MORGAN COUNTY — Diogenes the Cynic wandered around ancient Athens with a lamp during the daytime searching for an honest man. In the corrupt, morally decaying city, he could not find one.
In his day, the wild, eccentric Diogenes was a social outcast, mocked by his contemporaries. Philosophical stunts like the lamp incident perplexed those around him.
Today, he’s viewed as one of his society’s most incisive critics.
One can’t help but be reminded of Diogenes when talking to Tom Wallace. A Martinsville native and lifelong Democrat, Wallace has spent decades battling against what he sees as the moral and political failings of Morgan County. Everywhere he goes he spreads his message, railing about the Martinsville superfund site, property taxes and corrupt Republican officials in the county.
He’s become something of a local curiosity. Wallace has, in a way, wandered around Indiana, lamp in hand, looking for an honest man, finding none.
He’s also about as popular as Diogenes.
In 2019, Wallace ran for mayor of Martinsville — he lost in a landslide.
In 2020, he ran for Indiana State Senate against Rod Bray — he lost in a landslide.
In 2021, he lost his bid to become chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party, and the next year, he lost the Morgan County Commissioners race.
Now Wallace is running to be the Morgan County Coroner — why?
“It was just the next thing on the list,” Wallace said.
Wallace is 74 years old, and he readily admits that he’s probably too old to be doing this. Behind the rims of his glasses are sunken, tired eyes that, despite everything they’ve seen, still have a spark.
Every time he runs for a new office, he says, he gets to speak to a slightly different audience. Different voters care about different offices, and Wallace wants to proselytize to them all. He doesn’t know the first thing about being a coroner, but that doesn’t matter.
What matters is the message.
“Would I be surpri— everyone would be surprised if I won,” Wallace says with a smile. “If I won it would be on the front page of the IndyStar. ‘DEMOCRAT WINS IN MORGAN COUNTY.’ Yes, I’d be very surprised.”
He laughs when he says this, and that spark in his eyes glows even brighter.
The fight to be left alone
Wallace says he just wants to be left alone.
He believes that’s why anyone lives in rural America: so they can be left unbothered by the comings and goings of the rest of the world.
But the comings and goings of the world have always bothered Wallace, have always stirred him to action. Reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the 1960s changed his life — he became an environmental scientist and a lifelong activist after that. Wallace was also among the crowd in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, when Robert Kennedy mourned the death of Martin Luther King, a story Wallace tells with pride, and which he cites as a pivotal moment in his political awakening.
In truth, Wallace would love to live in a world where he can cultivate the family farm in peace and not talk to everyone he meets on the street about the evils of TIF districts. He has a deep love for nature, and that’s why he’s never once considered moving to Bloomington, or up north to Lake County where fellow Democrats abound. It’s the rural life for him.
And it’s that reason why Wallace, who just wants to be left alone, enters the social sphere. He’s especially concerned about the toxic plume contaminating the water in Martinsville, caused by a former dry-cleaning company that poured pollutants down open drains. Wallace makes no effort to conceal his disdain for Martinsville’s mayor, who he says “welcomed” the superfund site as if it was a boon for the city — Martinsville, thanks to a toxic plume, would be loaded up with government money.
With fire in his voice, he talks about the county’s high cancer rates, and the poor state of healthcare in Indiana. It is the Republicans, he says, who instead of helping people by fixing environmental or healthcare problems, help their corporate friends instead with tax breaks and other benefits.
It’s also the Republicans who sometimes snatch as high as 90 percent of the vote when they’re in a race against Wallace.
How to win
It’s common knowledge that to win an election in Martinsville, you have to run as a Republican. Even if you’re a liberal, you better run as a Republican if you want to get elected.
Wallace wouldn’t fool anyone if he tried that, but nor would he want to — when he points the lamp at himself, he hopes to find an honest man.
Why can’t Democrats seem to win in Morgan County? That’s the question that Wallace and the Morgan County Democratic Party think about day and night, and to which they really haven’t found an answer.
The party does what any respectable political organization trying to mobilize would do — they knock on doors, they call people on the phone, they show up with a booth at the county fair and area festivals. Wallace, for his part, talks to everyone he can, and he’s always running for some office. Name recognition is crucial in politics, and Wallace is trying his hardest to make sure you know his name.
He has a theory — the people of Morgan County aren’t actually as conservative as conventional wisdom seems to think. He points to voter turnout in the county, historically abysmal. Not even 20 percent of registered voters cast a primary vote earlier this month.
“People are hopeless,” Wallace said, describing why voters in the county are so apathetic. “And when they live in the country to be left alone, they stop paying attention. What they need to do is look at their current situations and act.”
Wallace is well-aware of the odds against him and his fellow Democrats. He thinks the coroner race will probably be his last before he retires from politics. He doesn’t expect to win the election, but he hopes he’s laid the groundwork for younger people who can win.
Wallace sees his political career as having been an uphill battle against ignorance. Losing one election isn’t anything to cry about. Winning may be the ultimate goal, but gaining ground every year with the electorate is a win in its own right.
Republicans will probably still retain a stronghold in the country for some time to come, but Wallace isn’t perturbed. The movement is everything.
