© Patrick Cavan Brown/Politico Magazine
Steering his white Dodge Ram while wearing a tan knit cap, a drab green Carhartt coat and a smear of brown livestock feed on his cheek, Terry Goodin jounced over frozen-hard mud toward his 100 head of beef cattle. "Make sure they're all four legs down and not four legs up, in this kind of weather," he told me in his southern Indiana drawl. The temperature overnight had dipped toward zero. Now, midmorning, it stood at 16 degrees. On the rear of his old pickup truck was a "Farmers For Goodin" bumper sticker, and rattling around his head were thoughts of what he was going to say the following week in a starkly different setting -- up in Indianapolis, at the regal limestone capitol building, in his introductory speech as the leader of his caucus in the state legislature.
He wanted to talk about the importance of public education, affordable health care and a living wage, and the moral necessity of addressing the opioids scourge. Six days later, dressed in a sharp suit and a striped tie, he would stress those priorities -- and also deliver a declaration of identity:
"I am a Democrat. I am a Democrat from rural Indiana."
That
Goodin, 51, who has held political office for more than 17 years, felt the need to say this out loud speaks to the divisions bedeviling the Democratic Party. A father of three and the superintendent of a 500-student school district,
Goodin is the last Democrat in Indiana who represents an entirely rural area. A member of the Indiana Farm Bureau, the National Rifle Association and the Austin Church of God, he's an anti-abortion, pro-gun, self-described "Bible-poundin', aisle-runnin'" Pentecostal. This unusual profile for a Democrat makes him a species nearing extinction within the national party, but it's also the very reason he keeps getting reelected here. This paradox is why he is prominently featured in a
report set to be made public Thursday by
the leadership PAC of third-term congresswoman
Cheri Bustos.
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