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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Taking back the party

Laura Anderson couples her passion for coffee with political service

Laura's Ethiopian Harrar is a dark roast, so the beans are shinier, because darker roasts are oilier.

BEDFORD, Ind. — Like a porthole in a ship, there is a small, circular window on Roxy’s side. Green coffee beans convulse, slowly turning a dark brown. A rich aroma swells. Then, a loud ‘SNAP.’

That’s first crack.

Nicaraguan is usually released right after the roaster’s first crack. But Laura Anderson waits. She smells. She listens. More snaps and crackles. The beans churning inside turn a darker brown and the smell becomes fuller and richer.

“It’s technically drinkable ...” she trails off, eyeing the porthole. The temperature is rising. The speed is increasing.

Laura’s not thinking about picking up her twins from school at 3:30. Or her lunch with Indiana first lady Karen Pence on Thursday. She isn’t thinking about the next time Senate hopeful Eric Holcomb will stop into her café for pizza.

At this moment, she’s thinking about roasting the acidity out of her coffee.

With a resolute push, she breaks the rising tension in the roaster. The medium-brown-colored beans funnel out through a cloud of steam.

“Yeah!” she shouts as she glides her hand through the beans. “I like it!”

Mondays are roasting days at Stone Cutters Café and Roastery.

***

This was supposed to be the year she would take a break from politics.

But when Sen. Dan Coats’s Chief of Staff Eric Holcomb was in her café a few Fridays ago, Laura couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with duty. It showed in her meticulously planned blue-and-white outfit.

“I put on my political hat today,” she said that evening.

Bedford, Ind., is Laura’s home and a ?hotbed for Republican politics. Bedford is one of the birthplaces of Indiana Senate Bill 101, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. State Sen.­­ Brent Steele, R-Bedford, was one of the bill’s primary authors. He stops into Stone Cutters regularly, Laura says. He takes his coffee black.

Laura is a Republican. But when she hears about RFRA, she cringes.

“My business is open to everyone,” she says.

Everyone includes U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind.; U.S. Rep. Todd Young, R-9th District; U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, R-4th District; Steele and other prominent politicians.

“They just drop in,” ?Laura says.

Young, Rokita and Holcomb have been dropping in a lot — they take their coffee black, Laura says.

“Maybe they’re just afraid to offend me by adding milk and sugar,” she says.

BEEP.

That’s Roxy, letting Laura know her Costa Rican Tarrazu has reached second crack.

Roxy is known formally as “Roxanne,” because to roast, one must “turn on the red light.”

While Laura eyes the Tarrazu roast, her 4-year-old son walks up to her. Colton is the youngest of three children.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks him. He’s too busy listening to music on her iPad to answer.

On this roasting day, it’s the Beastie Boys.

“At least he has a good taste in music,” Laura says.

***

Laura studied political science at Butler University. That’s when she met her ?husband.

Josh Anderson’s family owns a line of pharmacies. Soon, he will open an integrated care pharmacy in Bloomington within organic grocer Lucky’s Market.

The Andersons are a political family. Laura wants Josh to run for office. He wants her to run for office.

Every year, she finds someone to believe in. This year, that person is Eric ?Holcomb.

She’s invited him back to Stone Cutters to hang out and meet the townspeople.

“I love politics,” Laura says. “It makes the world feel smaller to me. I want to leave my mark. I think that’s why I keep doing it.”

After Gov. Mike Pence had been elected, Laura was on the committee to help update the party platform.

At the last minute, toward the end of the committee’s work, the definition of marriage was defined in the platform as being “between a man and a woman.”

Laura fought to have that part removed.

“I felt like the platform should be an umbrella for all of us, and under that umbrella, we could formulate our individual opinions,” ?Laura says.

In the end, she lost.

The party has alienated many, and she says the war between the social conservatives and everyone else is ?difficult to watch.

“If everybody would just cool it and think logically ...” Laura trails off, watching the Tarrazu rotate inside the machine. They should be close, but the beans don’t smell rich enough yet.

“I am a Christian, and I believe that Jesus would be hanging out in the gay bars.”

She lets the beans roast a bit longer.

***

Laura had just gotten back from London and had an internship offer with NBC. She wanted to be a journalist.

Then she met her soul mate.

“We’re like a coloring book,” she says. “He’s black and white, the lines. I’m the crazy colors that make it fun.”

Her 4-year-old walks over to the window where Laura is sitting.

It’s been a few hours in the café, and he’s run out of music to listen to.

“I want to go to Crowders,” he says.

“You can’t right now, honey,” his mother replies. “Daddy’s not there right now. Do you want a sandwich?”

Crowders is one of Josh’s family’s pharmacies. As a pharmacist, he takes more of an interest in holistic medicine. His philosophy is about getting people healthy, not treating their symptoms, ?Laura says.

Laura’s allergic to most antibiotics.

Before Laura met Josh, she wasn’t vaccinated. Josh made her get her measles, MMR and tetanus shots before getting pregnant.

“There was always an herb or a tea for everything in my family,” she says. “I was always a rebel, so I married a pharmacist.”

Without antibiotics, kids were hard. She wanted a traditional birth.

With her twins, she had an emergency ?Cesarean section.

“I’m pretty open about that,” she says. “I think it’s important for women to know that however it’s going to be, is how it’s going to be. And that’s OK.”

A few years later, Colton sits at the table eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Laura has one bag left to roast.

At the end of the day, everything is composted.

Laura has learned to laugh at herself.

“Yup,” she says, grabbing the next bag of coffee. “We’re not your typical ?Republicans.”

***

Her pixie-cut tomboy teenage self never thought she would be in Bedford caucusing for Indiana Republicans. She was going to be a political reporter.

“When I met Josh, all of that got sidelined,” she says. “I had a new identity. I realized that I was passionate about a lot more than I thought.”

Making the politics, not reporting on them.

“Maybe in some alternate universe, I’m working for NBC in London,” she says.

Before Bedford, Laura studied in England.

It was the year after Sept. 11. She sat in class with Middle Eastern students from Pakistan, ?Lebanon and Iraq.

“I was the worker’s daughter from Indiana,” she reflects. “It was such an interesting microcosm of what the world could be. We saw the humanity in each other.”

It was where she learned, fully, not to judge.

When she moved back to Indiana, her identity became more complicated. Not only was she a pharmacist’s wife in a small town, she became active in the political community she had spent years reporting on. Laura feared she would lose who she was after marriage and become known only as “Josh ?Anderson’s wife.”

So, she brought a coffee roasting company and café to the town square.

A few years later, she was honored as a member of the 2013-14 Lugar Series, a prestigious class of women who are active in their communities in Indiana.

Is Laura confident and secure in this new identity?

Absolutely.

“I thought, ‘I could be a RINO, that’s OK,’” she says. “This is what I fit into. I do know that I can make a ?difference.”

Colton finishes his sandwich and walks back to the counter. Having children was the best thing she’s ever done, she says.

Laura also loves good political gossip. She coolly hangs her head and whispers with a funny curiosity, “I know a lot.”

Minutes later, she’s deep into an off-the-record story about hidden statehouse emails and sexist jabs when all of a sudden, BEEEEEEEP.

It’s Roxy. The dark roast is done.

Through clouds of steam, hundreds of shiny, oily coffee beans flow into the bin.

“I’m really happy with this one,” she says.

***

Over Moscow Mules at Malibu Grill, Laura joked with Josh about someday moving to Bloomington.

But back at Stone Cutters, a sign hangs in the window: “Love Where You Live.”

“And I really mean that,” she says.

Sunday, Stone Cutters will host a callout meeting for the “Lawrence County Young Republicans.”

The agenda?

“Take back the party,” Laura says.

The meeting is for all of those who have felt alienated by the Indiana Republican Party, Laura says. The millennials, the Gen Xers, Laura herself.

“We want them to know, ‘We care about your vote,’” she says. “We’re not letting the far right speak for you anymore.”

No politicians Sunday evening. Just voters.

And freshly brewed ?coffee.

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