By Joseph Slacian
jslacian@thepaperofwabash.com

Jennifer McCormick, who recently declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Indiana governor, spoke recently to party faithful in Wabash.
McCormick, an educator and former Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state, also served as interim superintendent for the Oak Hill School System.
“We launched about two weeks ago, and it has been amazing,” she told The Paper of Wabash County prior to her remarks at the Wabash County Democratic Party meeting. “We’ve had Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, a lot of people are really excited.
“We said we’re going to run on common sense. We’re going to be bipartisan. I proved that the four years I was at the statehouse.
“But, really, I’m running because I went across the state and listened to a lot of issues. It’s time that we had a public servant in that office instead of a politician. We put people before politics. We empower people and we strive for a government that is efficient and effective with our dollars.”
Education, including the childcare, universal Pre-K, K-12 and post-high school, is one of the leading issues Hoosiers are concerned with, McCormick said.
“Healthcare, access and affordability is a key one,” she continued, adding that improved infrastructure also is a concern for Hoosiers.
A lot of issues dealt with by the Legislature in recent sessions “are national pushes that really have nothing to do with Indiana,” McCormick said. “For instance, the big push about pornography in our classrooms. I was a teacher. I’ve been in a lot of schools and there’s not all this pornography in the classrooms, but yet they focused on that, on litterboxes, on LGBTQ community.
“So, they targeted just a focus area that nationally they’re targeting for purposes that I think are quite hateful, and leaving the real issues that are very complex and very expenses that didn’t get as much attention as they should have.”