Educator McCormick touts optimism and opportunity

Jennifer McCormick has described herself in many roles during her run for governor: a wife, a teacher, a military mom, a businesswoman, the daughter of farmers—and a former Republican.

During her campaign, McCormick, who has spent the last four years working with school districts on strategic planning as an independent consultant, hasn’t shied away from talking about her decision to flip from identifying as a Republican to a Democrat following her time as state superintendent of public instruction from 2017 to 2021.

She hasn’t changed, she says. The Republican Party has.

Evidence of that, she said, can be found in the party’s candidate for governor, U.S. Sen. Mike Braun. She’s called his and lieutenant governor candidate Micah Beckwith’s ticket “extremist.”

She said she’s striving to be the balanced option, threading bipartisanship into her proposals and touting herself as a fiscal conservative—a label she believes is not reserved just for the GOP.

Those who know McCormick say her motivation to run for governor is rooted in her long resume as a teacher and school administrator. That’s strengthened by what they say is her aversion to partisan politics.

Her experience in education and politics, plus her genuine motivation to serve—first students and now Hoosiers—uniquely qualify her for the state’s top job, her former and current colleagues say.

“That genuineness is not captured in everybody doing this line of work,” former state Rep. Melanie Wright said, “but that’s something that she’s bringing from the education field into the political field.”

McCormick spent more than 20 years in various leadership roles at a medium-size school district close to Muncie. In 2016, she won the state superintendent of public instruction race on the Republican ticket. Eight years later, she is running as a Democrat in a campaign for governor launched last year.

Her campaign has focused primarily on improving education outcomes, specifically in public schools. She also has rolled out policies for expanding abortion rights, raising wages, and improving the efficiency and transparency of state government through her ethics, economic development and utility policy plans.

Her campaign is considered a long shot. Indiana hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since Frank O’Bannon in 2000. Polls throughout the race have handily favored Braun, who had raised $9.2 million for his campaign through the latest reporting period compared with McCormick’s $2.4 million.

But the last month has brought her campaign new optimism.

Two national race raters, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Inside Elections, changed their ratings for the race from “safely Republican” to “likely Republican.” And last week, the Democratic Governors Association contributed $600,000 to McCormick’s campaign—a move that signals the organization thinks the race is competitive.

Early voting is already underway, and Election Day is Nov. 5. Libertarian Donald Rainwater joins McCormick and Braun on the ballot.

Teaching ‘a natural fit’

Growing up in New Castle, McCormick said her teachers inspired her career in education.

“I’ve always been of the belief that we’re better with education, and it empowers people,” she said. “It was just a good way for me to be a public servant.”

McCormick stayed close to home to attend Purdue University, where she graduated in 1993 with a bachelor’s in elementary education and teaching.

She landed a job as a special education teacher at Yorktown Community Schools, 5 miles west of Ball State University, where she completed her master’s in special education and teaching as well as education leadership and administration. Soon after her hiring, she moved into a role as a middle school teacher, where she taught for eight years.

Heath Dudley taught with McCormick at Yorktown for three years. McCormick was personable with her students, he said, and invested her time in ensuring better outcomes. For example, she’d host “coffee” book talks with her students, which resembled a book club with hot chocolate.

“She always just kind of had that hardwired in her,” Dudley said. “It was always going to be geared towards what she believed was going to be the best thing for the kids.”

In 2005, McCormick became Yorktown Elementary’s principal, the first woman to hold the role. Three years later, she became the district’s assistant superintendent. And after completing her doctorate and education specialist degree, she became superintendent.

A key responsibility that has primed her for the position she’s now seeking? Balancing a school district’s finances.

“Every penny had to be accounted for, and it should have been,” she said. “I had to be super fiscally conservative and responsible because there just was never enough money.”

Kelly Wittman, who now serves as McCormick’s campaign manager, met her in 2005 when Wittman was interviewing for the job as Yorktown’s high school principal. They worked together for over a decade. McCormick has always been interested in inviting many people into her decision-making process, Wittman said.

“She always wanted the people at the table to be able to contribute, so that we could walk away with the best solution, regardless of who brought it,” Wittman said. “She was comfortable with the fact that she may not have the best idea at the table.”

Stint at the state level

After seven years as a district superintendent, McCormick ran for state superintendent of public instruction. She defeated Democratic incumbent Glenda Ritz in 2016 in a campaign that focused on separating politics from education and streamlining school services.

Once on the job, McCormick said her goal was to shape the department to respond like customer service. Wittman, who moved with McCormick to the Indiana Department of Education, said McCormick developed metrics to track how fast the department responded to school help requests and pushed her staff to provide consistent answers. She also sought to cut what the department considered frivolous school spending.

When it came to topics McCormick wasn’t an expert in, she turned to her collaborative decision-making style, said Leslie Rittenhouse, who was a fiscal analyst for the department. She delegated, trusting those she brought into conversations and allowing them to lead the department to solutions. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved, however.

“When I would read that bill and we would talk about it, she had already read that bill,” Rittenhouse said. “She never is not involved in what is happening at all levels. She doesn’t stop. I mean, quite honestly.”

Two years into her term, McCormick announced she wouldn’t seek reelection, saying the state’s education governance structure was a burden. She described her time in the role as her “dog years,” the Indianapolis Star reported at the time.

As superintendent, dysfunction at the Statehouse was a steep learning curve, she said, and party politics crowded out the ability to get anything done. She said there was a disconnect between the IDOE and policy set by the General Assembly and State Board of Education.

She found herself often butting heads with other Republicans on education policy. For example, although during her campaign she supported the expansion of school vouchers—a traditional Republican position—in office, she pushed for private schools receiving vouchers to be held to the same standards as public schools.

McCormick often sided with teachers, which put her at odds with Indiana GOP policy goals. Her battles eventually led to her receiving backing from the Indiana State Teachers Association, which doesn’t often support Republicans.

She was among the educators in 2019 who descended on the Statehouse for the teachers union’s Red for Ed day, calling for higher teacher pay, more funding for public schools and creative solutions for solving Indiana’s teacher shortage.

If elected, she has said, she’ll take those experiences with her back to the Statehouse and work to find bipartisan support for her policies. She’ll need that, since Republicans have held a supermajority in the Senate since 2010 and in the House since 2012.

Swapping parties, not beliefs

McCormick had been seen as crossing the party line in Republicans’ eyes even before she left her role as state superintendent.

In 2019, then-state Sen. Eddie Melton, a Democrat and now mayor of Gary, traveled the state as a candidate for governor. His listening tour focused on education policy, and he asked McCormick to join him. She did.

That prompted then-GOP Chair Kyle Hupfer to accuse McCormick of attempting to join Melton’s ticket as his lieutenant governor running mate. McCormick never endorsed Melton’s bid for governor, and he dropped out of the race in early 2020.

“It begs the question [of] whether Jennifer McCormick is still a Republican,” Hupfer said in a prepared statement at the time. “I’m sure someone will ask her that soon.”

She then supported Democrat Woody Myers over Republican Eric Holcomb in the 2020 governor’s race, the IndyStar reported. She also endorsed a number of other Democrats, including those running for Statehouse seats and in the attorney general race. At one point, Myers planned to appoint McCormick as his secretary of education should he be elected.

When McCormick announced in 2021 that she was changing her party affiliation to Democrat, the Times of Northwest Indiana described the change as “one of the worst-kept secrets in Indiana politics.”

McCormick maintains that she hasn’t changed; rather, she said, the Republican Party diverged from her morals. The party has shifted to the far right since former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, she said, and has become unrecognizable to her.

“I’ve always been about fiscal conservativeness. I’ve always been about opportunity and optimism. I’ve always been about making sure that we’re taking care of our public schools and our communities and our health care, good-paying jobs,” she said. “And what I saw was not that.”

Wittman said McCormick has always been good at working with people on both sides of the political aisle. As schools chief, she had both Democratic and Republican advisers. Wittman, a Democrat, said McCormick never minded her political affiliation when she asked Wittman to join her at the state.

“She never asked anybody, ‘What party are you?’ before she recruited people to come work for her at the Department of Ed,” Wittman said. “It was always about, ‘We are going to be relentlessly committed to service.’”

As for her campaign, McCormick says it’s not centered on Democratic or Republican beliefs but on common-sense Hoosier beliefs, which are often bipartisan.

“She’s not afraid to get in the gray,” Wright said. “It’s not a matter of, you’re either zero or 100 on that issue. There’s a massive gray in between. … That’s what’s been most impressive because she’s forged right into that.”•