May 4th Indiana Primary

Less that two weeks away the Indiana Primary Elections will take place. There are several interesting races, I know I will be watching the returns to see who will be filling the GOP slate in November.

For the Senate seat that Evan Bayh is vacating, we have the national party's pick Dan Coats, the populist choice of Marlin Stutzman, John Hostettler, Don Bates, and the longest shot Richard Behney. Don Bates, a businessman, and Richard Behney, owner of Atta-Boy Plumbing and Tea Party Activist are both in their very first political campaign. Marlin Stutzman, a farmer who was the youngest person to win a seat in the Indiana House in 2002, currently a State Senator for Indiana, and John Hostettler, who was in the U.S. House from 1995-2007 are both running for their first state wide election. Then we have Dan Coats who was a United States Senator from Indiana from 1989-1999, obviously has the most name recognition and experience.

Frankly, there are several interesting candidates in that race. I have my favorite, I would love to see Marlin win, but I also worked for the Coats campaign to help him get his signatures to get into the race. I hoped that he would at the very least raise the level of attention the media would give to this race. Who knew it was going to work as well as it did, once Coats got his names turned in Evan Bayh ran away. I will happily vote for either this fall.

The 5th District House Race, is a crowded mess, and shouldn't have been. Those four candidates who chose to run against Dan Burton are not showing much political intelligence. They are definitely showing that they care more about their own egos than they do about America. They have sucked massive amounts of money out of other possible places it could have been used to help win seats away from Democrats.

Some of these candidates have embarrassed themselves to the point they may never be considered credible candidates again. The lone exception has been Luke Messer, at least for the most part. His campaign has mostly been positive, his commercial focuses on him and who he is. I have heard that he has dredged up some of the half truths and mendacious claims against Dan Burton that John McGoff used in 08 in a mailer, but since I have not seen it, I don't know if that is true. I hope not, but heard from a solid source.

Just this week I was telling someone how proud I was of John McGoff for not stooping to the lies and half-truths he built his entire 2008 campaign around. Then I saw his new television commercial, which isn't nearly as slanderous as it is stupid. It told me that if John McGoff actually approved and paid for this commercial it shows a very poor level of judgement. If he would spend his own campaign money so poorly, what would he do with our tax money in D.C.?

Mike Murphy's campaign has been disgraceful, the very core of his campaign is mendaciously trying to accuse Dan Burton of being a big spending liberal because he was in the House while Nancy Pelosi was spending money. Under this logic Mike Pence is equally culpable. This is absurd, who could actually take Murphy seriously now, his campaign makes him look like a lying politician or a fool, or both.

Brose McVey has seemingly had a difficult time deciding if he should spend his money bad mouthing Dan Burton, or Luke Messer, or the candidate du jour.

For me, I have to agree with Congressman Mike Pence, who endorsed Dan Burton at the Hamilton County Lincoln Day Dinner last Monday evening while all the above candidates and their campaign teams had to sit and watch.

There is no advantage to unseating Dan Burton by any of the other candidates. None would vote any more conservative than Dan Burton has proven in his career. None can be used by the GOP as Dan can as an attack dog against the left. Burton has no interest in any higher office, or staying in office much longer than this term. He is uniquely qualified to take on those who use Alinskyisms to attack those who confront them. All of the candidates who are running against him would not put their own political careers at risk fighting those fights.
It is very important that Dan Burton continues to represent and reelected this fall.

Hopefully the 7th District Race will produce someone who can beat Andre Carson this fall. Marvin Scott is running once again against Carlos May, either one would be a massive upgrade over Carson. I have my favorite, but won't speak to it yet. I just want the one that the voters in the 7th District will embrace this fall.

It seems that Mike Sodrel will come out and be going against Baron Hill again this fall, where he should be able to win easily in this climate. I hope that Mark Souder will win once again in the 3rd. The 4th District with the newly open seat of Steve Buyer should be quite a race, I would think that Todd Rokita would have an inside shot, but with that many running it could be a wild ride.

It is one of the more interesting primary seasons we have seen in a long time. As for me, I can't wait to see what happens once the smoke clears so we can all come back together focused on winning in November.

See you at the polls!