The Arnold Playbook, the Rush Appointment and Mitch Daniels’s Convenient Exit to Purdue

INDIANAPOLIS —  At the risk of Deja Vu all over again, history deserves repeating:

Mitch Daniels spent his governorship presenting himself as a hard-nosed reformer who had little patience for government institutions that resisted executive efficiency.

Yet one of the most consequential legacies of his eight years in office may have been something less discussed at the time: the people he placed into Indiana’s judiciary and the political culture surrounding those appointments.

The comparison with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is difficult to ignore.

Schwarzenegger openly made diversity part of his appointment strategy, later touting that more than 35 percent of his judicial appointments were women and more than 41 percent of all his appointments were women. He ultimately appointed Tani Cantil-Sakauye as chief justice, helping create California’s first female-majority Supreme Court. (Purdue Engineering)

Daniels was governing Indiana during essentially the same period. He also appointed women to judgeships and, by 2012, faced open pressure over the fact that Indiana’s Supreme Court remained all male. His eventual selection of Loretta Rush ended that distinction and put Indiana on the path toward its first female chief justice.

No public record yet located proves Daniels consciously copied Schwarzenegger. But the political resemblance is obvious enough to deserve examination. Both governors were nationally prominent Republicans attempting to modernize the image of their parties, and both governed during a period when diversity in appointments had become increasingly visible.

The more difficult question is whether Daniels embraced that politics reluctantly, strategically or because the institutional incentives around him had changed.

Daniels Was Never a Conventional Republican on Institutions

As a public figure, Daniels cultivated an image of fiscal conservatism, managerial competence and executive control. He frequently emphasized measurable outcomes and efficiency over institutional tradition. As OMB director, he helped usher in federal deficits that continue to today.

He oversaw the property tax reform that after rates hit the central part of the state like the outside and other counties had for years. He served on a government efficiency commission which shuttered some township officials’ offices but not others.

That philosophy could produce tension with the judiciary because courts are not executive agencies and judges are not managers serving the governor.

Indiana’s own chief justice at the time, Randall Shepard, repeatedly described the judiciary as the state’s “third branch” and emphasized its constitutional independence. In his 2010 State of the Judiciary address, Shepard spoke explicitly of the pressures facing the “third branch” during the recession. (Government of India)

Rush herself has since gone even further, describing Indiana courts as a “third, co-equal branch of government” whose independence strengthens the entire constitutional system. (Government of India)

That matters because governors who view government primarily through an executive-management lens can sometimes regard independent courts as obstacles rather than constitutional equals. Daniels’s record was more complicated than outright hostility, but his administration did find itself in separation-of-powers disputes over how far courts could go in reviewing executive and legislative policy

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Then Came Purdue

The timing of Daniels’s move to Purdue deserves attention because it occurred while he was still governor. And moreover because Loretta Rush seemed to say she had never met him when she interviewed him (For that position?) and then she a lowly juvenile judge rose too fast, giving rise to the question of a quid pro quo or if him selling the open seat. This conflict of interest is heighten by her courts treatment of Andrew Straw’s disciplinary complaint against Daniels and her family ties to Purdue since including her employment there. Then her false reporting of payments to her by PU on her sworn statements. It just smells of corruption.

On June 21, 2012, Purdue’s Board of Trustees unanimously selected Daniels as the university’s 12th president. He would begin the job after leaving the governor’s office. Purdue praised the appointment as a “game-changing move” and emphasized Daniels’s political, business and management background. (Purdue Engineering)

But there was an unavoidable political complication: Daniels had appointed a majority of the trustees who selected him.

Purdue’s own archive acknowledges that critics complained of a conflict because Daniels had appointed eight of the twelve board members. The state later concluded that the circumstances did not violate Indiana’s ethics code. (Purdue Archives)

A legal finding of no ethics violation, however, does not eliminate the broader institutional question.

A sitting governor had appointed most of the people who then selected him for one of the most prestigious and well-compensated jobs in Indiana higher education.

That is a legitimate subject of political scrutiny whether or not it violated a statute.

Rush Arrived During the Same Political Summer

That same year produced another consequential Daniels appointment: Loretta Rush to the Indiana Supreme Court.

The parallel does not prove a quid pro quo between Rush and Daniels, and there is no basis to say Rush somehow “gave” Daniels the Purdue presidency. Purdue’s trustees, not Rush, selected Daniels. The available record does not place Rush in that decision.

But the timing helps explain why the entire summer of 2012 deserves historical examination.

Daniels was preparing to leave office for Purdue while simultaneously making appointments capable of shaping Indiana government long after his governorship ended. Rush was one of them.

The public discussion surrounding her appointment prominently included gender. Indiana had gone years without a woman on its Supreme Court, and Daniels had already faced criticism for appointing men to earlier vacancies.

When Rush was chosen, she ended that drought. She was a DEI choice, or was there a deal?

Her appointment therefore cannot be understood completely without acknowledging the political environment in which gender representation had become part of the discussion.

Was Daniels “Woke,” a RINO, Self-Dealing, or Simply Politically Practical?

Those labels are ultimately editorial shorthand, not historical findings.

Calling Daniels “woke” imports today’s political vocabulary into a period before the term carried its current partisan meaning. Calling him a “RINO” expresses a judgment about how closely he adhered to a particular conception of Republican politics.

The documented history is more interesting.

Daniels was a fiscal conservative and managerial Republican who was often willing to depart from later populist Republican orthodoxy. He was comfortable with technocratic institutions, elite universities and corporate leadership. His move from the governor’s office directly to Purdue fits that worldview perfectly.

At the same time, his judicial appointments occurred during a period when gender diversity had become politically valuable, including among Republican governors.

The Schwarzenegger comparison therefore matters not because Daniels necessarily copied California line by line, but because it shows the broader Republican strategy available to governors of that era: remain conservative on taxes and economic policy while presenting government appointments as modern, diverse and institutionally sophisticated.

Rush fit that moment,but has way overstayed her skills, abilities, and talents

The Question Is Not Whether Rush Was Legally Qualified

Rush met Indiana’s formal requirements for Supreme Court service and had substantial experience as a trial judge.

Besides all one needs a Governor as a friend, or partner in a deal for his future job? And she had never met him despite his years in state politics. Clearly everyone who was a Republican or influential or informed in the state knew him for decades. She was unfit by that very admission having lived in a her own “tippy canoe” so to speak.

Since her a bit to rapid nor be questionable rise to legal fame in the state, she’s traveled the country and state. HE made a request for her travel records but has no records yet to share.

The more interesting question is whether Daniels selected the strongest possible candidate for Indiana’s highest court or whether other considerations — gender representation, political symbolism, institutional relationships and the governor’s own priorities — materially influenced the choice.

Those are questions that appointment records, private correspondence and contemporaneous interviews could help answer.

What should not happen is for the symbolism surrounding Rush’s appointment to substitute for evaluating the results of her tenure.

Becoming the first woman chief justice was historically significant. That fact says nothing by itself about whether she later exercised the office successfully.

Daniels’s Purdue Move Shows Why Institutional Relationships Matter

Daniels later said the Purdue presidency initially did not appeal to him, but that the university’s land-grant mission and connection to Indiana ultimately attracted him. Purdue’s own 2013 interview records him saying the search committee approached him and that he had been considering other opportunities. (Purdue University)

That is important because it means the Purdue presidency was not some accidental retirement job he happened to discover after leaving office. Discussions occurred while he was still governor, and the trustees selected him months before his term ended.

Again, the state found no ethics-law violation.

But politics is larger than criminal or administrative liability.

The appearance of a governor being selected for a prestigious job by a board dominated by his own appointees was politically consequential regardless of legality. And it offers a reminder of how appointments create relationships that can reverberate across branches and institutions.

The Rush Question Belongs in That Larger History

There is no evidence that Rush controlled Daniels’s future employment or that Daniels appointed her in exchange for anything connected to Purdue. HE should not claim that.

The stronger historical argument is that the summer of 2012 reveals a network of overlapping institutional decisions: Daniels was preparing to leave government for Purdue, a board containing many of his own appointees selected him, gender politics were shaping the Supreme Court appointment debate, and Daniels selected Rush to a lifetime-style judicial office whose influence would long outlast his governorship.

Those events deserve to be studied together because they show how power moves through institutions even when no single act violates the law.

The Schwarzenegger model supplied the political backdrop: a Republican governor could champion women and diversity in appointments while remaining conservative on economics. Daniels operated in that same era and increasingly produced similar outcomes.

Whether that was conviction, calculation or simply the politics of the moment is a question the historical record can continue to illuminate.

What is already clear is that Rush’s rise was not simply the story of one juvenile-court judge being discovered on merit in isolation. Even though she loved adopting kids to out to others raising a total different set of questions….

It occurred within a politically charged appointment environment shaped by gender, institutional relationships and a governor already planning his own transition into another powerful Indiana institution.

That is the Daniels story worth examining.