EVANSVILLE - Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock resigned effective Friday, four months before he was set to leave the elected office after two terms.
Gov. Mike Pence named an interim treasurer to perform the functions of the office until he appoints someone to serve the remainder of Mourdock’s term, which expires at the end of the year.
In a statement his office issued Friday, Mourdock said he is leaving to “pursue other professional interests, particularly those relative to helping Americans save for retirement and for post-high school education.”
He did not elaborate, nor did he respond to phone messages afterward. Mourdock, a former Vanderburgh County commissioner, was term-limited from seeking re-election to the state treasurer’s office, having been elected to his first four-year term in 2006.
Pence announced Daniel Huge — chief financial officer and chief operating officer of the Indiana Finance Authority — will serve as interim treasurer to maintain continuity of operations of the office.
“We thank Richard Mourdock for the various roles he has played in public service, and we wish him well in his future endeavors,” Pence said in a statement.
Mourdock’s statement highlighted the accomplishments of the treasurer’s department under his tenure, including growth in the state’s college savings program. It included just one quote from Mourdock, directed to his staff.
“But all of us know those are not solely my accomplishments but your accomplishments as well, and I’m proud to have been a part of all that was required to achieve so much,” Mourdock said.
In June, Mourdock declined to rule out another run for political office in speaking to the Courier & Press at the State Republican Convention. He said he anticipated being back in his home in Darmstadt after serving as treasurer. At the time, Mourdock said he had several national public policy issues he wanted to address. He said a national think tank had sought him out about possibly working for them.
“I’ve long said my car could break down anywhere in Indiana and I wouldn’t have to walk more than a mile to a house of a friend,” Mourdock told the Courier & Press in June.
Crushing defeat
Mourdock, a geologist by trade, is a veteran of many local, congressional and statewide campaigns. He has lost some and won some. But he will be forever known for an eleventh-hour defeat from a self-inflicted wound in the 2012 U.S. Senate race.
There was little in Mourdock’s political resume before that year to suggest that he would one day find himself on the brink of election to the United States Senate.
In 2004, just two years before he was elected state treasurer, Mourdock had seemingly hit bottom. He finished fifth in a field of six candidates to fill three at-large Vanderburgh County Council seats. The sixth-place finisher attended no candidate forums and turned down interview requests.
But by virtue of being willing to take on an icon of Indiana politics, Mourdock found himself in position in 2012 to capitalize on conservative discontent with then-U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar. Running as the conservative alternative to the moderate Lugar, Mourdock scored a win in a nationally watched GOP primary, garnering more than 60 percent of the vote.
He was suddenly a political star.
Just two weeks before the general election, most political observers agreed that he was on track to defeat Democrat Joe Donnelly in the Senate race — albeit narrowly and with significant help from other GOP candidates. Republicans were widely expected to defeat Democrats from top to bottom in Indiana elections.
But Mourdock’s campaign effectively ended in an instant on Oct. 23, when he was asked about abortion rights during a live televised debate in New Albany.
His answer amounted to political suicide.
“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen,” he said.
In the furor that followed, Mourdock tried to clarify and explain his remarks. He said he supports abortion rights only when a mother’s life is in danger, but he hadn’t meant that he believes God intends for rapes to happen. He protested that Democrats were willfully distorting his words for political gain.
But the debate sound bite, played over and over again by Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups, was too jarring.
Aftermath
Since Mourdock’s loss to Donnelly that year, some Republican leaders in Indianapolis and elsewhere in the state have cast him as a political pariah. Through a complex political calculus involving newly created openings and prospective candidates to fill them, Gov. Mike Pence’s mid-2013 recommendation for a new Indiana GOP chairman effectively blocked Mourdock from running for office this year.
But local Republicans and anti-abortion activists have received Mourdock warmly since 2012. Vanderburgh County GOP Chairman Wayne Parke said in July 2013 that Mourdock felt good enough about his political standing that he was then considering running for another statewide office in this year’s elections.
Nowadays, supporters describe Mourdock as a good man who paid a high price for an inelegantly worded remark. At the Vanderburgh County GOP’s 2013 Lincoln Day dinner, some blamed what they called a hostile news media for making too much of the tempest in 2012.
In April, Mourdock spoke about the episode for almost 15 minutes before some 2,000 supportive anti-abortion activists at Right to Life of Southwest Indiana’s annual banquet. His voice crackling with emotion, he said his political fate turned on a single word.
Mourdock recalled that he had stepped off the stage after his debate with Donnelly high-fiving supporters, convinced he had defeated the Democrat soundly — only to learn otherwise in the moments that followed.
“My staff had the blood draining out of their faces and they said, ‘We need to correct this statement,’” he said. “And I said, ‘What statement?’ They said, ‘Well, the statement you made.’ I said, ‘That’s not what I said.’ (They said), ‘Yeah, it is.’
“And they played the tape, and I couldn’t believe it.”
Mourdock told the anti-abortion activists he could have sworn he had said, ‘even in that circumstance (of rape), God intended for that life to happen.’” He stressed the word, “life.”
“But what in fact came out of my mouth was, ‘God intended for that to happen,’” he said, this time stressing the word, “that.”
At the eye of the storm, Mourdock recalled, he made peace with defeat.
“Oh, it just broke my heart. We’d worked so hard. So many people had worked so hard,” he said.
“And yet, I was comfortable in saying quietly, to my God, ‘If you don’t want me in the United States Senate, I’m OK with that.’”