by WorldTribune Staff, June 25, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
Delegates at the Indiana Republican state convention on Saturday staged a revolt in choosing for lieutenant governor a pastor and citizen activist who spoke out for medical liberty during the Covid lockdowns and vax mandates over the chosen candidate of the party's nominee for governor.
The delegates nominated Micah Beckwith, rejecting the candidate that Sen. Mike Braun, the nominee for governor, had chosen as his running mate.
In the Crossroads Report blog on Substack, Margaret Menge noted how, prior to the vote on Saturday, Beckwith delivered a speech in which he slammed the Republican establishment's handling of the Covid pandemic.
Beckwith said he wrote over 4,500 letters for individuals seeking religious exemptions from their employer's vax mandate. He mentioned one couple who were distraught that their small business was declared non-essential by the governor in 2020, adding that over the next year they lost everything, including their business and their home, and that at the end of the year the man then took his own life.
More than 40 activists stood with Beckwith on the stage as he delivered his speech to the 1,800 delegates.
When the votes were tallied, Beckwith had 891, compared to 828 for Julie McGuire, the state legislator Braun had picked for his lieutenant governor.
Many of the top elected Republicans in the state, including State Treasurer Daniel Elliot and Secretary of State Diego Morales, endorsed McGuire.
Beckwith had "become well known in the state as an outspoken conservative activist who often hosts pro-freedom events at his church, Life Church in Noblesville, north of Indianapolis. He also leads the Hoosier Leadership Series and is the Indiana head of the group U.S. Term Limits," Menge noted.
The medical liberty issue is where Beckwith "became known to a wider group of patriots in the state, who were appalled that their so-called 'deep red' state had imposed a statewide mask mandate, closed churches, declared tens of thousands of small businesses 'non-essential' and pushed the Covid-19 vaccines on babies as young as six months of age," Menge added.
On June 10, 2021, Beckwith spoke at the Rally for Medical Freedom on the campus of Indiana University. The rally kicked off a legal fight, led by attorney Jim Bopp, against the university’s Covid vaccine mandate, which was backed up by threats that student meal cards would be turned off and all student online accounts shut down immediately if they showed up to class in August not having gotten the Covid vaccine. Faculty and staff of the university were threatened with immediate termination.
"On medical liberty," Menge noted, "Beckwith has committed to help repeal a law — SB 4 — that seemed to reward the Indiana Department of Health for its disastrous handling of the pandemic by giving the department vast new powers over county health departments and an additional $200 million to enforce a host of new requirements on them."
In a candidate survey he filled out for the group Hoosiers for Medical Liberty, Beckwith also committed to ensuring that churches, businesses and citizens are not subject to unconstitutional mandates.
