Hundreds ask ‘Where’s Baird?,’ vent during West Lafayette town hall

Overflow crowd in West Lafayette contemplates ways to push back on Trump administration, asks when Rep. Jim Baird will meet with constituents to hear their frustrations.

• Thanks today for ongoing help from Based in Lafayette sponsor Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette. For tickets and details on all the shows and events, go to longpac.org.

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• Thanks also to sponsor Stuart & Branigin for continued support of the Based in Lafayette reporting project.

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HUNDREDS ASK ‘WHERE’S BAIRD?,’ VENT DURING WEST LAFAYETTE TOWN HALL

It was a foregone conclusion Sunday afternoon that Jim Baird, Indiana’s 4^th District congressman, wasn’t going to be in the room for a town hall built on the premise of him not being there – what, with fourth-term Republican’s face superimposed over a Homer Simpson-disappearing-into-the-bushes meme flashed on a screen at the West Lafayette Public Library with the words, “Where’s Baird?”

But it didn’t stop more than 250 people waiting to vent about how a second, Elon Musk-flavored Trump administration had been going since January from breaking into a chant of “Where is Jim?” in a standing-room-only community room.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been in the same room with the man, to be honest with you,” Emily Robinson, a Lafayette resident, said. “I’m not sure I know many people who have. But I wish he could hear this – hear us. … Things are messed up. And if he doesn’t get that, he needs to start getting it.”

Sunday afternoon’s town hall, pulled together by the progressive Greater Lafayette Indivisible, didn’t play out the way it did for U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, a Republican who ignored GOP advice and took her chances Friday and Saturday with a constituent meeting in suburban areas of her district including Westfield. The hostile, jeering results, after Spartz went to bat for DOGE-style federal cuts and other moves by President Donald Trump, were right there in the headlines, including this one: “G.O.P. Lawmaker Faces Angry Crowds at Town Halls Outside Indianapolis,” via the New York Times.

And it was not the same sort of raucous as, say, Gov. Mike Braun's town hall at the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds in February, when the Republican wound up sticking round an extra hour to take individual questions after a testy round of questions from the Coliseum bleachers. (“Braun greeted by protest at Lafayette town hall, meets each individually afterward,” BiL.)

But the room Sunday was plenty charged about cuts possible for Medicaid, changes to Social Security, defunding of the U.S. Department of Education, school lunch programs, due process, voting rights, presidential orders and the influence given to Musk.

“I'm here today because, as a woman, a teacher, a wife and a mom, the actions of our so-called leaders have been overwhelming on the best of days and downright terrifying on the worst,” Jodi Tobias, of Jasper County, told the crowd as a mic started passing through the room.

Jodi Tobias addresses the town hall Sunday. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

“As a teacher, this has been exhausting,” Tobias said. “I work with high school students who are required to study the Constitution. … I have joked with my husband about highlighting a copy of the Constitution as a record of all the attacks against it, but I tell my students, if they have highlighted the entire page that it was probably too much. I saw the authoritarian tendencies during Trump's first term in office, and now I feel like I'm watching a restart of World War II at warp speed.”

Linda Rawles, a retired attorney from DeMotte who described herself as a former lifelong Republican from DeMotte, told the crowd that the GOP had left her.

“I have to tell you, I'm very sad, because everything I love is dying,” Rawles said. “My country is dying. Democracy is dying. And I'm pissed.”

Lisa Dullum, a Tippecanoe County Council member and Greater Lafayette Indivisible member, said Baird was repeatedly invited to some sort of town hall in this part of the 4^th District but that his office would not respond or commit.

Baird, a Greencastle farmer and former state representative, lives is a safely, deep-red district and has consistently stood with the Trump administration. He cruised to a fourth two-year term in November 2024 with 64.9% of the vote across the 4th District, which sprawls north and south of Lafayette. Baird’s tally in Tippecanoe County in 2024 was 50.7%. Those totals were fairly typical in the district over the past several decades.

U.S. Rep. Jim Baird (Photo provided)

Baird did not respond to requests for comment leading up to Sunday and again on that day about the town hall assembled in his name.

Mary Dietrich said she’d written to Baird on issues and had received correspondence that he considered Trump as the greatest president of his lifetime.

“You also stated that you strongly support his agenda, so confidence is not high that you will consider my request to do the right thing, if you truly believe in the Constitution that you swore to uphold, to declare that no man is above the law,” Dietrich said. “Rep. Baird, will fear of retribution keep you from doing what is constitutionally right? Will you bend a knee to the oligarchs, or will you be a common sense legislator?”

(Photo: Dave Bangert)

Matt Gyure, a Greater Lafayette Indivisible member who led the event, urged people in the room to continue to show up and push back. Gyure suggested it wasn’t time to hold back and wait for some strategic time later to take a stand.

“It’s important to remember that this stuff isn’t popular,” Gyure said about Trump’s moves during the first three months of his term. “We don’t have to pretend it’s popular. People are mad all over this country about what’s happening. … It might seem scary, but there’s no one coming to save us. We are the people we’ve been waiting for. We need to be courageous. … Think of it as Project 2029, but, you know, good.”

Minutes after the town hall ended, as hosts were stacking chairs and rolling them to storage, a tornado siren sounded and those remaining were ushered to the basement of the West Lafayette Public Library. There amid West Lafayette High School students who had been working on homework and parents who’d brought preschoolers to pick out books, the networking continued.

“I don’t want to say I feel better, because I don’t know where all this is heading,” Robinson said after the storms let up. “But there’s something to be said about not feeling alone in all this, like you have a team there with you.”

Thanks, again, for ongoing help from Based in Lafayette sponsor Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette. For tickets and details on all the shows and events, go to longpac.org.

And thanks to Stuart & Branigin for its sponsorship help with today’s edition.

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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.