INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — On Tuesday, the Indiana Senate made the decision to not meet in December and discuss mid-decade redistricting, a move that has received much backlash – including from Indiana Gov. Mike Braun.

Braun joined Daybreak on Wednesday as his office recognized Global Entrepreneurship Week.

While he discussed the focus of business first, he fielded questions from News 8’s Hanna Mordoh about redistricting.

Below is a brief transcription and does not include all questions or answers. Listen to the video interview to hear the full conversation.

 Global Entrepreneurship Week:

MORDOH: Why is the entrepreneurship the focus this week?

BRAUN: Entrepreneurship has often been mostly overlooked. All small businesses generally have a rocky start, and they get very little attention from government. It’s normally the larger businesses that do. .

So, we’ve done a few things.

When I came in and reorganized state government into eight policy silos, one of the new agencies – we’re trying to shrink agencies, do things better with less cost across state government, run it better – but the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation said that we’re going to emphasize Main Street and small businesses.

Larger that are existing here already, that would be the second leg. And then any of the newer businesses that all states compete for, they’re generally expensive. This is focused on Main Street, small business. So, we’ve done a few things already.

Power Up (Indiana) is by helping businesses within their own employee base skill up. So we’ll invest up to $5,000 per employee if, in fact, you retrain them, skill them up, and you pay them 25% more. It’s been received well. It’s just getting started.

We’re doing things like through the ReadI (2.0) program, making sure that Main Street’s going to see some of that attention. And then in general, where economic development is going to be different. I reconstituted an entire board there. It’s going to have a broader emphasis. It’s going to be very transparent. That’s going to be the economic development going forward.

MORDOH: So, you’re really emphasizing skilling up, training people in their jobs, and investing in that?

BRAUN: When it comes to economic development, if you fertilize the field of small business and entrepreneurs, it’s less expensive. It’s a culture that encourages then kids to start looking at owning a business.

There are outfits called Start It Up that actually began here, it’s now in like 69 counties. High School Hustle, it’s another great group. I was there to see what that has done already, and Junior Achievement.

We want to get the culture of small business in education and make sure that we’re giving them the leg up because so much of it starts on its own and gets very little attention, in many cases, from education and/or government.

Redistricting:

MORDOH: Clearly, business is a passion and a focus for you, but also recently, redistricting and the possibility of redrawing the congressional districts here in the state. Indiana senators say they’re not going to meet for the session until Jan. 5. What is your response to the latest that happened at the Statehouse Tuesday?

BRAUN: So, it was an active day yesterday, but the underlying reason would be that over the years, if you look at the last maps that Democrats did in our own state, it was a gerrymandering mess.

In other words, there were all kinds of tentacles, or they refer to it as salamanders, and they then nationally have done the same thing.

When you look at a place like Illinois, it’s got 17 congressional seats. The last election, it went 47-53. It’s normally more like 52-48. But it’s moving to become more and more red, yet of their 17 congressional districts, they’ve gerrymandered so far into central and southern Illinois that there are only three Republican seats.

You look at the six bluest states outside of California, and in the northeast, (they) control three times as many electoral votes. They’ve been gerrymandered for 20 years.

Then you look at how people are counted into the census. Of course, illegal immigrants are counted into it, that’s estimated to be between 20 and 25 million, 750,000 per district. California, Illinois, and New York have inherent advantages there.

President Trump asked all Republican states – (it) started with Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, they did it promptly. We were asked, and we’ve been dragging our feet because the Senate was against it from the get-go. That’s out of character with almost all other states.

So 20, nearly 20, of Republican senators, which is half the caucus, were for it, if not a few more, when Rod Bray pulled the plug by saying he wasn’t coming back.

I just want it to be a public discussion to where you get them in the public on a vote without hiding behind closed doors. He’s pulled that, and I don’t think that’s representative of his own caucus. And just yesterday, to adjourn until January, he had to get Democrats on vote to actually do that, because half of his Republican caucus was against it.

MORDOH: (Bray) has heard from constituents saying, “We don’t want to redistrict.” Indiana Code says that this gets done after a census every 10 years. We’re halfway through that.

BRAUN: It can be done in between, you can do that. If the code said that, you wouldn’t do it in the first place. But it’s supposed to be done every 10 years after the census, it’s traditional.

MORDOH: Constituents are telling lawmakers, senators, that they don’t want this.

BRAUN: You want to hear who those constituents have been? Nearly 100% Democrats and moderate and liberal independents.

Republicans haven’t been loud on it. Now, they’re getting louder when they look at what is at stake or when you explain the unfairness of the current configuration. President Trump has talked to them twice. JD Vance has been in here twice. And it has been moving — there are more senators publicly for it than there are against it.

The others have been hiding behind the fact that Rod Bray is not bringing it to a public discussion, just like the House is going to do. He says there are not the votes.”

MORDOH: Do you want to see the votes publicly?

BRAUN: Yes, because he doesn’t want to do it. Then he’s got his leadership team and a few others that are staying with him. We want to get it to where you do that publicly, because it was cascading so quickly. That is when he made the move just recently to say that they’re not coming back in session.

Two things: Half of his caucus is for it. now with that vote that we saw yesterday, and there are four or five others that if you bring it into a public discussion, we think we’ll get there. If not, then he’s at least done the minimum obligation, don’t hide, come into session, have it in a public discussion. That’s what is minimally being asked.

News 8’s Michaela Springer contributed to this report.