I am running for State Representative in House District 59 because our community deserves someone who will show up and do the work.
I grew up in Bartholomew County, graduated from Columbus East, and put down roots in Harrison Township. Today I live on a small hobby farm with my wife Rachel, a librarian at the Bartholomew County Public Library, and our young daughter. My weekends are spent in the garden, on a fire truck, or at a library board meeting.
By trade I am the Business Intelligence Director at Mainstream Fiber Networks, where my job is bringing high speed broadband to the rural corners of Indiana that the big providers skipped. I know what it takes to actually deliver something people were promised for years.
Service is not a campaign slogan for me. It is already how I spend my time.
In 2017 I joined the Harrison Township Volunteer Fire Department. Two years later my fellow firefighters named me Firefighter of the Year. Today I serve as Secretary of the fire company board, which means I see firsthand how thin the budgets are for the volunteer departments that protect rural Indiana.
My training reflects that commitment: Firefighter 1 and 2, Hazmat First Responder, Technical Rescue Awareness, Surface Ice Rescue, and the full FEMA incident command series. When the pager goes off, I go.
This is also where my family story comes full circle. My grandfather Marvin sat on the Bartholomew County Rural Fire Advisory Board, helping shape how rural Indiana protects itself. Two generations later, I sit on the Harrison Township Volunteer Fire Company board doing that same work. The names on the door change. The job does not.
Public service runs in my family, and it runs through one county. My great grandfather Henry Schulz served as Democratic County Chairman for Bartholomew County in the 1940s. My grandfather Marvin Burbrink sat on the 4-H Fair Board, the Soil and Water Conservation District, and the county Rural Fire Advisory Board, and he ran for County Commissioner as a Democrat.
On my mother's side, the Whittingtons made their mark in Hope. My grandmother Shirley was the longest serving Postmaster in Hope Post Office history. My grandfather Dick spent twenty two years at the Hope Post Office, served as Postmaster in Hartsville, and in 1981 he founded Whitt's Pizza, which my family still runs today.
Bartholomew County is not somewhere I moved to. It is the place that built me, on both sides of the family tree.
Now I am carrying that work into the next generation. Four generations, one county, and the same belief that you serve the place that raised you.
This is not my first time on the ballot. In 2022 I ran for County Council, and in 2024 I ran for County Commissioner, both times against long serving incumbents in one of the most Republican counties in Indiana. I did not win those races, but I showed up, I made the case, and I earned the trust of thousands of my neighbors.
I am back because the work is not finished, and the people of House District 59 deserve a real choice.
When the pager is quiet, you can usually find me in the garden, out on the small hobby farm Rachel and I keep, or chasing our two year old daughter around the yard.
I am also a licensed amateur radio operator, technician class, call sign KD9-RWK. It is the kind of hobby that has saved lives when the cell towers go down, and it is one more way I have learned to be useful when neighbors need help.
Public service in Bartholomew County is not something I picked up in an election year. I have been on local boards and on the volunteer side of community work for more than fifteen years.
Before I was President of the Friends of the Bartholomew County Public Library, I served as its Vice President and Secretary. I sat on the board of the Brown County Playhouse. From 2009 through 2015 I was a volunteer technician and executive committee member with the Connected Community Partnership, bringing technology resources to nonprofits and small organizations across the area.
This is the work I would do whether I held an office or not. I am running because the same instinct that put me on a fire truck and on a library board belongs in the State House too.