and its 2026 State Convention, which I participated in on Saturday. Watch the weekly video and then keep reading.

​I took a strong stance in the contested Secretary of State race which was decided at convention, writing an op-ed that was published in the IndyStar. In case you didn’t read it, here’s a quick summary: everyone hates the political establishment; running a nepo baby trust fund 30-year-old with a donor list that includes AIPAC and Trump loyalists was not going to win back trust in the hated Democratic Party.

I had been making it clear to anyone who cared about my opinion that I will not vote for Beau Bayh in November, regardless of whether he won the Democratic nomination at the convention.

Now that convention is over and I haven’t changed my tune, establishment Democrats are furious with me.

“Are you OK with denying Latino citizens and transgender citizens the ability to vote?”

“Democrats will once again shoot ourselves in the foot because we are so damned myopic.”

“This is a pretty privileged statement to make when you’re in Indianapolis”

“This is political self-sabotage masquerading as principle.”

The general theme of these critiques was: “we need to be united to defeat the Republicans.” Or, another way of saying it: “vote blue, no matter who”.

Though I’m quite sure that most of the people sharing their opinions with me are operating in good faith, I want to directly call out this sentiment as intellectually dishonest hogwash which attempts to use shame and fear to bully lefties and progressives into voting for moderate candidates - but never the other way around.

“Vote Blue No Matter Who” always ratchets the party to the right

Most recently, my comrade Zohran Mamdani won an upset victory in the Democratic primary for New York City. Two separate establishment Democrats abandoned the label “Democrat” to run against Mamdani as independents. Yet prominent Democrats in New York like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer refused to endorse the only actual Democrat in the race!

Going back further, when a coalition of socialists and progressives won election to leadership of the Nevada State Democratic Party in 2021, the establishment that lost the elections simply emptied the party’s bank accounts and encouraged staffers to quit en masse. 

Also in 2021, socialist India Walton won her primary for Mayor of Buffalo against establishment Democrat Byron Brown; Brown refused to support her and rallied the establishment wing of the Democratic Party in Buffalo to support his write-in campaign.

In New York City last year, in Buffalo in 2021, and in the Indiana Secretary of State race in 2026, we have seen the same thing play out: Democrats are willing to work with Trump-supporting Republicans when necessary to defeat socialists, even socialists within their own party.

Unity is absolutely necessary in order to defeat fascism and rebuild our broken democracy. But that must be the unity of working class people. We need to unify as the working class, and correctly name our enemies: the billionaires, privatizers, private equity firms and corrupt politicians who do their bidding.

What do we stand for?

The Indiana Democratic Party voted on the new Party Platform on Saturday during the state convention. Of the 2,300 and change delegates in the room voting, I believe fewer than ten of us had actually had the opportunity to read the latest draft of the platform before voting.

The Resolutions Committee did excellent work pushing the platform in the right direction, including recommending to the State Central Committee that we adopt a provision of the platform insisting on Medicare for All, pushing for immigrants to be centered, and decrying religious intolerance. However, efforts to include support for a data center moratorium were stymied by the leadership of organized labor in Indiana. 

But these Resolutions do not actually impact the platform of the state party.

In response to me booing the refusal to pass a data center moratorium resolution, state chair Karen Tallian told me on Saturday that the latest draft of the platform available on the State Party’s website was not the most up-to-date, but the new version was not published until today (June 9th - three days after delegates “approved” a platform they couldn’t possibly have even read.)

The revised platform makes a few improvements - unlike the draft available until today, it mentions voting rights and immigrants. But this final platform takes a weaker stance against ICE, a weaker stance about healthcare reform, removes the phrase “Democrats were elected to work for you, not insurance companies”, and weakens the language against data centers.

This platform still:

-Does not call to abolish ICE

-Does not call to ban or stop the construction of data centers

-Does not include the words “transgender”, “queer”, “gay”, “Black”, “charter schools”, “privatize”, “billionaire”, “Epstein”, “Israel” or “Medicare.”

-Doesn’t specify any particular wage that the party supports, merely stating that we should “raise Indiana’s minimum wage to a livable amount such that Hoosiers working full time can afford the basics of living.”

Seventy percent of Americans oppose new data centers being built near them.Over sixty percent of Americans support Medicare for All - even when the question is phrased as the elimination of private insurance plans and replacing premiums with higher taxes.

Nearly all Democrats and 60 percent of independents disapprove of billionaires financing elections. Roughly the same number of people disapprove of corporations funding elections. 

A majority of all Americans, including 77 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents, support abolishing ICE.

Eighty percent of Democrats and democratic-leaning independents have a negative view of Israel, a country that Mike Braun and the Indiana GOP continue to directly invest in and fund.

The average American supports creating a minimum living wage of at least $25 an hour. 

Who do we serve?

You would think that an opposition party that wanted to win voters’ hearts and minds would simply adopt some of the extremely popular positions above. 

But despite how well this would unite anti-Republican voters, that’s not actually the type of unity that the State Party leadership wants.

Their unity is with donors. 

Big tech firms who profit from AI data centers. Health insurance companies who profit from private health insurance schemes. Law firms who profit from complex, business-friendly laws. Developers who profit from Democratic officials who approve their projects. Utility companies who profit from Indiana’s lack of regulation. School privatizers funded by right-wing billionaires. And of course, the Israel lobby. 

All of these massive donor bases contribute immense amounts of money to Democrats in Indiana. 

And the Democratic Party leadership of Indiana, just like the Democratic Party leadership of the United States, spends a lot of time and energy trying to appease donors by backing candidates that appeal to donors.

There are two big problems with that plan.

First: big donors spend more of their money backing the party in power than they do hedging their bets with an opposition party. 

Joe Hogsett receives tens of thousands of dollars from companies, individuals, and organizations that give even more money to Mike Braun.

Major donors to Democratic candidates have also given support and funding to Donald Trump’s ballroom project.

The Indiana Realtors PAC gave a ton of money to Democrats - but even more to Republicans.

Second: big donors are notorious for being fickle and inconstant. 

Corporations have walked back their promises not to fund Donald Trump after January 6, 2021. 

Big Tech CEOs who once supported Democrats are now wholeheartedly behind Trump.

As a proudly capitalist party, the Democratic Party is forced to reckon with this irreconcilable contradiction within itself: the people who fund Democrats to help win elections are not actually very invested in helping Democrats win elections. And the people whose votes are required to win do not share interests with the people who are largely funding its major candidates.

The Democratic Party has a 25% approval rate and a 43% disapproval rate in Indiana. No amount of money will fix that problem if the Party refuses to support what Indiana voters want. This last weekend, the Party chose to reject the platform and the candidate that its volunteers wanted and that non-Democrats would prefer. No party this out of touch can survive very long, much less defeat an entrenched and more powerful foe.

I’m out to empower working-class Hoosiers and defeat the Republicans - regardless of how many Democrats stand in my way.

In love and solidarity,Jesse