Ethan Melman | Opinion Contributor
I am voting for Greg Ballard for Indiana secretary of state. I did not make this decision easily or lightly. I have been a lifelong Republican.
When I was in high school, I knocked on doors for Republican candidates in Chicago. In college, I worked for a Republican state senator from Illinois.
When I first started looking into Indiana politicians, figures like former Vice President Mike Pence and former Gov. Eric Holcomb seemed to embody the good old conservative ideals that I had grown up with. I moved to Indiana during the summer of 2024 with dreams of establishing my own law practice in Indianapolis and building a home for myself in a state that I saw as going up while Illinois was going down. I wanted to fulfill my American dream and make a name for myself.
I went to my first Marion County GOP meetings and almost felt at home. It was as though I had finally found a place where my Reaganesque political dreams could start to blossom and where I could consider running for office under the Republican banner.
Then I started learning about Diego Morales.
I had grown up under the shadow of a century-old political machine, where four governors, dozens of Chicago aldermen and others were federally indicted. I thought that level of corruption would stay in Illinois. I was unfortunately mistaken. Morales has faced allegations of sexual misconduct, nepotism and favoritism, questionable taxpayer spending and taxpayer-funded self-promotion. That all weighed on me as I waited for the upcoming secretary of state election.
I couldn't wait to see whom the GOP would put forward in June. And then I got my answer: Max Engling. I have nothing against Engling personally. I think he's a great family man and father. But I could not bring myself to consider voting for him.
When I listened to the first secretary of state debate on Aug. 26 while driving south toward Salem to meet with a client, I noticed something about Engling that took me aback. He refused to condemn or even acknowledge the allegations of rampant corruption that have engulfed the secretary of state's office.
I expected Democrat Beau Bayh and Libertarian Lauri Shillings to call them out and ask for audits of the office, but Ballard's comments resonated with me.
Here I was, listening to a former Republican call out his former party and say that things had to change. He agreed to an independent audit of the office he was running for and to investigate employees who had benefited from the alleged corruption of the current administration. On the opposing side, I, as a Republican, wished Engling would say something to that effect. Engling dodged the tough questions and moved on. That was when I made my decision.
I'm a Republican voting for Ballard, the former Indianapolis mayor, because he represents something that modern Republican politics has lost: integrity.
If I had to make an analogy, when your car's check engine light is on and you smell smoke, you don't continue driving, shrug and say to yourself, "This is fine." You take it to the shop.
The secretary of state's office is a car with its check engine light on, smoking as it travels down the highway. It needs a mechanic. That mechanic is Ballard.
Ethan Melman is a law student at the Indiana University McKinney School of Law and a law clerk for Robert D. Epstein & Associates.
This article originally appeared in the IndyStar.