AUBURN – Marlin Stutzman will run for his old U.S. House seat next year, the former congressman announced Tuesday.
Speaking to about 50 supporters at Kruse Plaza in Auburn, Stutzman mentioned it was tax day and bemoaned federal taxation and spending.
“People ask me, you know, why are you going to run again? Frankly, it’s because I’m ticked off,” he said. “Because watching what is going on in Washington, D.C., should break all of our hearts.”
Stutzman cited the national debt as a burden future generations will have to deal with and pointed to the business experience he’s gained since leaving office as a benefit he could bring to Washington.
“I also think I’ve learned some wisdom from previous time in office and decisions I’ve made in the past,” Stutzman said. “Hopefully I’m a little wiser this time.”
The former congressman joins a long list of candidates for a primary race that’s still more than a year away in May 2024. The 3rd District seat will be open after incumbent Rep. Jim Banks chose to forgo reelection to seek the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate.
The field now includes Stutzman; former Allen Circuit Court Judge Wendy Davis; state Sen. Andy Zay, R-Huntington; former legislative aide and veteran Jon Kenworthy; Warsaw maintenance technician and veteran Mike Felker; and Auburn lawyer Chandler Likes.
Just as other 3rd District candidates including Davis and Zay have done, Stutzman criticized the indictment of Donald Trump and said what the former president has gone through over the last four years “is just atrocious.”
Animosity between the parties has increased since he left Congress after 2016, Stutzman said. He also said he believes more politicians are interested in socialism, Marxism and other left-leaning ideologies.
“I think those are disrupting the way Washington has worked, because there’s a very different mindset than one of free enterprise and freedom and individual responsibility,” Stutzman said.
Radio host Pat Miller introduced Stutzman, praising the once and possibly future congressman for his conservatism and dedication to the U.S. Constitution. He pointed to Stutzman’s experience in Congress as a differentiating factor.
“Are there other people running for the race? Yes. Are some others good people? Yes,” Miller said. “But I want proven leadership. I want somebody who has done it and lived it and is willing to step into the trenches and live it again, because it’s not easy.”
Stutzman served in the Indiana Statehouse before first running for Congress in 2010.
He came in second to Dan Coats in the Senate primary that year and was later selected by a caucus to replace Rep. Mark Souder, who resigned that year after admitting to an affair with a part-time staffer.
He won election to the U.S. House in 2010 and was reelected in 2012 and 2014. In 2016, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat, losing to Todd Young.
Young received more than two-thirds of the vote statewide, although Stutzman did well in northeast Indiana.
Stutzman was the target of a 2016 ethics complaint after the Associated Press reported his Senate campaign had paid travel and hotel expenses for what his wife wrote on social media was a family vacation to California.
The congressman reimbursed his campaign but insisted the trip was filled with campaign activities.
A House review of the complaint ended when he left office.
