The nearly 70,000 people who live in Indiana’s 62nd House District are facing what is expected to be one of the most contested elections in the state. Republican Dave Hall won the district by less than 100 votes in 2022 — the closest race in the legislature. Now he’s facing Democrat Thomas Horrocks.
The district surrounds Bloomington, and also includes all of Brown County and part of Jackson County. The state redistricted it before the 2022 election, which made it more competitive — it used to include less of the metropolitan area surrounding Bloomington and more red areas to the west.
So, who are the candidates, and what are their priorities?
Horrocks wasn’t always a Democrat, and he wasn’t always interested in running. That shift in attitude expanded as he sought education to become a pastor — which he’s been for nearly eight years now — at seminary.
“When I got to seminary, we wanted to study them (the Old Testament prophets) in their own context, and they had these powerful messages of social justice for standing up for the oppressed and the marginalized,” he said. “I'm seeing that in my religious studies at the same time that I've seen injustice manifesting in the world around me. And so, I just started talking online, on Facebook and Twitter. For the first time in my life, people start calling me a liberal.”
Horrocks was raised in a conservative family and considered himself as such until the early 2010s, when he became disillusioned with the Republican party. Indiana voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. Horrocks voted for Obama in 2012 but kept it a secret.
In that time, he also served in the Indiana Army National Guard for around a decade. He went on deployment once to Kuwait from 2019-20, and bounced around U.S. bases in other surrounding countries in the Persian Gulf.
In an interview with the Indiana Daily Student, he repeatedly quoted and referenced Desmond Tutu — “eventually we've got to stop pulling people on the river and go upstream and find out why they're falling in.” He was in the Gulf when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which threw a wrench in quality-of-life issues in Indiana he was already seeing develop upstream.
In particular, Horrocks was concerned with quality of life and education. To address these issues, he wants to universalize pre-K, increase teacher salaries and wages for everyone in Indiana and implement incentives for affordable housing.
If elected, there are two scenarios he’d have to deal with — a state house with a Republican supermajority, or a state house still dominated by Republicans without one. In both cases, Horrocks feels he would be able to fill in the gaps and work across the aisle.
Still, breaking the Republicans’ four-seat supermajority is a major priority of him and other Democratic state house candidates. With that gone, inter-party collaboration would become more commonplace, he said.
Hall, the district’s incumbent, did not respond to a request for an interview.
Living on his wife’s family farm in northwest Jackson County, Hall owns a crop insurance company and farms corn and soybeans with his father. Before running for state representative, he served in numerous positions in Jackson County, including as president of its county council.
He’s staked out a more moderate path — including a vote against SEA 202, legislation that changed tenure requirements and pushed colleges toward “intellectual diversity.” He was one of just two Republicans in the state house to vote against it.
One of his top priorities is combating drug addiction, according to his campaign website, an effort he led in Jackson County by helping start the Jackson-Jennings Work Release Center, which helped rehabilitate those dealing with addiction. Other priorities include improving infrastructure and expanding high-speed internet. He opposed Bloomington’s proposed annexation of unincorporated communities.
