Jennifer Wagner Chartier/ Special to IBJ

Regardless of party, we need our elected officials … to run things well.

If you’re even remotely plugged into local politics, you know several folks other than Shackleford have been jockeying to be Indy’s next chief executive for quite some time.

Voters have to feel like you’ve got their back, that they can trust you to do right by them.

In my experience, the people and organizations that lead with honesty and transparency are the ones who succeed as leaders in the long run—even if their ideas do not.

It took a little more than a fortnight for the national political landscape to shift in ways we never imagined.

These days, politics feels more like competitive eating, where you shove as much food as you can.

It might not feel like it for fans who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them, but the Indy Eleven might have the upper hand here.

The way all of this has unfolded feels sudden, secretive and un-Hoosier-like.

All of this is a very good thing for democracy, which operates best when it operates in the sunlight.

It’s not a huge surprise that, unless there’s a hot topic on the agenda, most public meeting rooms are either empty or filled with people who get paid to be there.

How do we explain to the next generation of voters that it wasn’t always like this, and it doesn’t have to be this way?

There is a certain level of machine-like consistency that accompanies longevity.

Politics has long run on fear and anger, but it’s hard to ignore how much hotter that rage fire burns in the age of social media and widespread misinformation and disinformation campaigns.

Growing up during the ‘war on drugs,’ I was firmly convinced that just one breath of weed smoke would have me hooked on cocaine the rest of my life.

Politics is serious, but humor done well can be far more memorable than constant negativity.

Skyrocketing housing prices and the increasing ability to work from anywhere appear to be the main roots of the trend.