INDIANAPOLIS – Some years ago, former Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, showed his most winning side.
It was at the 2012 Gridiron Dinner, an event that features earthy, uninhibited humor from and focusing on the state’s political class. The dinner came at the end of another grinding session of the Indiana General Assembly, one enlivened, though, by a late-term detour into absurdity.
State Rep. Bob Morris, R-Fort Wayne, managed to earn national attention by being the lone lawmaker to vote against a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts on their centennial anniversary.
Morris said he voted no because the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood had partnered up to “sexualize” young girls.
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His vote earned Indiana scorn from every corner of the country.
Enter Bosma at the Gridiron.
He bounded onto the stage wearing a Girl Scout sash and started munching from a box of Girl Scout cookies. His face alight with a puckish grin, he announced that he’d just been sworn in as a member of “Troop 69” by Planned Parenthood leader Betty Cockrum and former Indiana ACLU executive director Sheila Kennedy.
Then, Bosma stood there, munching on his cookies, smiling like a jack ’o’ lantern, while the huge crowd howled with laughter.
He had reason to grin.
He’d solved a political problem. He’d made it so people were laughing with the GOP rather than at Republicans.
And the only price he’d had to pay for doing so involved driving a bus back and forth over Bob Morris a few times.
But that was Brian Bosma, as curious a mix of charm, cunning and cruelty as this state is likely to see for a while.
For much of the past decade, he was the most powerful politician in Indiana, a figure who inspired loyalty and fear. Even governors feared to cross him.
When stories of a long-ago alleged Bosma dalliance with an intern broke in 2018 – stories that prompted a House show-trial investigation – Gov. Eric Holcomb all but did the macarena trying to dance away from commenting on the speaker’s supposed indiscretion.
For good reason.
Bosma could be ruthless.
“I’d say he’s as mean as a snake,” one of Bosma’s fellow Republicans once told me, “but I’m afraid that might not be fair to snakes.”
But it wasn’t through fear alone that Bosma ruled.
When Bosma announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down as speaker and wouldn’t run for re-election this year, I talked with former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, now Purdue University’s president, about Bosma’s legacy.
The two had worked together when Indiana became both a laboratory for and a model of conservative governance. They sometimes butted heads, but, together, they helped reshape the state in ways that will be felt for decades.
Daniels said Bosma was the “essential partner” in that effort.
The former governor said Bosma might have had the biggest leadership challenge of the state’s politicians. The House is a large body and its members could be restive, even combative. Somehow, Daniels said, Bosma found ways to get the House members to move together.
Daniels cited Bosma’s gifts for behind-the-scenes diplomacy, vote-wrangling and arm-twisting. Again and again, Daniels said, Bosma figured out how to move difficult measures through the House and thus into law.
“I’ll never know all the skill it took,” Daniels said. “But he did it, and I think any fair-minded person would have to say he was one of the most influential and successful people ever to hold that office.”
Brian Bosma announced last week that he would leave office for good. His last day in the general assembly was Friday, July 31.
His announcement prompted much of the state’s political hierarchy to offer up farewell tributes. Such tributes tend to fossilize people and strip away any of their living, breathing attributes.
But much of what has made Bosma fascinating were his contradictions – the peculiar combination of strengths and weaknesses, virtues and flaws that define him.
He was and is the kind of guy who could stand on a stage wearing a Girl Scout sash and make a crowd roar with laughter.
And still be meaner than a snake.
In short, he was a reminder that our leaders can be and are every bit as contrary, confusing and, yes, human as they people they serve.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
