Courtney Tritch is more than happy to ride the apparent “blue wave” and be among the record number of women running for Congress.

That was apparent during a campaign stop Thursday when the 3rd District Democratic candidate visited Three Crowns Coffee shop on Buffalo Street in downtown Warsaw.

Tritch is among a dozen women who filed to run in Indiana for the House of Representatives and among more than 300 across the country, energized in part by last year’s Women’s March in Washington, D.C. and the #metoo movement.

At the same time, Democrats have seen a string of victories in otherwise challenging Congressional districts against Republicans in recent months.

She said her campaign is working  to “turn this momentum into a movement.”

“The winds of change are blowing,” she told the crowd.

Tritch has worked in economic development and was vice president of marketing for the Northeast Indiana Regional Cities Initiatives.

She was quick to point out to the audience of about 35 that Warsaw’s North Buffalo Street development plan featuring a mix of retail and residential near Center Lake is a result of Regional Cities.



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That kind of success, she said, happens locally from a willingness to work across geographical and political lines, she said.

“We’ve made so much progress in our own communities that it’s time we take that mentality to Washington,” she said.

Tritch is the likely nominee to face first-term Republican Jim Banks in the general election.

During her coffee shop talk, Tritch did not talk directly about  President Donald Trump – a main focus of Democratic angst. The only time she mentioned Banks by name was when she noted that her campaign had raised more money than him in the final quarter of 2017.

Minutes after introducing herself, the Fort Wayne resident made a passing reference to the lack of representation of women in Congress while  discussing the Republican’s recent inability to reshape the Affordable Healthcare Act.

Tritch said she was troubled last year when she watched 13 Republican men working “behind closed doors creating a health care bill.

“They didn’t even show it to other Republicans, let alone a woman, and rather than work across the aisle, they said let’s just repeal and be done,” Tritch said.

Such a move, she said, would have resulted in the loss of health care for 20 million people and make it more difficult to combat the opioid crisis.

Specifically, she pointed to Republican efforts last year in which they proposed giving block grants to states, a move she said predicted would have made “being a woman a pre-existing condition” and make maternity care optional.

“When you do things like that – when you take away health care from people and rights away from women in general – at some point, we’re going to say ‘enough.’ We’re not going to stand for it any more and I think that’s what you are seeing happen,” she said.

She also talked about the sense of a looming political movement.

“It’s exciting to be a woman running for office this year because there are so many. To me, that’s an indicator of how long we have stayed silent and now, we’ve just had enough,” she said.

She smiled when asked about the departure of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who announced Wednesday he would retire from Congress.

Ryan’s exit is among a large number of Republicans in Congress who are leaving.

“It’s an indicator of what direction this country wants to go and that the Republican party is starting to realize it – that there is a wave coming,” she said. “Not necessarily just a blue wave, but a wave of people standing up and saying this is our democracy and we want it back.”