Mitch Daniels won’t announce a decision about a presidential run this weekend, despite the fact that Indiana’s legislative session ends Friday.
Daniels, who has long said he would not make an announcement until after the legislative session, told the Indianapolis Star that “you can’t announce a decision you haven’t made.”
Despite the nearly six-week absence of Indiana’s house Democrats, Daniels was able to achieve some major legislative goals this session, including passing a statewide voucher program and an expansion of charter schools in both chambers. Those education reforms won Daniels a kudos from former Florida governor (and noted education reform advocate) Jeb Bush, who told RealClearPolitics that Daniels’s “dedicated and bold leadership” resulted in Indiana “leading the nation in having the most comprehensive set of reforms to improve the quality of education.”
Daniels, whose advocacy of a “truce” on social issues has troubled social conservatives, also must decide what to do about a bill that would ban abortion after the 20 weeks and would deprive Planned Parenthood of $2 million in federal funding that the state distributes. (Planned Parenthood receives an addition $1 million from the federal government that the state is unable to control.) He could choose to neither sign nor veto the bill, in which case it would become law seven days after it reached his desk.