.png)
Healthcare
4.00
Economics
4.00
Candidate Name
Devon Wellington
District
State House District 29
Values
Grade
Values
Party
Democrat
Experience
Challenger
Grade
Democracy
4.00
Accessibility
4
Governance
4
Cost
Choice
4
4
Freedom
Voting
4
4
Community
4.00
A+
Overall Grade
Education
4.00
Affordability
Equity
Opportunity
4
4
4
Environment
Public Safety
Inclusion
4
4
4
Stability
Funding
Belonging
4
4
4
Notable Information
Candidate Name
Candidate for:
State House District 29
Democrat
Challenger
Notable Information
MADVoters Survey Responses
Healthcare: The Big Beautiful Bill is projected to cut $31 billion from Indiana’s Medicaid funding, including almost $13 billion in hospital funding, over the next decade. What will you do if elected to ensure healthcare affordability and access given these changes? (Source: Indiana Hospital Association)
First, it’s important to be clear about what a state legislator can and cannot do here. Congress controls federal Medicaid funding. Indiana's General Assembly cannot restore dollars that Washington cuts. Anyone who tells you otherwise is making a promise they can't keep.
What the state can do is significant. Indiana administers Medicaid through the Healthy Indiana Plan waiver, and the General Assembly controls how that waiver is structured and funded. The Big Beautiful Bill is projected to strip coverage from 180,000 Hoosiers through enrollment caps and benefit restrictions. The state's job is to resist those conditions in waiver negotiations and commit state dollars to protect coverage when Washington pulls back. I will fight against any budget that treats those cuts as acceptable losses.
The state also has direct authority over the insurance market. In 2024, more than 80% of Medicare Advantage prior authorization appeals were overturned on review. In Indiana, at least one major carrier denies urgent care requests at nearly double the rate of routine ones. Three in five physicians report insurers are issuing batch denials through automated systems with little or no human review, overriding doctor's orders without a doctor on the other end making that call. Indiana can require actual physician review of denials, public reporting of denial and overturn rates, and financial penalties for bad-faith patterns. The state can also regulate pharmacy benefit managers, requiring transparency on spread pricing and banning the vertical arrangements that let one company control what a patient is prescribed, where they fill it, and what they pay. The state has these authorities. It has not used them.
Prevention beats intervention every time, in a doctor's office and in a state budget. Maintaining coverage costs less than treating uninsured Hoosiers in emergency rooms. A state that keeps waiting for the crisis to arrive first is not managing costs. It is deferring them onto the people who can least afford to absorb them. I will not govern that way.
Economics: AI and data centers are having a huge impact on jobs and communities across the nation, particularly in Indiana. What is Congress’s role in addressing this developing technology? What action will you take to hear and represent the concerns of Hoosiers on this topic?
Economics: Dozens of AI data centers are planning to come to Indiana, drawn by the state’s “business-friendly” reputation. How should Indiana manage these large industrial site proposals and their potential impact on communities? (Source: Citizens Action Coalition)
Indiana calls itself "business-friendly." What that has come to mean in practice is that large corporations get subsidized infrastructure, reduced regulatory friction, and negotiated agreements with local governments that the public isn't allowed to read. Data centers are the current example. Indiana communities are being asked to accept large industrial facilities that draw enormous amounts of power and water, generate relatively few local jobs, and in some cases are being approved through NDAs with city councils — meaning elected representatives are voting on agreements their own constituents cannot see.
Opposition to this is one of the least partisan things happening in American politics right now. Across party lines, in community after community, people want this process to slow down. They want clean water, clean air, and healthy soil. They want accountability for what gets built in their neighborhoods. They do not want these facilities forced upon them through zoning technicalities and closed-door agreements. That consensus deserves a legislature that listens to it. Before Indiana approves more data centers, the legislature should be required to examine what has actually happened in communities that already have them. What did energy costs do? How many jobs were actually created, for whom, and at what wages? We do not have to learn every lesson the hard way. In the meantime: stop charging residential customers for infrastructure being built to serve corporate data centers. Restore Indiana's energy efficiency program, which helped families make permanent reductions to their bills before the legislature eliminated it. Protect local zoning authority. Require closed-loop cooling systems and independent environmental impact reports as conditions of approval. And require third-party verification that every tax incentive delivered the jobs it promised. If it didn't, the incentive gets clawed back. That is how a contract works.
The through line is the same one that runs through public education and utility regulation. If you are operating on public subsidy, public infrastructure, and public goodwill, you operate under public rules. Indiana has been generous with the subsidy and negligent with the rules. That is the problem, and it is fixable.
Education: Describe your stance on the Department of Education and its role in education administration, funding, and protections for students with disabilities.
Education: Since 2012, Indiana has spent over $5.5 billion in taxpayer dollars on charter schools and the private school voucher program. If elected, would you support or oppose the use of taxpayer dollars to funding private schools and charter schools? Why or why not? (Source: ICPE)
The use of taxpayer dollars to fund private and charter operators is a government subsidy. The reason I point that out is not because I’m opposed to all government subsidies, but because I am opposed to subsidies that are robbing the vast majority of kids of a good education and giving the money to families who were never going to enroll in public schools anyway.
Ninety percent of Indiana's children are educated in public schools. Yet, we are on track to take $600 million of much needed funding from public schools and route it to private and charter schools instead in this next school year alone. The year after it will be over $1 billion. We are also anticipating a referendum wave: public schools are going to require more local tax dollars to keep their schools going because our state is choosing to fund private schools at the same time our property tax “cuts” are gutting our ability to locally fund the public schools in their communities. And those two things are happening at the same time that the state is refusing to keep up with the funding formula. Functionally: Noblesville schools should be getting an estimated $5M next year. Instead we’re getting a referendum and have already had to cut $3M in staffing.
And the real kicker: 70% of the kids who take the school voucher have never been enrolled in a public school. The program is not rescuing children from failing schools. It is subsidizing families who could already afford private schools. Not only that, but we are seeing the cost of private schools skyrocket. They know their families can afford the cost, and they know they’re also getting taxpayer subsidies. So functionally, families who couldn’t afford private school before receiving the subsidy still can’t afford it. If a private school was $10,000 last year, and $18,000 this year, an $8,000 government subsidy isn't making private school accessible. It's making private school operators richer. Meanwhile, 90% of children educated in public schools are getting less and less of the taxpayer dollars our state promised them.
I’ve spent years in federal education policy, including my work with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. That work taught me how funding formulas get written, how compliance requirements get watered down or sometimes flat out ignored, and how public dollars get redirected to private operators with no accountability to the public that funded them. I have also seen what it looks like when states find ways around their legal obligations to students with disabilities. Indiana's special education has not received the independent scrutiny it deserves. I will require it.
I will never begrudge a parent trying to get the best education for their child. That said, any funding for education alternatives should come from a separate appropriation, not the same pool that funds the 90%. Any school receiving public dollars must contribute to the shared costs public schools are legally required to carry: special education, transportation, and English language learner support. Taxpayers should not be paying twice for the same obligations. And any school taking public per-pupil funding must meet the same accountability standards as public schools: elected governance, full financial disclosure, and no selective admissions.
If you take public money, you operate under public rules. Since 2009, state revenue has grown 66%. Public school funding has grown 40%. That gap is the promise Indiana broke. Indiana's constitution already requires we provide public education. It is time to enforce what we already agreed to.
Democracy: In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge or threat facing our democracy right now? If elected, what will you do to help overcome this challenge or threat?
The biggest threat to democracy right now is representatives who have stopped representing the people who elected them. This is being done in a measurable, documented, daily way.
We are watching it play out at every level. Congressional representatives supporting a federal budget that strips billions from their own constituents; not asserting the powers given to them by the Constitution. State legislators doing the national administration's bidding on redistricting, on education, on utility policy, on healthcare — not because their districts asked for it, but because the money and the pressure came from the top. When the legislators who held the line for their constituents got primaried out, the message was delivered to every remaining member. A party that does that to its own has told you exactly who it works for.
When that happens repeatedly, people stop believing the process is worth their time. And that cynicism is not irrational. People have evidence for their distrust and cynicism. And it is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a democracy, because a public that has given up on participation is a public that has no defense against the next bad decision.
The mechanism behind most of it is the same: when special interest money shapes who gets access and whose calls get returned, the people who funded the campaign get represented and everyone else gets “managed.” Indiana's campaign finance environment makes that easy. I will push to change it.
But the structural fix only matters if the person in the seat is doing the work in between elections. My commitment is to be a representative people can actually reach, who reports back on what she heard and what she did with it, and who treats constituent input as the job; who knows that making good legislation requires being accessible to people instead of pushing through pre-written legislation from ALEC.
Trust gets rebuilt one kept promise at a time, and I intend to govern in a way that earns and keeps that trust.
Community: Describe your stance on ICE and its role in immigration enforcement and detention.
Community: What role or responsibility do local and state governments have with regards to immigration enforcement?
Immigration enforcement is a federal function. But states have real choices about how much they participate, and those choices have consequences for real people living and working here.
My position is straightforward: Indiana's law enforcement and National Guard exist to serve Indiana's public safety. They are not federal immigration agencies, and deploying them as such is a choice this state makes, not an obligation it has. Indiana law enforcement has a defined jurisdiction, funded by Indiana taxpayers, for Indiana communities. Federal immigration enforcement sits outside it. The legislature should be passing laws that protect the people of Indiana, not laws that put our residents at risk of having their constitutional rights violated. Any action this state takes must operate within the boundaries of the United States Constitution, which is not ambiguous on this point.
The Supreme Court has held, unanimously and repeatedly, that the Fifth Amendment says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Not citizen. Person. The 14th Amendment says the same, and binds the states directly. What that means in practice is simple: the government must give people a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before taking away their liberty. That is not a high bar. It is the floor. And it is the law.
The thought of holding people unjustly without cause should concern all of us, not just Democrats. And I have too much respect for the Constitution of the United States to ignore anyone's constitutionally guaranteed rights.