How Politics Changes People: Todd Rokita’s Transformation Sparks Debate Over Power, Influence, and Integrity

One of the things I’ve talked a lot about is how politics ruins everyone. Almost everyone. There’s a few that stay true to themselves, but politics warps and ruins just about everyone it touches eventually. Some people, very quick. Some people, it’s a prolonged thing. And the sad thing for me, and I saw this firsthand, and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to get out very quickly because I didn’t want it to happen to me, it gets good people. People who go in there are some nasty, rotten people who go into politics. There are some very selfish people. There are some people who, from the get-go, are in it for themselves. And that’s a lot of people who go into politics. And I’m talking politics at all levels: the city, the county, the state, the feds. But there are some very good people who go into politics to do the right thing. And I’m very critical of the politicians, but there are some really good people who go in to do the right things, and those people get warped over time as well.

Why Politics Has a Reputation for Changing Even Good Leaders

And a big part of it is, and we’ve talked about this at length, politics becomes the identity for these people. They never got the exposure or the notoriety or the praise or the power or whatever, the influence, when they were younger. I’ve said for years, politics is run by the people who got stuffed into lockers as kids. And they have recognized, because the American people are largely apathetic and unengaged with their government, which sucks. That’s on us. It’s why we’re here doing this show, to try to get fewer people apathetic and unengaged. But they recognize this is a path to power. If the people are going to give this thing to me that I couldn’t obtain on my own, through their apathy, through their engagement, their disinterest, whatever you want to call it, this is my opportunity. And I saw this stuff firsthand, of how people who I thought were pretty good people, and I saw them over a period of years, how they were warped, how they were ruined because elevation became the whole thing. Elevation, moving up, more power, acquiring more influence, more prestige. It defined their whole life. They stopped being themselves and they started becoming almost this caricature of themselves. And every choice they made and everything they did became about the elevation rather than the people that they were elected to serve, and once upon a time, they actually gave a damn about and actually did the right things for. And I’ve talked a lot about this, and this is a reason our country is in the situation it is. A big reason the bad people are bad enough, but we’ve lost so many good people to the system itself. And when the good people are willing to be warped or willing to be ruined because of their own hopes and desires for themselves, there’s hardly anybody left to fight. And I thought, you guys have heard me say this for so long, what if I give you someone who could serve as an eyewitness account to this? Like, don’t take my word for it. Oh, Rob, he’s a shock jock. Oh, Rob, he just says things for ratings. Oh, Rob, he’s such a blowhard. Somebody yesterday got into it with me on redistricting and was saying how this redistricting failure was all my fault. And I said, look, you guys got to pick a lane. The politicians say I’m just a shock jock and a blowhard. Nobody listens. And then you’re saying that I’m the reason redistricting failed. Look, I’m willing to wear whatever scarlet letter you want to put on me. Shock jock. Blowhard. Nobody listens. Okay, I’ll take that. Or I’m so influential that senators who don’t even represent me, who live two hours away, are subservient to my demands. I’m fine with whichever. Whichever one. But we can’t have this back and forth. We can’t have this whatever in the moment I want you to be. If you want to say I’m so influential that I can make senators do whatever I want, I’ll gladly accept that. Or if you want to say I’m a shock jock blowhard, nobody listens to me, I’ll take that, too. But then you can’t blame me for stuff. You guys gotta pick a lane on what we’re doing here.

Firsthand Accounts Reveal How Power and Ambition Reshape Political Careers

So later today, I’m going to have a guy by the name of AJ Feeney-Ruiz on our show. And AJ spent a very long time in a variety of roles around now Attorney General Todd Rokita, going all the way back to after Rokita was first elected as Secretary of State. And AJ is going to be with us to talk about how Todd Rokita changed over time, and how so many of these politicians, these high-profile people he was around, changed over time to the point the guy became so disillusioned with the system, he not only got out of politics altogether, he fled the country. He spent years out of the country. These people were so rotten. But look, I chose AJ, and I chose Rokita for this reason. I saw AJ because he worked for Todd. He was a comms director when Todd was the Secretary of State. And I have said this for many, many years, and you guys who are longtime listeners know this, when I first started paying attention to politics, I really admired Todd Rokita because Todd Rokita, at a time I was first coming into paying attention to politics, this is ’07, ’08, this was the property tax cap fight, was really the first thing that got me paying attention. Like it seems weird, like a world where Rob Kendall was naive to local politics and government. It was. I was a college kid. I started a business very young. It was successful. I was buying a radio station. I was doing all these things. I voted. I naively voted based on Republican versus Democrat, and I couldn’t tell you much about politics other than the high-level national stuff.

Todd Rokita’s Early Reform Efforts Once Set Him Apart in Indiana Politics

But when the property tax stuff started in that ’07, ’08 timeframe is when I started really paying attention as an outsider, but reading, learning. And Todd Rokita was a guy I read a lot about and started to admire because he repeatedly took bold positions that seemed reasonable. I would describe Todd as a Secretary of State as bold but reasonable. And one of those things was Todd Rokita’s push against his own party to take politics out of redistricting. Todd Rokita got in big trouble with the Republican Party in the late 2000s because he was super bold and super vocal that we needed to remove politics from redistricting and draw fair maps. And I remember reading about this and seeing this and going, wow, this guy’s p*****g off people in his own party because he wants to do what’s right for the people. And I kind of like that. Now Todd Rokita has taken the exact opposite stance on redistricting. He wants to, and by the way, the maps we have today look very similar to the maps Rokita proposed back in the late 2000s. Removing politics, some changes because of population shifts, but the maps themselves look very similar. They’re good maps. And Todd Rokita now stands in direct opposition to the maps he once proposed, the system he once proposed.

Policy Reversals on Redistricting and Voter ID Raise Questions About Political Evolution

The same thing is true with voter ID, and I saw AJ, who’s now a local business owner living back here in America, make this post about voter ID. He was there when Todd was the Secretary of State proposing the landmark voter ID law, and he was talking about how one of the things Todd Rokita was adamant about in that voter ID law was that college IDs be allowed to work for students to cast their ballots. And how disgusted he was that Todd Rokita today takes the exact opposite position as attorney general. And I’m reading this thinking this guy, Todd Rokita, did really good stuff. Really independent stuff. Really bold stuff. Stuff that we should aspire to see from all of our politicians, advocating for good public policy that cut through the barriers that politics creates and trying to do right for the people. And yet, on multiple occasions now, as attorney general, he has advocated in direct contrast to not only the positions, but the landmark legislation that he helped pass. I can’t believe that Todd Rokita just suddenly woke up one day and thought, you know what? I was dead wrong on those things that I felt so deeply about.