Bio: I was born in Utah and grew up in rural Illinois close to Champaign. I lived in Southern Brazil for two years and attended college at BYUI in Idaho where I studied History and American Government. I moved to Indiana in 2016 and to Frankfort in 2023. I’ve worked in factories, theaters and gas stations, for moving companies and call centers, and I have seen first hand how hard people work to get by and how often we are hurt by the systems and people we trust to protect and help us.

CHALLENGES FACING OUR COMMUNITIES

• Rising Costs of Utilities

Power and water companies have been given a broad mandate to charge whatever they see fit for the services that they provide with little to no recourse to appeal their decisions. I would like to see these monopolies reigned in and reminded that they exist to benefit communities, not profit off of them. I also want our infrastructure to be updated and hardened against violent storms and tornados so that we can better weather those events. 

Utilities companies are not people.

• Data Centers

These are cropping up like weeds throughout our state and are a drain on local power and water resources. Data centers are moving to our communities because they are being incentivized with low taxes, low utilities rates, and relatively cheap construction costs. This incentive means that our tax dollars are paying the data center’s costs. Alongside that issue, data centers often pollute the water they use to operate. My solution to these issues is to have these companies pay their fair share in taxes and utilities rates, and enforce inspections on their waste to ensure that it is handled in a way that does not damage our communities. 

Data Centers are not people.

• Environment

We live in a beautiful green state that is being targeted and exploited by organizations that seek to destroy it. Data centers and other industries are building massive campuses without regard to the local environment including dumping pollutants into our communities. These industries also burn through electrical power at a never before seen scale, with individual data centers drawing more power than every home in Indiana combined. This industrial expansion must be stopped until it submits to environmental regulation to ensure that they benefit our state instead of destroying it. Alongside this issue, our energy infrastructure needs to be diversified into wind, solar, and whatever other alternatives we can find that do not harm the environment. Recent events in Iran have shown just how fragile and expensive it is to rely on only burning fossil fuels for our power, and a diverse energy grid will allow our state to cleanly power all of our homes and projects. 

People deserve clean air, land, and water

• Immigration

New people moving to our communities is one of the great strengths of our country. Recently legislation has passed that will require professionals in education and healthcare to work with immigration authorities. I believe that this is an awful mistake and a cruel error. Forcing the people that we trust with our lives and our children to assist in kidnapping is heinous to put it mildly. One of my goals is to help these people to integrate more easily and to prevent the tragedy and catastrophe that comes from massive militarized operations invading our homes in search of people who are only trying to build a better life. 

Immigrants are people too.

• Healthcare

Hospitals are an unfortunate necessity for all of us. We all wish that we didn’t ever get hurt or sick, but in reality we all will need help from medical professionals at some point in our lives. Me and my family have needed to use the Frankfort hospital on a few occasions and we have used our insurance to pay for it. As a state representative I will do my best to ensure that rural and local hospitals retain the funding that they need in order to operate, and provide insurance options for all Hoosiers. 

The sick and afflicted are people too.

• Education

Almost 2,000,000,000 dollars, that’s 2 Billion, has been siphoned from Indiana public schools into for profit private organizations with very little to show for it other than a worsening educational experience for every Hoosier. Private schools should be shut down, and the money returned to the communities that it was taken from. Everyone in Indiana deserves a top notch education and the opportunity to train for success. 

Children are people too.

• Safety

Individual safety is of paramount importance to a healthy and happy society. Currently many people feel unsafe to even approach their neighbors for fear of firearms or brutal police intervention. The United States has more shootings and mass shootings than any country on Earth by a ridiculous margin, and it has been proven time and again that the solution to this problem is to reduce the number of firearms in circulation. 

Additionally, the police need retrained to deescalate situations and part of that should be to reduce their firepower. If you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail, and a police officer with a gun will solve perceived problems with the tools they have available. 

People should feel safe

• Transgender Rights

Each individual has a right to do what they want with their body. People should be allowed to change their names, gender, and whatever else about themselves that they desire. This is very important because to attempt to deny this at any level hurts everyone. For example, there has been a recent push to require your ID to match the name on your birth certificate. This was designed to hurt transgender individuals, but it also hurts every married woman who changed their last name to match their husbands. Every man, woman, child, and anyone else deserves to have the final say in what happens to their body and the ability to continue to participate in society regardless of what they decide. 

Trans people are people too.

• Abortion

This also leads to abortion. Attempts to limit, ban, and prosecute doctors and patients for abortion have led to unnecessary injury and death for mothers and their children. If we don’t want abortions to happen then birth control and education are the answers, rather than prosecuting doctors or mothers who had to make the already difficult decision to proceed with an abortion no matter what their reasoning. 

Women are people too. 

Feel free to reach out!

Phone: 217-840-4736

Donate at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jacksonthayes41

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