INDIANAPOLIS — Not long after many of his Democratic Party colleagues fled the Indiana House for neighboring Illinois on Tuesday morning, Rep. Steve Stemler got a call from his 80-year-old father in Florida.

The elder Stemler — who often took his son with him on the road as he traveled Indiana as a field director for longtime Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton — was livid. He’d just seen a national news story about how the walkout had virtually shut down the House, blocking votes on a series of contentious labor-related bills. He told his son: “You better not be with them.”

Stemler wasn’t. Instead, he was one of only three House Democrats who remained behind in Indiana and the only one who did so as an act of defiance to his party leadership.

But it didn’t take his father to tell him what to do. Stemler’s colleagues said he’s been telling them since last November — when Republicans swept the Statehouse — that wouldn’t take part in a walkout.

The Jeffersonville Democrat has been out of step with his party on some major issues this session — including those that prompted the walkout — but he said his decision to stay was based not on partisanship but some principles learned from his father.

Among them, as Stemler said: “If you take a job, you better show up and get your work done.”

Even if that work is sometimes unpleasant.

Stemler, who describes himself as a “moderate conservative,” grew up with a father who not only taught him about politics but also about how to run the family plumbing business, started by Stemler’s grandfather in 1925. As Stemler tells it, when he was growing up there were plenty of evenings, weekends and holidays when his father would take him and his brother on dirty jobs that required crawling under houses or digging up sewer lines. There were customers who couldn’t pay promptly, or pay at all, but Stemler said his father couldn’t bring himself to turn away people in his community who were in need.

And that, Stemler said, is where he learned what it meant to be a Democrat.

“A lot of people question me as to why I’m not a Republican,” Stemler said. “They say, you’re so conservative, fiscally and socially. But the core of what I believe, the foundation of what I think means to a Democrat, is that you help those who are less fortunate — the people who need someone to look out for them.”

Stemler’s Democratic colleagues have been arguing that’s what they’re doing. Late Tuesday and again Wednesday, Democrat minority leader Patrick Bauer said most House Democrats would remain holed up in an out-of-state hotel  — where they continue to earn their $155 per diem — until Republican leaders pull back on what Bauer has called a “radical agenda” that hurts families and working people.

Late Tuesday, Bauer released a list of labor and education bills that he demanded be pulled from this legislative session before he and the others would return.  

Stemler’s decision to show up every time there’s been a roll call in the House since his colleagues departed has made him appear a little lonely. Sitting amidst a small sea of empty seats, Stemler has remained stoic as House Republicans have verbally pounded on the absentee members.

Behind the scenes, he’s been in communication with some of the missing Democrats, including those he described as “wavering.” He’s also had conversations with Republican House leaders to see if there was any ground to be softened in what’s become an increasingly bitter dispute. Stemler has some leverage to do so: He’s one of only two Democrats to hold a  committee chairmanship — a prize traditionally reserved for majority members.

Stemler’s presence in the Statehouse has gone largely unnoticed by the thousands of protesters who’ve gathered there daily, chanting angry slogans as legislators have tried to go about their business.

That may be changing as the boycott gains national media attention. On Wednesday, a reporter with a national online news service recognized Stemler in a Statehouse hallway. He cut the interview short, though, to keep an earlier commitment: Lunch with a group of young 4-H members who’d traveled from small towns in his district to visit the Statehouse.

“I wanted to hear what they thought of what was going on,” Stemler said.

On hearing how Stemler had spent his lunch hour, one of his Republican colleagues, Rep. Eric Turner of Cicero, said: “Steve’s not here for the politics. He’s here for the service.”

Later that afternoon, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels singled out Stemler during a press conference, calling him “a man of conscience.”  

Those words may not help Stemler. Speculation was rife Wednesday that Stemler would pay for his decision to stay with pushback and punishment from his party.

Stemler didn’t seem to care, though he did note that he intentionally failed to show up at a meeting of the House Democratic caucus Thursday, where talk of the boycott first emerged. The result, he said, was that he didn’t know until Tuesday morning that his fellow House Democrats had fled the state.  

“Nobody told me,” Stemler said. “I didn’t get to go on the field trip.”

— Maureen Hayden is statehouse bureau chief for CNHI’s Indiana newspapers. She can be reached at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.