WASHINGTON—Some might argue that serving as a member of Congress isn’t a pleasant job most days, Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) said. But at least it’s better than owning a dinner theater, he told The Epoch Times.
He would know.
During his eight years away from Washington, he bought and ran the Round Barn Theatre in Nappanee, Indiana.
“Don’t buy one,” Stutzman said, half jokingly.
His family still owns the facility. It’s part of The Barns at Nappanee, a popular tourist attraction in the area.
But Washington lured him back.
Since January, the Republican has represented, for the second time, Indiana’s Third Congressional District.
Stutzman left that office the first time in January 2017 after seven years, following an unsuccessful bid to represent his state in the U.S. Senate. He was succeeded in his congressional seat by Jim Banks, who has since moved to the Senate.
Life and Lessons After Congress
After leaving Congress, Stutzman worked as president of WishBone Medical, which manufactures pediatric orthopedic devices. Then he bought a company that sells RVs.
But it was owning a dinner theater that really ate his lunch, so to speak, he said.
He bought it in February 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That one there probably taught me more lessons because of the effects of COVID and what the government did, as far as restrictions to our guests and our customers and also to our operation,” Stutzman said.
“And then we went into labor shortages. Food costs went through the roof. Now, the cost of insurance, cost of utilities … have made that place almost impossible to run.”
Through that experience, he saw how Washington policies can negatively affect everyday people and their businesses.
And that, he said, prepared him for his recent comeback to the halls of Congress.
The Comeback
In 2024, Rep. Jim Banks, Stutzman’s successor in the U.S. House, was running for the Senate.
Stutzman saw that as an opportunity to use what he learned in the private sector to return to Congress and help constituents.
“I felt like this is the right time to run and be able to offer budgetary solutions and share with other colleagues the difficulty … small businesses [face] across this country from the effects of government decisions,” he said.
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) served with Stutzman when both were in the House. Young said he is happy to see Stutzman back as a representative for the people of their state.
“Marlin is a strong conservative and an effective advocate for northeast Indiana,” Young told The Epoch Times. “I am glad to be working with him again and to have him back in the Indiana delegation.”
Stutzman said it is his time in the dinner theater business that gave him the strongest insight into the potential benefits of President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
“When President Trump talks about no tax on tips, I see how hard our waitstaff work,” he said. “I see how hard our kitchen staff work to provide a good product.”
Stutzman has seen how important it is for businesses to provide health care to employees. For many, he said, it’s a struggle because of the high cost.
“When you have a federal government that makes life more difficult from the top down, it hurts those at the bottom that are trying to rise up,” Stutzman said.
Congress looks different from how it looked when he left in January 2017, he said.
Democrats, he said, have moved further to the left, while members of the GOP seem more focused on lowering both the national debt and the budget deficit.
During his previous time in Congress, Republicans controlled the House and Senate. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, was in the White House.
The GOP’s current trifecta of control in Washington, with Trump in the Oval Office and majorities in both chambers of Congress, makes for a “night-and-day” difference, Stutzman said.
Inspiration to Enter Politics
Stutzman’s experience in agriculture and trucking originally inspired him to run for office, he said.
At 16, he began a beef cattle operation. At 18, he became a partner in Stutzman Family Farms, helping build it into a multimillion-dollar operation. As their farming operation expanded, the family grew corn, seed corn, green beans, soybeans, and some organic crops. And when Stutzman added a trucking company to the family’s business ventures, he found out just how heavily regulated that industry is, he said.
“I saw how government has a lot of power that can affect a small business owner,” Stutzman said. “And America is full of small businesses.”
The federal government defines a small business based primarily on industry-specific size standards set by the Small Business Administration. The standards vary depending on the industry and are usually based on the number of employees or average annual revenue.
As of November 2024, there were 34.8 million small businesses in the United States, according to the Small Business Administration.
In 2024, small businesses made up 99.9 percent of all U.S. businesses and employed 45.9 percent of the private workforce, about 59 million people, according to the agency.
Small businesses contribute about 43.5 percent of the gross domestic product, or the total monetary value of the goods and services produced within the country.
But it was the 9/11 attacks that finally spurred Stutzman to get involved with politics. His oldest son was just 3 weeks old when terrorists flew planes into targets on U.S. soil, including the two tallest buildings in the World Trade Center complex.
Stutzman said that was when he knew that he wanted to be part of ensuring a safe future for the United States.
He began attending GOP precinct committee meetings.
Then, a judge’s spouse suggested that he run for an open seat in the Indiana House of Representatives.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll try,” he recalled telling her.
He won by 249 votes.
Stutzman learned a lot while serving in both houses of the Indiana General Assembly between January 2003 and November 2010. That’s when he won a special election to succeed Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who had resigned after acknowledging an affair with a female staff member.
Farm-Raised on Conservative Values
Stutzman grew up keenly aware of the value of hard work.
His father had to drop out of high school in the ninth grade to help on the family farm. And his father knew, he said, that with his lack of education, he would have to work hard to be successful.
His father eventually worked for a larger farming operation and then struck out on his own when the future congressman was a teenager.
“[We] built up the farming operation with hard work and family working together,” Stutzman said.
That upbringing in northern Indiana meant toiling on the farm and doing a range of tasks, from detasseling corn to caring for cattle.
“And that’s where I believe in America,” Stutzman said. “That anybody can do and accomplish anything if they work hard and build relationships.”
He also credits his parents and grandparents for showing him how to live out a strong Christian faith.
“Wherever there was a hurricane or tornadoes, they were always there as first responders to help clean up and rebuild with church organizations,” he said. “So I come from a family that served other people.”
His wife, Christy Stutzman, published a book in 2023 titled “The Spiritual Price of Political Silence.” A copy is displayed in his congressional office.
Christy Stutzman served in the Indiana House between November 2018 and December 2020.
“If you’re not engaged in politics in the United States, not only is there a spiritual price, there’s an economic price,” her husband said. “But she focused particularly on spiritual price because a lot of our ancestors came to the United States for religious freedom.”
The Things That Matter
Back home in Indiana, Stutzman enjoys working on his 65-acre farm with his sidekick, a Yorkie named Zeke. He tends to the cattle and manicures the yard with a Kubota zero-turn mower. The farmhouse on the property along the Pigeon River was built in 1887.
He also enjoys watching auto racing, a major sport in Indiana, the host of the Indy 500.
“I do enjoy NASCAR, but the greatest spectacle in racing is in my home state,” he said.
In Washington, Stutzman’s office decor reveals his passion for baseball.
One of his sons pitches at Bethel University, a Christian liberal arts school in Mishawaka, Indiana. In the office, there is a picture of that son in his baseball uniform, striding out of a cornfield like a character in the movie “Field of Dreams.”
Also displayed in his office is a bobblehead figurine of George Costanza, a fictional character from his favorite TV show, “Seinfeld.” In the show, Costanza had a stint working for the New York Yankees.
Stutzman missed getting the memento when the wobbly-headed caricature was handed out at Yankee Stadium. But he was able to snag one on eBay.
The walls of his congressional office also show his passion for agriculture.
An agriculture-related bill that he drafted with former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) hangs on a wall, even though the legislation never got a hearing, let alone a vote.
And he displays the packaging of the beef that his farm’s beef-processing plant produces. He is working on making the farm’s beef sticks and wagyu steaks kosher by involving a Jewish rabbi to ensure that kosher laws are followed.
A large painting of former President Ronald Reagan, created by an Indiana state police officer, hangs on a wall in Stutzman’s office in Washington.
He said he hopes that his current term in Congress will allow him to use his experiences to help make life better for his constituents.
“Northeast Indiana is a great place to live and work,” he said. “[The people] are here for one another, and they don’t want Washington to make life harder.”
