By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — Destiny Wells said Friday she thinks the political stars for women up and down the ballot in Indiana could align Tuesday for a historic night.
Wells is a military veteran who is seeking to unseat Indiana’s incumbent Republican state Attorney General Todd Rokita.
Wells knows victory in Indiana for Democrats has been few and far between since the days of Evan Bayh but thinks circumstances involving Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris, abortion and an abundance of females on the Indiana ballot — including Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormick — set the stage for a real chance.
On Friday, she was en route to Elkhart for a campaign event before heading to southern Indiana for a women’s march ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Background
Rokita gave up his U.S. House seat and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2018. Two years later, he topped incumbent Curtis Hill for the Republican nomination for Indiana Attorney General, and is running for re-election this year.
Wells, in 2022, ran for Secretary of State and lost to Republican Diego Morales, picking up 40 percent of the vote.
She enlisted in the US Army National Guard following the 9/11 attacks and is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Money and message
The campaign has turned into a sprint, combining both fundraising and the need to meet voters. She talked to News Now Warsaw while traveling from Carmel late Friday afternoon.
Wells contends much of Rokita’s time has focused on social issues outside the purview of the Attorney General’s office.
That includes an incident in 2022 when Rokita inserted himself into the abortion debate and identified a female abortion doctor who provided services to a child rape victim from Ohio.
He referred to the woman as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor with a history of failing to report” abortions.
Rokita was found by Indiana state courts to have violated Indiana law and engaged in attorney misconduct due to his public statements about the circumstances.
Wells has continued to make the medical privacy issue a campaign concern.
She believes controversies in recent years require a restoration of integrity to the office.
“I worked in the office under Curtis Hill when he was in trouble with the disciplinary commission. Todd has obviously been in trouble with the disciplinary commission and it’s caused a bit of an exodus in the office where it’s really degraded the agency and what they’re able to do,” Wells said.
She said her campaign got a late start in fundraising, but has raised $1 million and is using that judiciously to reach key voter segments.
She said their campaign has worked to reach women through different avenues rather than “preaching to the choir” via traditional channels.
She was scheduled to be in Jefferson and Corydon on Saturday and was also expected to attend a women’s march over the weekend.
“We feel we’ve done a good job at that,” she said.
She said she thinks they’ll see more success on Election Day than what is anticipated.
Wells was asked about the effort to ensure women can vote their conscience without their husbands or others knowing how they voted — an issue that has made national headlines in recent days and was the focus of billboards in Kosciusko County this summer.
She said women have raised the issue in her campaign about the level of privacy.
“My question to men is when they get really upset if women are voting on their own conscience is why? Are you losing control?” she said with a laugh.
“Nobody expects men to vote how their wives want them to (so) why are we expected it the other way around?” she asked.
