By Tony Cook and Barb Berggoetz

tony.cook@indystar.com

Republican state lawmakers have sought to ban gay marriage, regulate abortion, allow guns on school property, test welfare recipients for drugs and protect Christmas celebrations in public schools.

The fate of those proposals is difficult to predict at the halfway point of the 2014 General Assembly, but they illustrate an effort by the legislature’s dominant party — which has supermajorities in both chambers — to push the envelope on a host of hot-button conservative issues.

Now in their second year of virtually unchecked power, Republican lawmakers are under increased pressure from social conservatives after delaying action on a proposed constitutional gay marriage ban last year. Fiscal conservatives also want to see bolder action when it comes to cutting taxes and rolling back regulations.

“If we’re not going to do it now, we’re never going to do it,” said Craig Ladwig, executive director of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, a conservative think tank. “We just aren’t that courageous here.”

Andy Downs, a political scientist at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, puts it this way: “There is some desire for action that was not satiated last session.”

As a result, House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro Tempore David Long are walking a fine line between appeasing the party’s conservative base and appealing to a broader range of voters in November. That’s when all the House seats and half the Senate seats will be up for election.

That balancing act has produced some dramatic moments in the legislature. In some cases, leaders have forced conservative measures through the legislative process despite resistance from more moderate party members. In other cases, they’ve been put in the awkward position of reeling in some GOP lawmakers.

Bosma, who has a sign on his desk that says, “Welcome to the Speaker’s office. Herding cats since 2001,” sees it like this: “It is a balancing of expectations of members and the public.”

HJR-3 highlights balancing act

No issue has dominated this year’s session like the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage, known as House Joint Resolution 3.

Bosma and Long have repeatedly downplayed the importance of the measure, refusing to list the increasingly divisive issue among their top priorities.

But when a House committee appeared poised to kill the resolution after hearing nearly four hours of testimony, Bosma took the unusual and controversial step of reassigning it to a more favorable committee, ensuring it would reach the full House.

Opponents of the measure, including some Republicans, cried foul. They accused Bosma, who had said he would treat the resolution like any other bill, of breaking the public trust and abusing his power.

Once it reached the full floor, nearly two dozen Republicans joined Democrats to remove the proposed amendment’s second sentence, which also would have banned civil unions and similar domestic partnership arrangements.

The frustration from social conservatives was palpable.

“You elect people who say they share your values, but when they get down to the Statehouse, they then have political amnesia,” said the Rev. Ron Johnson, executive director of the Indiana Pastors Alliance, a group that supports HJR-3.

Long made sure he had more control over the measure once it reached the Senate. He sent it to the Senate Rules Committee — which he chairs — rather than the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it was heard in 2011 and where he had planned to send it just a week earlier.

The rules committee is scheduled to hear the measure Monday after the Senate’s 1:30 p.m. session.

Why do legislative leaders downplay HJR-3 but then treat it like a priority? The reason is simple, political observers say.

“The base is clamoring for something that is finally within their reach,” said Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville. “But it’s less appealing to the state’s voters overall.”

The same-sex marriage ban might be the highest-profile example of that tension at play, but it’s far from the only one.

Protecting the party brand

In other instances, legislative leaders have stepped in to correct the actions of GOP members when they might make the party look bad.

Last week, for example, Republican representatives Jim Lucas of Seymour and Jud McMillin of Brookville slipped into an unrelated bill a proposal that would allow guns in parked cars in school parking lots. That proposal had previously stalled in another committee.

But the maneuver drew the ire of Bosma, who quickly moved to yank the controversial addition.

“Even though I supported the revision to our gun laws, I didn’t feel it was adopted in the proper way,” Bosma said. “There was no notice to the public or the advocates or opponents of the issue. And the individual who worked that into another bill understood that — after the fact.”

Long has also reined in his own members.

On the very first day of the legislative session, amid blizzard conditions, a hearing was scheduled on a controversial bill aimed at making it illegal for animal rights activists to video-record conditions at industrial farm operations.

The timing of the committee hearing drew protests from opponents, who feared those who wanted to speak against the bill might not make it because of the weather and short notice.

Long stepped in and announced that no committee votes would take place that night. The measure, known as the “ag-gag” bill, was later amended to remove the prohibition against video-recording.

Such decisions may have raised the ire of some of the GOP’s most strident supporters, but self-policing is required of legislative leaders when their control is virtually absolute, said John Keeler, a former GOP lawmaker and onetime chairman of the Marion County Republican Party.

“You not only have to deal with politics within caucus, but also with how that appears from the outside and how that will affect your ability to achieve more important goals and win elections in November,” he said. “If you do overreach, it can come back to bite you.”

That’s just what happened in the mid-1990s, when Republicans won control of both chambers. They quickly picked fights with organized labor and sought to re-draw legislative districts even though there had been no new census, Keeler said. The following year they lost control of the House — and failed to take the governor’s office.

Avoiding such overreach is a key part of leadership’s job description, said Marjorie Hershey, a political science professor at Indiana University.

“Party leadership has the job of protecting the party’s brand,” she said. “When something happens that threatens to weaken the party’s brand, it’s leadership’s job to say if the brand is weakened, we won’t get elected in November.”

Social issues

But that hasn’t prevented Republican lawmakers from pushing conservative issues.

GOP lawmakers filed several measures intended to regulate abortions. One would require people with private insurance to pay extra if they want abortions to be covered. That bill, authored by Rep. Jeffrey Thompson, R-Lizton, passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

Two other bills in the Senate would have put more stringent restrictions on facilities where abortions are performed and authorized a study of whether women are coerced into having abortions. Ultimately, those bills were scaled back by GOP senators and most, but not all, of language objectionable to pro-choice supporters was removed. The author of the study bill then withdrew it before a House vote because he said the language was unclear.

After what often felt like a “mean-spirited” tenor in the legislature following the 2010 elections, Betty Cockrum, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, said the infusion of new legislators from the 2012 election seems to have brought a more moderate voice. So far, this session, she said, “we have thus far enjoyed a more open and collaborative interaction on our issues.”

Still, another contentious measure returned that would screen welfare recipients for drug abuse — and restrict the use of food stamps to “nutritional foods,” likely prohibiting the purchase of candy and soda. That bill cleared the House last week.

Then there’s the so-called “Merry Christmas” bill, which passed the Senate last week. It would allow Christmas celebrations in schools and is necessary because Christmas is “under attack,” according to the bill’s author, Sen. Jim Smith, R-Charlestown.

The American Civil Liberties Union, though, says the bill would be unconstitutional and would let public schools endorse religion.

The General Assembly’s focus on such social issues could be a liability because most Hoosiers say the economy and jobs should be the state’s top priorities, said Joe Losco, a political science professor at the Bowen Center for Public Affairs at Ball State University, which recently conducted a survey about public attitudes.

“Clearly what the public is saying is they want the economic problems taken care of,” he said. “Those don’t seem to be the issues the General Assembly has focused on so far this year.”

A variety of bills

Bosma and Long are quick to disagree with that assessment.

“We have a variety of bills,” Long said. “Some get more attention than others.”

They point to legislation that would cut taxes for businesses, create a preschool voucher program for low-income students, and release $400 million for highway improvements.

While the two chambers and Gov. Mike Pence agree on those priorities, Republicans in the House and Senate have disagreed on the best way to accomplish them — especially when it comes to phasing out a tax on business equipment, which could take away millions of dollars in revenue from local governments, schools, and libraries.

Republicans also have taken up legislation that would limit electronic surveillance, reduce the number of government committees and allow mass transit expansion in Central Indiana.

As for social issues, some GOP lawmakers feel they have an obligation to take them up. After all, Indiana voters gave the party supermajorities in both chambers and a Republican governor to boot.

“The job here is to keep eyes focused on the important issues. That’s why we had an agenda this year,” Bosma said. “And yet, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to deal with these other issues, because they are important issues to Hoosiers.”

Democrats, however, say the GOP has lost sight of priorities such as improving education, employment, and wages for Hoosiers. The steps Republicans have taken toward those goals are minor compared to the push on divisive social issues, said House Minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City.

“It’s time for the people of Indiana to ask themselves, what is it that we are getting from these two supermajorities and what is it that we’re getting out of one party controlling virtually all of the reins of state government,” he said.

Other observers say Republicans may be exercising less restraint than last year and may lose some of the middle ground with their stands on issues such as gay marriage, but overall they haven’t gone as far as they could have in pushing their conservative agenda.

“I actually think they’ve been better than what I anticipated,” said Mark St. John, a lobbyist for labor, environmental and human services organizations. “The House is more conservative than it has been previously. Speaker Bosma has exerted leadership and pushed back on things, but in the big scheme of things, I don’t feel like they have abused their supermajorities.”

In the meantime, the tensions within the party will likely continue.

“You can’t keep your caucus on a short leash,” said Mike Murphy, a former GOP lawmaker and Marion County Republican Party chairman. “You have to give them freedom, but eventually some ideas end up running to the end of the leash.”

Ultimately, the voters will cast final judgment come election time.

“Leadership puts in a degree of self-correction during the session,” Murphy said. “Then the voters decide if that was enough correction or not.”

Call Star reporter Tony Cook at (317) 444-6081. Follow him on Twitter: @indystartony.