Tully: Bill Oesterle's plan to remake the Indiana GOP

Bill Oesterle was filling a to-go cup of coffee at the Cornerstone Coffee Shop on the Northside Monday morning when a worker there recognized him.

"Thanks for what you're doing," the employee, a lifelong Indianapolis resident named Marty Sullivan, said. "I just appreciate someone around here having some backbone."

As Oesterle deflected the compliment, less than a week had passed since he'd sent the Indiana political world into overdrive with his announcement that he would soon step down as the CEO of Angie's List so that he could spend more time on politics — and, more specifically, on moving his Republican Party in Indiana away from the culture wars that have cost it and the state so much in recent months.

"Hoosiers are fair and practical people — they are," Oesterle, 49, said during a 90-minute conversation Monday. "I've seen it up close and personal, over and over. And if we as a party don't begin to realize that we will eventually end up with another 16 years of Democratic governors, like we had before Mitch (Daniels) came along. I don't want that. My goal is to prevent that."

Oesterle's announcement last week followed his harsh, high-profile criticism of Gov. Mike Pence and the other Statehouse Republicans who pushed the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act through the legislature this year. His actions and words of protest have carried weight because of his background: He leads one of the region's best-known companies; he has showered Republicans with campaign cash in past cycles; he is a respected civic leader; and, most important, he managed Daniels' first campaign for governor in 2004. The two remain close.

Oesterle was cautious as we talked because, he said, he has barely begun to draft the details of his political plan; he is just now re-engaging in state politics after several years as little more than a big-dollar financial contributor. With a few months remaining at Angie's List, he said his next step is "to gather up a bunch of people and figure out what we are going to do."

By "people," he means Republicans who served in the Daniels administration, or who believed deeply in its focus and ambition, or who simply worry that state GOP leaders are forging a destructive path forward. At a high level, he said, the concept is to make it easier for people who come from the Daniels wing of the party — the pragmatic, jobs-focused wing as opposed to the far-right wing — to once again play a leading role in Republican Party politics, and to win elections.

"Mitch's governorship represented something very powerful to a lot of people," he said. "It was built on ideals. It was built on energy. It was fearless. It had thousands of loyal participants. It was about putting the interests of the state of Indiana first. It was about the simple proposition that if you do the right thing for all Hoosiers, everything works out."

"I want to make sure," he continued, "that all of the people who bought into those things have the organizational and institutional support to run for office or to get involved. Right now, they are stuck out on an island. Banding them together and putting resources behind them is the point here. Because they will change the world."

Oesterle, a father of six who has made millions in recent years at Angie's List, has usually been a behind-the scenes player in politics. But he has recently transformed himself into a front-page fixture, and into a man seen as a potential threat to another Pence nomination in 2016. His words, his plans, his motives, and his future — they've been the talk of Indiana politics in past weeks.

He laughed off the attention but told me he was worried that many believe he is doing nothing more than attacking Pence; he said his focus is on something bigger: The direction and soul of the Republican Party in Indiana, and his fear that his party has become insular.

He said details will come later, but the new organization he is contemplating could seek to counter the influence of socially conservative Republicans, who tend to play an outsized role in low-turnout primaries. Given his connections and the widespread frustration that many other Republicans share, his new organization would have little trouble raising huge sums of money and could play a part in the upcoming open-seat U.S. Senate primary, as well as in state legislative races.

Of course, the talk at this point has been focused on Pence, whose political standing has been hit hard by the chaos surrounding the religious freedom fiasco. Oesterle confirmed talk that he is aggressively pushing the idea of another run for governor by Daniels, perhaps as soon as next year. He hasn't discussed the idea with Daniels, now Purdue University's president, and said, "'I'm just spouting off about it. What else can I do? I find it works better that way. If I actually discuss it with him, he can tell me to stop."

Oesterle said there is little chance Daniels would challenge an incumbent Republican in a primary. "Mitch is fiercely loyal to his party," he said, "and that doesn't figure into who he is." But, he said, if Pence decides not to run again, "Then I think it's a real possibility" that Daniels would. To make that point clear, he slowly repeated the sentence again.

In recent days, though, the Oesterle story has centered not on Daniels but on the potential that he would be the one to launch a challenge to Pence. He downplayed that (somewhat ineffectively) as good copy and a compelling "soap opera plot," insisting that he does not want to be a candidate, and that the GOP's troubles run deeper than one person.

"The primary chatter underestimates the work that is needed," he said. "It diminishes the magnitude of the work that has to done. That's the work of putting the party in a position once again in which it has the support of the majority of the voters in this state. We have, because of what has been done, the very real risk of permanently alienating a large bloc of Hoosiers. That's going to be hard to overcome."

Without big changes and a bigger tent, he said, Republicans will see big losses in the coming years, and the party is going to risk its relevance in a changing world. The first step forward, he said, should be an amendment to state civil rights laws to include protections based on sexual preference and gender identity. That would not only be fair, he said, but it would also help repair the long-term economic damage done by this year's religious freedom debate.

He also believes it could save Pence's career.

"He can fix his governorship," Oesterle said. "But to do so, he is going to have to completely reexamine his understanding of the needs of the entire state. Not just some pieces of it, but the entire state. He's capable of it. He honestly is."

As next year's elections approach, it's clear that Oesterle is no longer willing to sit on the sidelines and hope for change. He's ready to reenter the game of politics. The question is, can he change the direction of a party he believes has lost its way?

You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or at Twitter.com/matthewltully.